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promote pedagogy that enables students who are disenfranchised and marginalized to demonstrate their strengths and innate intellectual potential. Dr. Jackson’s approach, called Pedagogy of Confidence, helps educators believe in and value these students and optimize student success, which, for Dr. Jackson, is the basis of equity consciousness. Dr. Jackson is a former teacher and has served New York City Public Schools as director of gifted programs and executive director of instruction and professional development. She continues to work with school districts to customize and systemically deliver the collegial, strengthsbased High Operational Practices of the Pedagogy of Confidence that integrate culture, language, and cognition to engage and elicit the innate potential of all students for self-actualization and contributions to our world. Dr. Jackson has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Urban Superintendents Program, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University, the Feuerstein Institute, and Thinking Schools International. In 2012, the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences International honored Dr. Jackson with its Educators’ Voice Award for Education Policy/Researcher of the Year. She has applied her research in neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and the cognitive mediation theory of the eminent cognitive psychologist Dr. Reuven Feuerstein to develop integrated processes that engage and elicit high intellectual performances from students who are underachieving. This work is the basis for her award-winning book, The Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools. Dr. Jackson also coauthored Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership and Unlocking Student Potential: How Do I Identify and Activate Student Strengths? with Veronica McDermott, and Mindfulness Practices: Cultivating Heart Centered Communities Where Students Focus and Flourish with Christine Mason and Michele M. Rivers Murphy. Dr. Jackson received a bachelor of arts from Queens College, City University of New York with a double major in French and education, and a master’s degree in curriculum design, master of education, and doctor of education in educational administration, all from Teachers College, Columbia University.
