Lisa Nagel has worked as the head of the preprimary and lower schools at St. Anne's Day School, an Episcopal day school in Annapolis, Maryland, since 1998. Here, she has initiated and refined curricular programs in the areas of social development, literacy development, and emergent thematic studies to match the school's mission of providing innovative, hands-on experiences for students.
Lisa's interest in social development and conflict resolution grew out of her years as a classroom teacher at an independent school in Ohio. Following her work in the classroom, Lisa served for five years as an education specialist with a state funded agency and also as a private consultant, developing and presenting conflict resolution education, mediation, and classroom community and management programs for faculty, administrators, parents, and students in more than eighty schools. Lisa developed and served as editor on Contemporary Women's Issues, a special libraries' acclaimed CD-ROM and on-line reference database for high school and university audiences, focusing on human rights issues faced by women and children internationally. She has also contributed to research on the development of cyber communities among educators, supported by Stanford Research International.
Since 1993, Lisa has continued to serve as a presenter at a variety of local, regional, and national conferences. She has consulted with public and independent schools across the nation on topics related to balanced literacy, social development, conflict resolution, and constructivist curriculum. Most recently, she has presented workshops and seminars on caring classroom communities at the National Association of Episcopal Schools biennial conference and the Association of Independent Maryland Schools annual conference. Lisa also presented keynote lectures on the establishment of democratic classroom communities to educators across the country of Lithuania, supported by the Ministry of Education.
Lisa's work centers upon the ideas that the social curriculum and a commitment to community are foundations required to take sound risks and succeed intellectually at school. Students seek to make sense and meaning of the world around them, and so curricula should be holistic and rooted in hands-on experience to establish and further such connections. In pursuing such a course, schools must work from a basis of abiding respect, direct communication and a sense of caring among colleagues, families, and students.