Barbara Schieffelin Powell

Barbara Schieffelin Powell is a national and international educational consultant in curriculum development, teacher education, and evaluation. She has evaluated educational arts programs such as Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Connect, the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s program to bring Shakespeare to incarcerated girls, and a program in which severely disabled and able-bodied students collaborate in art and music. She developed the teacher education program for Exploring Humanitarian Law, a worldwide curriculum in 19 languages and 50 countries for youth ages 13 to 18, designed by the Education Development Center and the International Committee of the Red Cross. As a researcher she has studied high school change for the Coalition of Essential Schools, Brown University; Teach for America’s summer training institute; and teaching for understanding in schools. Previously she taught secondary school English and history in Malawi and the United States. She has been a high school principal and has taught at Wellesley College, Harvard University, and the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Currently she is mentoring a rural school in Bali, India. She is the author of Toward Understanding: Observations from Two Classrooms.