About Shveta
Shveta Miller
Shveta Miller is an enthusiastic presenter, master ELA teacher, and inspiring instructional coach dedicated to decreasing disparities in student outcomes. She helps oversee professional learning for all of Oregon’s educator workforce through her position at the Oregon Department of Education and advocates for literacy education as an executive board member for the Oregon State Literacy Association and the national nonprofit Reading With Pictures.
She is the author of the highly praised Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher-Level Thinking with Comics and Visual Storytelling, a top-selling AP English Literature exam guide published by McGraw-Hill, many articles about teaching for popular sites like Edutopia and Cult of Pedagogy, and curriculum guides for for some of the nation’s largest education companies and nonprofits. She has played a crucial part in improving the reading confidence and performance of tens of thousands of students across the US in her role as a traveling literacy consultant, and she continues to provide flexible, engaging, ongoing professional development to teachers around the country.
More about my story
In 9th grade geometry, we were seated in groups and expected to collaborate to solve problems out of a textbook. Without much direction beyond that, we mostly worked out problems independently and silently. One of my group members consistently mumbled under her breath about how she didn’t “get any of this stuff.” Each time she sighed, no one responded. Finally I asked, “What part don’t you get?” After a few more questions and a little modeling, she said, “Wow, I learned more from you than I have all year in this class.” And a teacher was born.
For the rest of high school, I saved every assignment I found stimulating, planning to assign it one day to my future students. I thought deeply about why I wasn’t learning or engaged in certain classes but fully invested in others. Why was I skipping Algebra 2 to read Shakespeare in a bathroom stall? I saved these observations for that future classroom, where I wouldn’t just teach to the front row and expect everyone to “keep up,” where I wouldn’t announce test scores to the whole class to shame students into “trying harder,” where I wouldn’t lower my standards so all students got an A but couldn’t say what they learned how to do, and where I wouldn’t single out students to speak for their entire race or culture during a discussion of a “diverse text.”
After several years in college and grad school as an SAT teacher, and a stint in Japan as a college instructor of English as a Foreign Language, I finally got my own high school classroom. I put a Rushdie quote on the wall, I curated a classroom library out of whatever I could find in the old building’s storage closets, and I wrote a letter to my students promising that they would leave my class with a favorite book and strong opinions.
I went on to teach high school English in two New York City high schools, I authored a test prep book for the AP English Literature exam, spent a few years (in the US and abroad) adjuncting at colleges and universities while designing curriculum as a freelancer, and returned to SAT/ACT test prep as a staff trainer and consultant.
When I became a parent, I left the classroom to work with students one-to-one, appreciating the opportunity to customize learning experiences to each individual student’s needs and interests. When there’s only two of you in a room for an hour, there are no distractions. My class isn’t too big, my curriculum isn’t too narrow, I’m not preoccupied by a million other tasks or limited by an antiquated bureaucratic education system. With one pure hour of learning through conversation, relationship building, relevant and responsive instruction and meaningful practice, you can change a student’s entire learning trajectory.
In 2016, I became an education consultant who facilitates professional learning sessions for English, ELL, and reading intervention teachers. I worked with an instructional design team to create professional development experiences that engage participants with research-based best practices, opportunities for reflection, and collaboration. After large PD sessions, I partnered one-to-one with teachers as their instructional coach. I learned to practice deep listening to follow a student-centered coaching philosophy that ensured our conversations stayed focused on what students can achieve. I had the opportunity to support teachers in a variety of environments – rural small town districts in the Great Plains, Indian Reservation schools, underserved districts in high poverty areas, language immersion schools, and more. With each partnership, I learned more about how to meet the diverse needs of our nation’s children. I observed teachers who disrupted my own biases about each community’s unique assets and the impactful role they could play in their students’ lives.
At the peak of the COVID 19 pandemic, I joined a school district as a Teacher on Special Assignment to design and facilitate job-embedded staff development for secondary teachers. The district was transitioning to heterogeneous Math and Language Arts classrooms. We needed to ensure every student was engaging daily with higher-level learning opportunities, benefitting from Universal Design for Learning strategies to be successful. So we launched a professional learning series focused on supporting teachers to differentiate instruction for each student’s evolving rate and level to ensure they are thriving within their assessed zone of proximal development.
This professional learning series was part of a greater effort to address the disproportionate identification of White and Asian students as Talented and Gifted. Knowing that our district had historically under-identified students from marginalized groups as requiring TAG services, we implemented a redesign of our identification protocols. We conducted equity-centered data analysis of disaggregated assessment scores, removed cut off scores as barriers to identification, implemented universal screeners using non-verbal assessments that uncover the nuances of how neurodivergent students think, and began conducting culturally competent family interviews to uncover universal and culturally specific characteristics of giftedness in students across all populations.
Decreasing disparities in how we identify and serve students is challenging work because at each step I was faced with the need to boldly acknowledge my existing biases and how I have perpetuated racist practices that have underserved students. At the same time, I was serving as a clarifying agent of change for colleagues, leaders, and community stakeholders.
I have taken that experience with anti-racist school reform to the state level in my new position as a Professional Learning Facilitator for Oregon’s Educator Advancement Council (EAC), an innovative partnership aimed at helping Oregon achieve high-quality, well-supported and culturally-responsive educators in every classroom. I help design sustainable state and regional learning organizations that will be able to decrease disparity, disproportionality, and predictability in student outcomes.
After 15 years of teaching and serving educators in different capacities, and over a decade of parenting, I now have a clearer sense not only of what I won’t do in a classroom, but what I intentionally will do and support others to do. I aim to establish learning environments where all students feel safe enough to take intellectual risks, to engage with ideas, people, and texts that may appear uncomfortably unfamiliar at first, and where all students can reach academic and social-emotional goals that are meaningful to them.
I’ve been around the world as a teacher, consultant, and coach. I’ve worked with thousands of students and hundreds of teachers. And I am still learning a lot every day about the complex work of educating young people. Reach out below to work alongside me.