Kirsten Olson

Kirsten Olson is a writer, an educational consultant, a national-level Courage To Teach facilitator (www.couragerenewal.org), and principal of Old Sow Consulting. A frequent lecturer and presenter, Olson has also been a visiting assistant professor at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, and is the author of Schools as Colonizers (2008), a book that reconsiders the educational ideas of the radical school critics of the 1960s. She received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005 and was an English major at Vassar College.

Olson’s work as an educational consultant focuses on instructional improvement and leadership development to better support all learners. She has been a consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and to many large public school systems and charter schools. She also writes for Education Week, Educational Leadership and Teacher Magazine.

Olson can be reached at www.kirstenolson.org, where stories about school wounding, healing, and standing up to old school culture are being collected and featured. Please join us there.