Consultants

CSEE's consultants are experienced educators who know independent schools. See our consultations page for more information about topics & fees.

Barbara Dixon Ackerman

...is an academic coach, teacher, and advisor at Garrison Forest School, in Owings Mills, Maryland. She also leads CSEE's highly acclaimed advisory workshops.  She is co-editor of CSEE's handbook for advisors: Need a Hand with Advising? Here's a Handbook!

Mike Pardee

...is Director of Character Education at The Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas, where he develops experiential curricula in the burgeoning new fields of leadership training and character development. Prior to his position at Kinkaid, he served as the Executive Director of the Leadership Initiative at Suffield Academy in Connecticut.

Mike's years of research and first-hand experience in both boarding and day school environments are assets in exploring the theoretical and practical applications of ethical leadership and character development in schools.

In his capacity as the founding Executive Director of Suffield Academy's Leadership Initiative, he helped generate a four-year curriculum and comprehensive leadership program that culminated in a leadership "practicum" in which all seniors assumed significant leadership responsibilities at the school, while being mentored by a faculty advisor.

In addition to consulting for CSEE, Mike is one of the founding faculty members at the Gardner Carney Leadership Institute (whose primary mission is "teaching teachers about teaching leadership") at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs. He has presented at NAIS Conferences on youth leadership development and character education, and organized the June, 2007, regional symposium on both these topics at the Kinkaid School in Houston.

John Roberts

...has been faculty advisor to the honor council at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia for 12 years, and has facilitated CSEE's Honor Codes conferences for the past nine years. His teaching includes experience both at the university level and in the Independent School world. He has written two textbooks and a number of professional articles.

John is editor of CSEE's Connections newsletter, and offers an objective, informed perspective, as well as resource suggestions and recommendations for school-specific programs drawn from years of experience and a variety of schools.

Ann Saylor

...founded and directed the Service Learning program at The Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2000, her service-learning program earned Harpeth Hall recognition as one of 23 high schools in America named "National Service-Learning Leader School. Harpeth Hall's spirit of service under Ann's guidance was contagious: with no service requirement, 95% of students chose to volunteer each year.

Ann authored the volunteer recruitment chapter of Youth Service America's National Youth Service Day Tool Kit (1998), she served on the national review committee for the Points of Light Foundation's YES Ambassador Program, and published in Volunteer Leadership, the national service magazine.

Ann has presented workshops both regionally and nationally on such topics as Introduction to Service Learning, Advanced Service Learning, Planning Volunteer Trips, Asset-Based Service Learning, and Introduction to Developmental Assets.

David Streight

...is a nationally certified school psychologist with three decades of experience teaching in religiously affiliated, and non-affiliated, schools. His teaching has included courses on Christianity, eastern religions, Islam, mysticism, ethics, and love. He is a co-founder of Religious Studies in Secondary Schools, and the translator of a half-dozen books for academic presses on subjects in the fields of religion and philosophy.

He was a team member to translate Routledge's impressive Dictionary of the Papacy. David spent two years as host to the teacher's section of the PBS Web site for Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and is a Practice Advisor for the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence for Search Institute.

David has been Executive Director of CSEE since 2004.

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CSEE Moral Development Team

CSEE's Moral Development Team is a group of experienced teachers and administrators from independent elementary, middle, and secondary schools throughout the United States.

The group has trained with the top character education and moral development trainers in the country, in addition to their own individual and collective work to facilitate moral development programs in schools. They are co-authors of CSEE's booklet Highly Effective Programs: Character Education in Independent Schools.