Scholar-Practitioner · Author · Speaker
Dr. Rhema Stradford Dai, Ed.D.
Experienced Elementary School Leader
Developing People. Strengthening Schools. Inspiring Futures.
Schools flourish when leaders intentionally develop people.
An elementary school principal and scholar-practitioner committed to building joyful, academically rigorous schools where children flourish, educators grow, and families become authentic partners in learning.
Dr. Rhema Stradford Dai, Ed.D.
Experienced Elementary School Leader & Scholar-Practitioner
Per Sapientiam et Servitium
To the stars through wisdom and service.
A Word of Welcome
I am an elementary school principal and scholar-practitioner committed to building joyful, academically rigorous schools where children flourish, educators grow, and families become authentic partners in learning.
My work lives at the meeting place of practice and scholarship, in the daily life of a school and in the slower, deeper inquiry that gives that life meaning. I believe schools flourish when leaders intentionally develop people, and I have given my career to that conviction.
Current Focus
Work in Progress
A period of active scholarship, writing, and professional engagement, the intellectual life that surrounds and prepares the next chapter of school leadership.
Dr. Rhema Stradford Dai is currently advancing work at the intersection of educational leadership, adult development, instructional practice, and the development of people. Her present work includes writing and preparing scholarship for publication, contributing to professional and academic conversations in educational leadership, developing new ideas for leadership preparation and professional learning, and engaging in selected speaking, educational, and collaborative opportunities.
As a scholar-practitioner, she remains particularly interested in the relationship between how leaders develop and how schools improve: how adults learn, how instructional cultures are strengthened, how leaders create the conditions for belonging and rigorous learning, and how educational organizations build the human capacity necessary for sustainable change.
She welcomes conversations with schools, universities, professional organizations, researchers, publishers, and educational leaders interested in speaking engagements, scholarship, professional learning, and thoughtful collaboration.
A Question I'm Thinking About
“What changes when school leaders understand adult development not as an ancillary leadership skill, but as a central mechanism of school improvement?”
Writing
Current essays, manuscripts, and emerging scholarship.
Speaking & Convening
Recent and upcoming presentations, panels, professional learning, and scholarly conversations.
Inquiry
Questions currently shaping Dr. Dai's thinking about leadership, schools, adult development, instruction, and organizational life.
An Integrated Leadership Framework
Four Dimensions of Practice
These are not four services offered for hire. They are the interwoven dimensions of a single practice, the work of leading a school by developing its people.
Develop People
Teacher development, leadership coaching, professional learning, talent development, reflective supervision, and adult development.
Strengthen Instruction
Curriculum leadership, literacy development, assessment, supervision and evaluation, instructional coherence, and rigorous, joyful learning.
Build Community
School culture, belonging, family partnership, community engagement, trust, and joy.
Policy Leadership
Strategic planning, continuous improvement, organizational leadership, change leadership, and sustainable growth.
Scholarship & Practice in Conversation
From the Field & the Academy
My scholarship is informed by the lived realities of educational leadership, and my leadership practice is continually strengthened by research, theory, inquiry, and reflection. The two are not separate careers but a single vocation, the field giving the academy its questions, the academy giving the field its depth.
Here you will find my research, university teaching, publications, presentations, and writing, the intellectual life that surrounds and sustains the school I am privileged to lead.
An Invitation
Let us think together about the work of developing people.
Whether you arrive as a fellow practitioner, a scholar, a school community, or a reader, you are welcome here.