My passion in education focuses on building opportunities for positive behavior change. Educators face steep challenges when they seek to achieve successful outcomes for students with behavior concerns. I currently serve as the Positive Behavior Intervention Coordinator for Chesterfield County Schools. I also serve as an ESD Facilitator for the Effective Schoolwide Discipline Initiative, a State-directed Project of the Virginia Department of Education. I have had the opportunity to work side-by-side with school teams, providing professional development, consultation, and coaching support for over seventy schools in Virginia who are implementing Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. I contribute professional development presentations on a range of positive behavior intervention topics at local and statewide conferences and on site at schools, including subjects such as: “The Sweet Set-up for Classrooms”, “Teachable Moments for Behavior Change”, “Coaching for Self-Management”, “No-Drama Problem-Solving”, “Melt-downs and Power Struggles: Reaching Kids in Crisis”. I greatly enjoy working collaboratively with educators to develop and implement evidence-based interventions that get results. Twenty-plus years in teaching and administration from Pre-K through college level has brought many rewarding experiences with my fellow educators as we worked in partnership to improve learning engagement for students with emotional disabilities, communication disabilities, attention-deficits, autism, sensory integration concerns, and severe conduct disorders. These experiences have taught me that when we work collaboratively to build systems of support, it is possible to implement effective interventions for students. Tiered systems of effective supports result in rich life-long benefits by improving skills in problem-solving, relationship-building and self-management.