Melissa Strand is a District Services Senior Program Associate. Strand provides professional development, coaching, and consulting to teachers and state, district, and school leaders focused on making research-based instructional decisions. She has pedagogical expertise in early childhood, the science of reading, multicultural education, assessment, and professional learning communities. She shifts school culture to focus on the power of teacher collaboration to enhance teacher learning and student achievement through WestEd’s service, VITAL Collaboration.
Strand also works with the Region 2 Comprehensive Center, which provides technical assistance to state agencies in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island to grow the capacity of educational systems and bring about instructional improvements for students. She is currently leading a project to support Connecticut’s state legislature through Networked Improvement Communities around the Science of Reading to ensure districts and teachers are equipped to make decisions that support all students reading at grade level by third grade.
Before joining WestEd, Strand held various educational roles and has over 20 years of experience. For many years, she was an early childhood classroom teacher and eventually decided to become Nationally Board Certified, which impacted her educational journey in ways she never would have expected. As a result, her roles ranged from a National Board Certified Teacher in (NBCT) early childhood to a university professor, instructional coach, and professional development coordinator.
Strand received her PhD, with an emphasis on cognition and instruction, from Grand Canyon University in 2018. She focused on researching the impact the National Board Certification process has on the leadership pathways of early childhood NBCTs.