Our Team

Project Director

Rhonda Bondie is lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Throughout her career, she has focused on ensuring all learners are valued, engaged, and stretched in inclusive classrooms. Rhonda began teaching as an artist-in-residence and then spent over 20 years in urban public schools as both a special and general educator. Bondie is the faculty chair for Programs in Professional Education's online course Differentiated Instruction Made Practical. The course is based-on the teacher-decision making framework, All Learners Learning Every Day collaboratively developed with Akane Zusho and published by Routledge in the book, Differentiated Instruction Made Practical (2018). Rhonda has been a faculty member of Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project Zero Classroom since 2006. She designed the online course, Differentiating Instruction for English Language Learners, for HGSE Programs in Professional Education WideWorld. She directed the Teaching with Primary Sources Northern Virginia Partnership for seven years. Bondie maintains the websites for teachers, all-ed.org.

Historian

Jarvis R. Givens is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and the Suzanne Young Murray Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, having earned his Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. As an interdisciplinary historian, Givens' research falls at the intersection of the history of American education, 19th and 20th century African American history, and critical theories of race and schooling. Before assuming his position as an assistant professor, Givens was a Dean's Postdoctoral Fellow at HGSE (2016-2018), a Ford Dissertation and Pre-doctoral Fellow, and a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow.

Givens has published in journals such as: Race Ethnicity and Education, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Harvard Educational Review, and more. He is a life member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and a contributor to Black Perspectives (blog of the African American Intellectual History Society).

Social Studies Method Expert

Eric Soto-Shed is a lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and was the founding director of the Harvard Teacher Fellows teacher preparation program. Prior to coming to HGSE, Shed was the director of secondary history/social studies education at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Teacher Education from Stanford University, and has also served as a methods instructor at New York University, and with the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP). His work as a teacher educator has been greatly informed by eight years of experience as a high school social studies teacher in three distinct types of urban schools: a small alternative high school, a large comprehensive high school, and an early college magnet school. From the Bronx to Harvard University, Shed's passion for helping struggling students become critical thinkers has been the driving force in his sixteen-year career as teacher and teacher educator. His current research also reflects this commitment; he is the lead investigator on a Library of Congress funded project exploring how K-12 educators can use primary sources to teach local history.

Carla Lillvik, an alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former high school English teacher, is a research librarian at Gutman Library. She is library liaison to a wide variety of master’s concentrations from Teacher Education to Technology, Innovation, and Education. Carla works with graduate students to develop research competencies that support improvements to practice. She is assuming a growing outreach role with Gutman’s Special Collections, which include historical textbooks, public school reports, and materials relating to the history of education and teacher training schools.

Sarah Wong is an alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Learning and Teaching. She co-teaches in a combined 1st/2nd grade classroom at an independent school in Dover, MA. Sarah is also an avid dancer and dance educator and is passionate about incorporating intentional movement into traditional classroom settings. When not in the classroom, you can find Sarah at the dance studio, on a hike, or on the couch with a good book and her cat, Casper.

Rebecca Lee is an alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Learning and Teaching. For the last seventeen years, she served as a high school ELA teacher and an instructional coach. She recently pivoted to the nonprofit sector, where she works with students and community organizations as a Youth Leadership Coordinator. She enjoys supporting pre- and in-service educators in their advancement of anti-oppressive pedagogical practices.

Aminisha Ferdinand is an educator, performing artist and child of New Orleans. For the past two decades, she has been teaching children and adults how to access their inherent creativity within the confines of public school systems. As an arts integration specialist with KID smart, she designed and led arts-integrated, research-based curriculum developed through partnerships with K-8 teachers in core curriculum and self-contained classrooms. She travels across the country to train teachers, university students, teaching artists, and administrators through conferences, school workshops, and mixed-reality simulated classroom environments for organizations such as Harvard Graduate School of Education, Tulane University Center for Public Service, National Guild for Community Arts Education and Arts Council.

Aminisha brings a racial and economic justice lens to all of her work. She is trained in Theater of the Oppressed techniques and uses these activities to engage students in building community and awareness of their bodies and space. She has also been trained in SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) and uses this learning to assess where biases show up in her teaching practices and curriculum design, while training other educators to do the same.

Jonny Adler graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the fourth cohort of the Harvard Teacher Fellows program. He has taught, coached, and written curriculum for middle school social studies for the past four years. A big history nerd, Jonny loves helping young people learn about the past and its implications for the present and future. Outside of work, Jonny can be found reading, running, traveling, watching movies, and listening to podcasts.