Dean Kokonas Email & Phone Number

"Learning is at its best when it is deadly serious and very playful at the same time." Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot - Educational SociologistI am a professional educator and a life-long learner. My passion is teaching, learning, authentic assessment and educational leadership. I am a teacher/leader at Lester B. Pearson High School in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I hold a PhD from the University of Minnesota, where I conducted a study on the phenomenon of leadership succession in international schools. I am in the 26th year of a successful and productive teaching career spanning three continents: 18 years in Canadian public high schools and eight years as an international school educator and leader in Germany (four years) and Singapore (four years). I am a highly qualified International Baccalaureate Diploma, Middle Years, and Career Pathways educator. My content speciality is Secondary Mathematics. I am a skilled educator with a resourceful, creative and engaging teaching style committed to cultivating productive learning environments to drive student achievement. Lead, Learn, Challenge, and Care is my mission statement. These words guide and filter every leadership and instructional decision I make. I believe in the transformative power of education for students, and by extension, their wider communities. Consistent and precise communication is fundamental to effective and efficient teaching and leadership. My teaching and leadership style is a balance between transformational and distributed. I value objective data-driven decision-making over gut-level reactions. Modern learning organizations are complex systems, and there is no room for silo-thinking. Student achievement is a direct function of organizational and structural coherence.My professional goal for 2021 is to seek an opportunity to provide substantive support to both national and international educators and leaders who are ready and prepared to advance school-wide and district-wide reform initiatives for coherent, consistent and lasting school improvement. My focus is on teachers' contributions as leaders of instructional development and the multiple ways teachers and principals work together to promote collaborative school cultures for school improvement.

Listed skills include Teaching, Educational Technology, Educational Leadership, Curriculum Development, and 25 others.