Diane Sweeney has been a national consultant since 1999, and is currently the lead consultant for the educational consulting firm Spark Innovation. With a passion for teaching literacy, Diane has spent two decades working with teachers to implement Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop across grades K-12. Her work began as a program officer at the Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC) alongside renowned educators such as; Ellin Oliver Keene, Stephanie Harvey, Debbie Miller, and Cris Tovani. Since then she has become a respected voice in the field of coaching and professional development. The author of Student-Centered Coaching: A Guide for K-8 Coaches and Principals (Forthcoming, Corwin Press) and Learning Along The Way: Professional Development by and for Teachers (Stenhouse, 2003), Diane also holds a longstanding interest in how adult learning translates to learning in the classroom. In the past, she has served as a classroom teacher, literacy coach, a trainer for literacy coaches, and an instructor at the university level. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Denver and a Master’s in Bilingual and Multicultural Education from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Diane can be reached at diane@sparkinnovate.com.

In addition to providing consulting support to Spark Innovation, Mariah Dickson is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Denver School of Science and Technology, a Denver Public Schools charter school in its fifth year.  DSST has distinguished itself as one of the highest performing high schools in the country and as the only high school in Colorado to receive the highest ratings for both performance and improvement for three consecutive years.  Prior to this position, Mariah served as a Senior Consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates funded Colorado Small Schools Initiative, providing coaching, technical assistance, facilitation, and professional development services to the teachers, principals, schools and districts participating in this reform initiative.  She was also the School Coach for the Manual Educational Complex, the Denver School of Science and Technology, and Arrupe Jesuit High School.  Before she joined CSSI and after she spent 10 years as a teacher and administrator in small high schools, she also served as the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC), the home of national literacy experts, such as Cris Tovani, Ellin Keene, and Stephanie Harvey. Mariah has an M.A. in English from Tufts University and a B.A. in Humanities from Stanford University. She has written articles and frequently presents on the topics of school coaching and instructional leadership and practice as the basis for secondary school reform.

Mariah can be reached at dickson.mariah@scienceandtech.org.