Consulting Projects

Just like Commissioner Gordon used to shine the bat signal to call in Batman when he needed some outside help, I’m here for you —whether it’s to help solve particular challenges or when you just need some extra hands to move the needle forward. (Note that an email works better than shining a light into the night sky for me, though no judgment on how Gotham City did it.)

Once I get your signal, we set up a time to talk through what you are looking for help with so I can create a customized project that is designed to ensure you get the solutions you need. We’ll talk, you’ll tell me what you want to be true at the end of our work and I’ll write you a customized proposal with some options to review. When I say customized, I mean everything about it is for you and your organization, drawing on my extensive experience, vast library and insane hard drive—taking into account how it needs to get done in your circumstances. (Do you need to build organizational buy-in or is time of the essence? To what extent is team input important, and how can that best be gathered? I think about those are the kinds of things when I’m drafting your proposal.)

Sometimes that proposal fits exactly right—but other times, it’s a starting place and you can react to what works about and what you’d like to adjust. I’ll revise, Proposal 2.0 is born, and we repeat this cycle as many times as we need to in order to make sure this will get you what you need, want and are dreaming about.

Having worked as a leader throughout different schools and education organizations for over 25 years, my experience and expertise allow me to support you on a wide variety of subjects, including but not limited to:

Academic

Choosing a new curricula, designing and implementing a coherent academic strategy, implementing data driven instruction, using assessments strategically to drive instruction, nurturing engaging classrooms, creating consistent school and classroom systems, fostering instructional routines and rituals and designing, implementing and trouble-shooting related operational systems

Cultural

Establishing a strong school culture, creating consistent and positive classroom cultures with teachers of all skill levels, incorporating trauma-informed practices into your school or organization, reducing or eliminating exclusionary discipline practices, improving student attendance, weaving joy (or other desired characteristics) in your organizational culture and related operational systems

Talent-Related

Increasing employee engagement, reducing staff turnover, turning around a toxic or mediocre team culture, engaging stakeholders (e.g., community, families, Board, staff, etc.) meaningfully and effectively, rebooting your hiring and onboarding practices to set people up for success, customized plans to help staff members grow their skills through professional development, establishing internal leadership development programs and pipelines, clarifying roles and responsibilities, implementing or revamping your performance management practices

Leadership

Helping leaders broaden their toolkits to increase their effectiveness, creating a vision for team functionality that can come to life quickly, leading through challenge, turning around organizations, shifting culture to integrate themes like growth mindset, how to function as a leader in a way that allows you to be proactive (not just reactive), communicating effectively with your team, leading with your Strengths, building a more asset-focused environment

Samples of Past Projects

Working with Beth was incredible. We were able to get clear on our goals, have a robust data dashboard and cut out some of the noise that comes with day to day school life. We implemented a lot of practices that hae really helped move us forward. I can’t recommend working with Beth enough!
— Jen, Head of School, Detroit Prep

Testimonials

Having a clear direction of how to go from theoretically making our middle school curriculum more rigorous to actually having a plan of how to get there has been so exciting. It’s been really helpful to think more concretely about teacher load and distributing the weight of adopting new curriculum. Also working through the recommendations you’ve made, from the perspective of them being “evergreen” with acknowledgement that everything can’t be implemented in one year makes it feel realistic.
— Claire, Principal, St. John School
Beth’s work on a project for us was super helpful: the level of detail is phenomenal and working well on the ground in implementation. I just can’t thank Beth enough for being such a terrific resource for our team!
— Dana, Managing Director, Watershed Advisors