AIW Leadership
Dr. M. Bruce King, Director of the AIW Institute, is a Faculty Associate with the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work in ELPA concentrates on teaching courses on instructional leadership and teacher capacity, coordinating the Wisconsin Idea PhD cohort program in K–12 leadership, and building effective partnerships between the department and schools and districts.
Bruce has been a researcher with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, where he contributed to two studies focused on Authentic Intellectual Work, the Research Institute on Secondary Education Reform for Youth with Disabilities and the Center for Organization and Restructuring of Schools. He received his PhD in curriculum and instruction from UW-Madison and taught upper elementary, middle, and high school for 11 years in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Quito, Ecuador.
Bruce has been a research fellow at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, and has consulted on two research projects in Australian schools that extended the body of research on AIW. He serves as associate editor for the international journal Teaching and Teacher Education, and has published in national and international research and practitioner journals. Currently, he provides professional development as an AIW coach in Wisconsin, Illinois, and with Dr. Laura Lang, in Israel, with previous work in Iowa, Georgia, Connecticut, and New York City.
Along with UW-Madison colleague, emeritus professor of Curriculum & Instruction Fred Newmann, and Dana Carmichael, Bruce recently published Authentic Intellectual Work: Improving Teaching for Rigorous Learning (Corwin, 2016). He is also the editor of How Schools and Districts Meet Rigorous Standards Through Authentic Intellectual Work: Lessons from the Field (Corwin, in press, May, 2016).
Laura Lang
Dr. Laura M. Lang is the Associate Director of the AIW Institute. In this role, she helps establish new AIW collaborations and provides professional development for multiple schools and districts.
Dr. Lang is also a Faculty Associate with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches face-to-face and online graduate courses in educational leadership and instructional coaching. In addition, she continues to work as an educational consultant, collaborating with a range of schools and organizations in Wisconsin and the Chicago-area, including the Terra Foundation for American Art and Newberry Library. Current partners include Overture Center for the Arts and University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics (Department of Hematology/Oncology).
Dr. Lang received her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction (Literacy Studies) at the UW-Madison in 2012, her M.S.Ed in Reading Instruction from National Louis University in 2000, and her B.S.Ed (Secondary English Education) from Northwestern University in 1996. She also completed required coursework for Educational Leadership certification in 2006.
Prior to starting work as an AIW coach in 2013, Laura spent 17 years working in the Chicago Public Schools, at New Trier High School (Winnetka/Northfield, IL) and in the Madison Metropolitan School District (Madison, WI) as a high school English teacher, reading specialist and literacy/instructional coach in both urban and suburban settings. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and has coauthored multiple texts for educators, including "Academic Vocabulary in Middle and High School: Effective Practices across the Disciplines" (2015, Guilford Press).
AIW Institute Affiliates
TS Educational Leadership Consultants was established in 2010 by Christina Wahlert and Susan Peterson. Drawing on their individual and combined educational experiences, Wahlert and Peterson began consulting with school districts, working with leadership and staff to effectively implement Authentic Intellectual Work professional development. Through their AIW work, the pair began developing tools for program evaluation and monitoring teacher implementation, while also instructing leadership to collect and evaluate the data points.
TS Mission: To design and deliver effective, collaborative professional development, meeting the specific learning needs of educators as they work to improve teaching and learning, and to provide reliable tools and rigorous training for program evaluation that measures the impact of professional development on student achievement.
Tina Wahlert
Tina Wahlert is an independent consultant with TS Educational Leadership Consultants. She also serves as a school improvement professional development consultant with Green Hills Area Education Agency in western Iowa. Tina has been in education for 35 years. Prior to her current position, she taught K-12 special education, reading, English, and technology for 18 years. She holds Master's degrees in Education and Educational Administration.
Since 2015, Tina has been a member of the Iowa Statewide School Improvement Team; she also serves as the Development Co-lead of Collaborating for Kids Design Team. Tina is a veteran AIW facilitator and coach; she has been supporting schools and districts in Iowa and Minnesota since 2007.
Susie Peterson
Susie Peterson is a former English and History high school teacher, adjunct college instructor, and high school principal, working with several southwest Iowa schools for the past 30 years. She holds a masters degree in English and her administrative doctoral work was done at Iowa State University. Susie is an independent consultant for TS Educational Leadership Consultants and currently works with school districts in Iowa, Minnesota, and Georgia.