Meet Your Trainer

    Kirk’s philosophy about teaching is simple. He agrees with Madeline Hunter when she said, “Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!” Many think she was being too “warm and fuzzy” but what she meant was you are not going to reach some kids academically until you first reach them on the “human to human” level. We won’t ever really know what goes on in their lives at home, drama, trauma, unattainable expectations.   Kirk believes in re-prioritizing the human beings in classrooms to then enable doing their academics.  He doesn’t believe you only need a trendy new program that has the right buzzwords or big theories without direct practices

Kirk knows that educators have the toughest job in America as they are asked every day to wear many different hats – mom/ dad, nurse, career coach, differentiator, supervisor, translator, judge, and hopefully teacher – to name a few. Kirk believes what teachers can use is both research based, proven in actual schools, and practical strategies teachers can start applying immediately.

Kirk understands that just as in the special education classrooms, in general education classrooms students have a wide range of cognitive abilities, intellectual assets,  and academic experience.  Add in the increasingly diverse cultural and religious backgrounds and the old  “one size fits all” approach contributes to our challenges in the classroom.

Kirk also knows the biggest unchallenged assumption by many today about education is that kids are coming to school willing and ready to learn, particularly by policy makers. As educators, that is not the experience we have in the classroom. More and more students are socialized on social media, video games, celebrity lifestyles, etc.

After seeing the challenges stressing teachers across all educational systems, from private and charter schools to urban public schools, Kirk is dedicated to helping educators be successful for their students and for their own pride in their work in the classroom, using proven, practical strategies and inspiration for classroom climate.   Kirk is committed to paying it forward for the elementary teachers that turned him from a remedial reader to consistently at upper end of class in literary analysis; and turning non-readers into reading chapter books on free time – changing even more students lives.