This month’s spotlight shines on Lisa St. Clair, a founding Partner and Senior Evaluator at the Omaha Program Evaluation Services (OPES) in Omaha, Nebraska. Their clients range from a completely free private school in North Omaha called Nelson Mandela Elementary School to a school for students with identified special education needs in Nebraska. In her previous work at the University of Nebraska, Lisa led a team that used the CLASS to evaluate after-school programs for elementary through high school students.

Lisa had been doing program evaluation for approximately 15 years and sees the benefit of using the CLASS when looking at the quality of educational programs. According to Lisa, “The CLASS has been useful to measure the quality of classroom teaching and learning interactions as well as to help to focus professional development and coaching.”

To say that Lisa is well versed in the CLASS would be an understatement. She is certified on Infant-Secondary and is an Affiliate Trainer for Infant, Toddler, and Pre-K. This coming October, she will attend Teachstone’s Regional Training in Charlottesville to become certified as a K-3 trainer. She readily admits that if Teachstone offered TTTs for Upper Elementary and Secondary that she would attend those trainings as well. Lisa found that going through the Train-the-Trainer Program has deepened her understanding of the tool and also helped her support OPES’ coding team to refine their coding skills. Lisa definitely understands the Learn-Measure-Improve paradigm, explaining, “To me, CLASS is all about usefulness- using the information to continuously improve the teaching and learning interactions our youth are experiencing.”

Lisa’s advice for new trainers is as follows:

  1. Start with a small and forgiving group
  2. Use a parallel process when training. When a participant calls out, “I see you are modeling Regard for Student Perspective!” she knows that things are going well.


Would you like to be featured in our monthly Affiliate Trainer Spotlight? Send an email to lianne.minnis@teachstone.com and we'll be in touch!

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