About the Consultants Considered authorities on the subjects of teacher education, teacher leadership, and professional development schools, Vivian Troen and Katherine Boles speak at conferences and regularly consult to schools and school districts. They are the authors of Who's Teaching Your Children: Why The Teacher Crisis is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It (Yale University Press, 2003) and contributing authors to Professional Development Schools (Teachers College Press, 1997), New Directions for School Leadership (Jossey Bass, 1996), Women Leading in Education (SUNY Press, 1995), and Teachers as Leaders - Perspectives on the Professional Development of Teachers (Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1994). They were consultants to the book Writers at Work, published by SRA/McGraw-Hill, and their articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Educational Leadership, Education Week, Language Arts, and Creative Classroom. Vivian and Kitty founded, in 1985, one of the nation's first professional development schools to link colleges and public schools in partnerships for preservice education of teachers. They have appeared on the cover of NEA Today and their work in the development of the Democratic Classroom was featured on a CBC documentary, The Democracy Project, which was shown on PBS television. An interest in the transformative power of teacher action research led the two colleagues to establish a teacher research group in their public elementary school in 1995. With a grant from the Spencer Foundation, this enterprise was expanded to three other schools and subsequently to a study of action research groups throughout the United States. Reporting on their work, the two teachers presented a paper entitled "Transformative Professional Development: Teacher Research, Inquiry and the Culture of Schools" at the American Educational Research Association's Annual Conference in 1999 and a subsequent paper entitled "A Review of Seven School/University Partnerships for Action Research in the United States," at the International Sociological Conference in Brisbane, Australia in July 2002. Vivian Troen Equally at home in the classrooms of elementary schools and universities, Vivian taught in public schools, served on the faculty of Wheelock College, currently teaches graduate seminars, lectures before organizations and associations, and leads workshops nationally. She teaches in the DeLet Program at Brandeis University, where she is developing and implementing a model professional development school collaboration between elementary schools and the DeLeT program. She also develops programs for educative mentoring in math and science with the Education Development Center. She has served on numerous commissions and committees, including the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) to draft model licensing standards for beginning elementary school teachers; the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE); the Governor's Study Group on Teaching, the Massachusetts Department of Education Commission on Roles & Responsibilities of the Mentor Teacher, and the Brookline Black Achievement Action Committee. Her work in schools focuses on mentoring, professional development, and issues of teachers as change agents in reforming school culture and the practice of teaching. She is the co-author, with colleague Kitty Boles, of Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the teacher crisis is worse than you think and what can be done about it (Yale University Press, 2003). Kitty Boles A classroom teacher from 1971 to 1999, Kitty Boles has successfully combined classroom teaching with leadership roles in the school and at the university. After teaching in elementary and secondary schools in New York and New Jersey for five years, she joined the Brookline, Massachusetts public schools and taught there for over twenty years. She earned her Doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1991. Currently a lecturer at Harvard, Kitty regularly teaches courses on school reform, teacher research, and new forms of teacher leadership. She joined the faculty of Harvard's Teacher Education Program in 2002 and currently directs Harvard's Professional Development School partnership with the Cambridge, Massachusetts public schools. In addition, she directs the Teacher Leadership strand of Harvard's School Leadership program and teaches a course for prospective teacher leaders, school principals and superintendents that is designed to help them understand key ideas central to recent research on teaching and learning and explore ways to apply knowledge of teaching and learning to establishing policy and transforming practice. She is the co-author, with colleague Vivian Troen, of Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the teacher crisis is worse than you think and what can be done about it (Yale University Press, 2003). (c) 2003 Vivian Troen, Katherine Boles; All Rights Reserved.