Carissa Duran is a lifelong educator in pursuit of justice, currently serving as a learning consultant specializing in personalized learning, assessment, and systems redesign. Before her work as a consultant, she served for eight years at an innovative, competency-based high school, teaching Humanities and coaching teams in literacy, English language development, assessment, and educational technology best practices. Fully committed to disrupting inequities in education, she spent those years leveraging Project Based Learning, Standards Based Grading, Restorative Practices, and student-centered learning to serve her students. She was recognized for this work with a Leadership in Biliteracy award from the San Diego County Office of Education as well as the 2019 Personalized Learning Teacher of the Year award from the Aurora Institute (formerly iNACOL).
Carissa holds a Masters in Education from the University of California Riverside Graduate School of Education as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy, Law and Society, also from the University of California Riverside. She believes that as long as we’re serving diverse students with diverse backgrounds— which we are— we need to leverage technology and personalization to bridge the opportunity gap and give all students an onramp to success.