Educating for Change
Nancy J. (Nan) Starling
Educational Consultant
Nan Starling currently works as an educational consultant to provide all students the skills they need to succeed in high school and beyond. After 35 years as a classroom teacher in Illinois and Missouri, Nan has consulted for the past ten years at schools in Brooklyn, NY, Benton Harbor, MI, Chicago, IL, Bogalousa, LA, New Orleans, LA, St. Louis, MO, Kansas City, MO, Omaha, NE, Sacramento, CA, Fresno, CA, Apple Valley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA, as an instructional facilitator for Talent Development High Schools (TDHS), a program of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. As a facilitator for whole school reform and the TDHS Freshman Seminar course, Nan coaches cross-curricular teachers in this course for ninth graders’ transition from middle school to high school so that students gain study skills, skills for cooperative learning and interpersonal relationships, technology skills, and research on career choices to motivate students to remain in high school.
Nan also mentors TDHS facilitators and trains coaches in schools as well as presents at annual national conferences for the TDHS program, which research data validates through student retention, graduation, and college attendance. Nan helps teachers and counselors accommodate the curriculum to make these skills available to all students through adaptations for probationary ninth graders who have not graduated from eighth grade, for advisory classes in grades 9 through 12, for before- and after-school gang prevention programs, and for transition from incarceration to regular high school programs. Incorporating her degrees in Language Arts and Group Process along with her years of writing and editing, Nan authored the Study Skills Unit of the newly revised and expanded curriculum for Freshman Seminar with alternative and enrichment strategies to reach all learners equitably (to be published in June 2009). Based on her consulting experiences, Nan contributed to How to Coach Teachers Who Don’t Think Like You: Using Literacy Strategies to Coach Across Content Areas, a 2007 publication by Bonnie M. Davis.
In her own classroom in the School District of Clayton, MO, Nan was honored with the Emerson Excellence in Education Award for her multiple contributions to education. In this highly academic, award-winning district Nan created equity in her Language Arts classes, including students designated as honors, basic, and special needs. She worked with special education teachers for inclusion through Class-Within-A-Class to be accepted as a state approved instruction model, and as a team leader she incorporated special education strategies into the standard curriculum for all Language Arts classes. Nan’s students ‘ writing was recognized at their school, locally, and state-wide, but more importantly their skills have lead to success in other classes, graduation from college, meaningful careers, and the confidence and commitment to be productive citizens.
Besides being a classroom teacher, Nan served as a team leader, curriculum writer, and extra curricular activities sponsor, where she developed many innovative programs. She also served as The School District of Clayton Substitute Coordinator, refining selection, training, and evaluation of substitute teachers and screening of new teachers. After retirement from Clayton, Nan shared these methods through creation and coordination of the Substitute Institute offered by the Regional Professional Development Center (RPDC) and the University of Missouri at St. Louis. Also through the University and RPDC, Nan taught and supervised pre-service Language Arts teachers and established the St. Louis Area Laws of Life Essay Contest, a project of the Templeton Foundation of Radnor, PA and Charaterplus, a program of the Cooperating School Districts of St. Louis. For this contest over 12,000 students from over 40 schools and agencies wrote essays, four of which were published internationally by the Templeton Foundation, including one published essay by a homeless student in a shelter. In these roles Nan practiced her belief that every student can reach his/her potential when given the skills and opportunity.
