Isaac is the Director of Teaching and Learning with the Core Collaborative. Prior to his work at The Core Collaborative, he worked as a School Improvement Specialist and Instructional Coach for Henderson County Public Schools in North Carolina. He is able to transform research into practice and demonstrates this daily with the districts, schools, teachers, and students he serves.
Isaac has a passion for progress and focuses his own learning and his coaching around the question “What’s next?” For ten years as a teacher and seven as an instructional coach, he made evidence the guide. When writing scores dropped district-wide, he studied writing instruction and led his county through the North Carolina Phases of Writing professional development. When his school failed to meet annual yearly progress goals in math, he shifted his focus to math instruction and became a facilitator for the North Carolina Partners for Mathematics Learning. As a School Improvement Specialist, he facilitated and coached a professional learning community model that gets results so that other teachers can follow where the data leads, adapt their instruction, and influence others.
As a consultant with The Core Collaborative since its founding in 2015, he has loved building relationships and learning alongside students, teachers, administrators, and others all across the country. He shares that these partnerships have taught him more about learning, organization, structure, and collaboration than he could have imagined when he first became a teacher. He is grateful to these schools and districts for creating the opportunities to develop the skills and ideas that have been infused into the Mimi & Todd Press books he has had an opportunity to contribute to over the last few years.
When not working, he enjoys spending time with his wife, elementary teacher Dana Wells, and daughter Jane in the mountains of North Carolina.
Isaac has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education from Elon University and is a National Board Certified Middle Childhood Generalist.
