Meet The Team: Eagle Rock Professional Development Associate Anastacia Galloway

As a professional development associate, Anastacia Galloway does a lot more than just coordinate POLs (presentations of learning), recruit panelists and create schedules. In fact, most of her time is spent working with schools and organizations across the country to reengage youth in their own education.

Anastacia says it’s re-imagining what public education can look like in this country.

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In just the past year, Anastacia has worked in Vermont on everything from service thesis projects to proficiency-based graduation requirements. She has facilitated protocols with visiting groups on projects or dilemmas they are experiencing in their schools and facilitated workshops for our licensure candidates.

In addition, this fireball has supported Eagle Rock’s curriculum department by helping to implement student-centered coaching. And last year, she was a core member of our Professional Development Critical Friends group as well as director of the student-led Adult Mentor & Peer Mentor program.

Get to know Anastacia Galloway:

Eagle Rock: It sounds like you have a full plate, but are there other duties you perform at Eagle Rock?

Anastacia: Besides my work as the Professional Development Center (PDC) associate, I’m the house parent for Pinon house. In every sense of the word, house parents are parents — I am my students’ biggest fan and strongest supporter, and I will push them to the edges of their comfort zones. And that means when it comes to keeping their areas clean or becoming leaders in the house or throughout the Eagle Rock community. Four nights a week and one morning, I open my home to them where we cook, make coffee, hang out, and otherwise spend time together.

Eagle Rock: What did you do prior to coming to work for Eagle Rock?

Anastacia: Let’s see, prior to coming to Eagle Rock I had just imploded my life plan. In the fall of 2010, I was in law school with ambitions to become an advocate at The Hague International Court of Justice defending sex trafficking victims, persecuting traffickers and being part of war crime tribunals.

Although I excelled, I regularly pulled all nighters, and I found my personal relationships suffered, and the debt I was accruing was unreal. Reflecting on my motivation, I realized that I didn’t need to become an international attorney to be able to use my talents to contribute to society in a meaningful way.

Prior to going to law school, I spent 50 hours a week in a windowless office building as a logistics coordinator and purchasing specialist for a building supply company the size of Coca-Cola called Ferguson Enterprises.

After graduating in 2008 from West Virginia University with degrees in business and world language, I moved to Villahermosa in Mexico where I interned for a marketing and advertising company, Signo Communicaciones.

Eagle Rock: What attracted you to Eagle Rock?

Anastacia: Since I had just imploded my life plan, I moved to Estes Park with my partner, Kevin, with no idea what my next step would be. In January 2010 I applied for the registrar position at Eagle Rock, thinking, “Other than direct experience with high schoolers, I have the skills and experience to be the registrar.”

When I did my full-day interview, I fell in love with the Continue reading…

Eagle Rock and Student-Centered Coaching

The Professional Development staff here at Eagle Rock are organizational school change consultants who work with schools, school districts, and youth service organizations to create healthy, high-functioning learning environments in order to improve student achievement.

Recently, the team took on an instructional improvement tool here on campus called Student-Centered Coaching (SCC), which has more of an impact on students than Teacher-Centered Coaching or Relationship-Driven Coaching.

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The sequence of this SCC cycle includes the “tuning” of a lesson plan with the instructor. When we tune a lesson plan we generally have two basic aims: a learning target, and a set of activities sequenced in a way that will help students meet that learning target.

The objective is to give and receive feedback from colleagues about the degree to which the activities seem likely to get students to the learning target. The plan is “in tune” when the learning target and the activities are most in alignment.

While observing the lesson, peers then analyze student work against the learning targets. We debrief those observations with Continue reading…