Brenda Pollard
CSL Improvement Specialist
Brenda Pollard is a School Improvement Specialist for The Center for Strategic Leadership and Organizational Coherence. For 25 years, Pollard has mentored and coached teachers and provided students with research-based best practice strategies to move from at-risk to on-target. Pollard’s work with three high-priority schools used data as a tool to take down poverty and bring improvement and growth for student success. The equity brought to the students at these district schools removed the title of state “takeover” from State Reward Schools to National Blue-Ribbon Schools.
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Pollard’s goal is to help students and teachers make positive academic changes. Her passion is helping students grow with a focus on at-risk students. She has trained in professional development, teacher mentoring, intervention, curriculum instruction, and disaggregation of data and helped write and publish a district workstation manual while working in public and private schools and presenting at district and national conferences from Chicago to New Orleans.
Pollard is a graduate of the University of Memphis and holds a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction Leadership. She was inducted into the Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education. A Mississippi native, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Journalism from the University of Mississippi. Pollard trained as a journalist and worked in Arlington, Texas, Winston-Salem, NC, and Wilkes-Barre, PA as a news reporter. In addition to turnaround work, Pollard enjoys service projects at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis- St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, homeless shelters, nursing homes, and annual walks to end breast cancer. Pollard’s biggest accomplishment is their mom. Her son Keith is an adult. She is married and lives in Memphis and has a personal interest in finance and is teaching herself how to buy and invest in stocks.