Origins of Agile in Education - A Conversation with Steve Peha

Steve Peha is the founder of Teaching That Makes Sense, an education consultancy specializing in literacy, student engagement, and instructional innovation. He has written extensively on developing young people’s literacy and his book ‘Be a Better Writer’, written with his wife, Margot Carmichael Lester, was an Amazon #1 “Hot New Release” in teen writing. The book also won a Parents’ Choice Recommended Award, a 2016 Best Book Gold Medal Award in Young Adult Nonfiction. It has also received an award nomination from YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association, part of the American Library Association.

Steve’s new novel ‘Jordan's Run’, a near-future dystopic look at American culture, won the 2019 Spark Award at New York's BookCon. He is also working right now on an essay collection for the 2020 election called "We All Breathe the Same Air" based on JFK's famous American University speech.

Since 1995, Steve has written widely on teaching, learning, and writing for publications like The Washington Post, The National Journal, Psychology Today, Edutopia, Education Post, and many others. In 2001, he created The Effective Learning Series for The Seattle Times and received an Innovators in Education from the Newspaper Association of America.

In particular, Steve wrote a very prescient piece for InfoQ in June 2011 entitled, ‘Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would)’. He has also spoken at Yahoo, Google and Paypal on the topic of introducing Agile strategies into education.

Prior to starting Teaching That Makes Sense, Steve held top management positions with several technology companies. As founder of Music Technology Associates, a multimedia consulting company, he developed Music Mentor, an award-winning music education program for the Windows Multimedia PC platform.

Social Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevepeha

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepeha/