Impactful Leadership for Effective Schools

Dave has served as a thought partner to nearly 100 school administrators of all different experience levels, and in all different contexts. He has coached first-time assistant principals to accelerate their growth and effectiveness, and has worked with effective and experienced principals as they navigate challenging landscapes.  Whether it is a first-time administrator, or an experienced veteran, his cognitive coaching methods and broad experiences have supported both rural and urban school leaders. Dave has helped school administrators lead with an equitable mindset to foster success for all students.  In addition, Dave has coached numerous teacher leaders as they worked to make their grade level and department teams more productive through PLC's.  Dave has also worked with many aspiring administrators as they look towards making the leap into school administration.  

Dave has developed and presented countless professional development sessions from topics ranging from evaluating both teachers and administrators, taking a coaching approach to supervision, managing people and systems, school climate, implementing professional learning communities (PLC's), classroom management, instructional leadership, and school climate (just to name a few!).  He has done so not only in his home state of Delaware, but also in other states such as Tennessee, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia, and even Athens, Greece!   Dave's sessions are always firmly rooted in research-based practices, and are developed with close attention to the principles of adult learning theory, resulting in engaging, informative, and practical professional development experiences.  

Dave served as the Senior Associate Director of the Delaware Academy for School Leadership (DASL) at the University of Delaware, where he coached administrators and provided professional development to hundreds of administrators across the state and the country for nearly six years.   

Dave worked in the State of Delaware for twenty-one years as a school administrator. From 2011-2017, he served as Principal of Dover Air Base Middle School in the Caesar Rodney School district, which was named a 2016 National Blue Ribbon School. During his tenure, the school received two State of Delaware Recognition Awards. The first was for Improvement (2012), and the second was for Academic Excellence (2015). In addition, Dover Air Base Middle was recognized by thebestschools.org in 2014 as the 35th best Middle School in the United States.

During his tenure in Woodbridge as K-12 Director of Instruction from 2004-2011, Woodbridge Elementary School received both a National Blue Ribbon Award and a National Distinguished Title I Award (2010) and it was named a superior school six times. 

In addition to his work in schools, Dave has served on many Delaware state-level committees, including as chair of the State Mathematics Coalition, and as a member of the Secretary of Education’s Change Management Committee for Race-to- the-Top implementation. Furthermore, he co-chaired a Delaware Performance Appraisal System (DPAS) Advisory Sub-committee.