Carroll Speaker Series (for Parents)

Tracy Zager loves teaching and learning. As a student, she studied mathematics, geology and physics at Wellesley College and MIT, physics and economic and social history at the University of Oxford, and teaching with an emphasis on special education at the University of Washington in Seattle. She finally traded in her backpack for a teacher’s tote, and happily taught fourth grade for several years.

When her daughters came along, she gave up her classroom to work with pre-service teachers and their in-service mentors, K-8. After many years in adult education in a wide range of urban, suburban and rural schools, Tracy began extensive field research for her 2017 book, Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You’d Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms.

Tracy now divides her time among coaching in a K-6 school, editing math and science professional development books for Stenhouse Publishers, and writing and speaking. She's happiest when she is in classrooms, learning alongside teachers and students over time, and she hopes to return to full-time teaching someday.

Dr. Nadine Gaab is one of the world's foremost researchers in the field of learning disabilities and language development. Her lab at Children's Hospital in Boston engages in a wide variety of topics, but is especially focused on questions related to dyslexia. Dr. Gaab has done conducted foundational research on reading fluency, connections between music and reading, and studies on infants and preschoolers as her team looks for neural markers of dyslexia prior to taking on the challenges of learning to read. She is also a collaborator with the Gabrieli Lab at MIT which is so connected to Carroll School's research.