Denise Wilbur

Change Agent, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Potential employer, World traveler, Writer/Editor

I'm an educational consultant/researcher/writer/editor-- four nouns, like many at TED. I work with teachers, administrators, state DOE staff, and national ministries of education to improve learning and teaching. My commitments are to curriculum that enhances deep understanding rather than broad knowledge, deep respect between teachers and students (especially from the former toward the latter), and the breaking of the entrenched conservatism of American education. I worry about the deep grounding of American schools in 19C authoritarian models, and I work for reform that reaches toward the adult future-- how do we build and run schools that will produce adults to lead our-- and their own-- future? I've been a teacher, a dean, a development worker, a grant writer. I've written multi-million dollar grants, restructured artisan cooperatives in Hungary after the fall of the Berlin wall, and counseled sexual assault survivors.

Education as inspiration...the intellectual experience of children....professionalism... great food...Paris

Curriculum design, Editiing, educational reform

I want to use TED as a springboard to create the ultimate education event that will bring US educators beyond their conservatism, expose them to the work of dynamic ideas, and inspire them to make changes in the way we run schools. I'm here to listen and learn, but then to use this experience to help teachers learn how to think beyond the boundaries of their own experiences, to embrace the potential of an uncertain future, and to teach their students to be greater than themselves. More personally, I want to extend my research on professionalism, a topic of great concern (and sometimes resistance) to educators: what does professionalism mean? How do professionals behave? How does a professional system regulate, extend, and improve itself? How can education really become a profession?

Writing to simultaneously clarify and inspire...upholstering furniture...French cooking