Academic Coaching

Organization, planning, time management, study strategies, taking notes, and even taking accountability are skills that are often expected of students without being explicitly taught. 

Well aware that not everyone is as inclined to color code their bookshelves, Kendall imparts her deep love for structure onto students and encourages them to find peace in order and routines. She enhances the habits of school that help students streamline their busy lives, manage their workload, sharpen their understanding, and maximize their potential.

Supporting students’ communication is a big piece of advancing their success. Kendall helps empower students to better know themselves as learners, to self-advocate, and to articulate what needs to be done when and how.

Kendall has extensive experience working with neurodiverse students and meets every student where they are. She brings warmth, patience, and a sense of humor to each meeting.

Writing Support

“Writing” is not a single skill. Compelling writing requires both planning and dreaming, both order and a dash of risk taking. Good writing does not simply rely on good ideas. Word choice, sentence structure, organization, literary tricks and techniques, time management, and sheer stamina are all essential for delivering engaging content.

Kendall knows that adept writers have a strong grasp of language and seasoned abstract thinking skills. She works to identify roadblocks in the writing process and helps each student chart a path through them.

Kendall also knows that writing doesn’t just show up in English class. From completing research papers to organizing lab reports to putting the final touches on a first job application, Kendall helps students write across the curriculum.

For students with a particular interest who seek exploration and practice beyond their classroom’s course of study, Kendall develops bespoke writing programs. She supports college and graduate school applicants with their essays.

Reading Support

One of the most common comments Kendall hears from parents of adolescents is, “My child used to love reading – I don’t know what happened.”

A lot happened. A lot is happening. Attention spans are evolving, distractions are accelerating, vocabulary skills are declining, and many schools are opting out of teaching whole novels altogether. Kendall helps students reconnect with the joy of reading. She assesses comprehension, teaches students how to actively engage with texts while reading, and pulls literature that is both enjoyable and the appropriate level of challenge. She shows students how to zoom in on the small sparkling details that make sentences beautiful and zoom out to consider a piece’s “big picture” and relevance in our daily lives.

Curriculum Design

Kendall has helped scope and sequence secondary English programs in independent schools for over a decade. She deeply believes in responsive teaching practices that meet the needs of her students today, so no two school years are alike. Units are meticulously outlined but leave room for experimentation and a wide range of modalities for students to express their learning.

Kendall has designed after-school and summer remediation courses, extracurricular creative writing workshops, grammar classes, “short term” electives, and social-emotional learning opportunities. As a curriculum consultant for an education technology company, she developed targeted “back-to-school” English Language Arts lessons used by hundreds of thousands of students.