Schools make more sense when you understand the people within them.
After more than three decades working in schools, I’ve learned that the challenges that appear most urgent are rarely isolated.
Enrollment, leadership, culture, student behavior, faculty wellbeing, family relationships, and communication continually shape one another. Understanding a school means looking beyond the presenting problem to the relationships, experiences, and structures beneath it.
That understanding is the foundation of Elephant Educational Consulting.
Dave Provost, Principal
THE PERSPECTIVE BEHIND ELEPHANT
For more than 35 years, I’ve worked in independent schools as a teacher, coach, admissions and enrollment leader, program director, head of school, and board member.
I’ve experienced schools from nearly every angle—working with students and families, supporting teachers, leading organizations, navigating enrollment and retention, and helping communities through periods of growth and change.
Over time, my work led me toward a question that cuts across all of those roles:
What allows people—and the organizations they create—to thrive?
That question led me more deeply into the study of trauma, attachment, relationships, stress, regulation, and human behavior—and ultimately to advanced training in trauma-informed practice and Compassionate Inquiry.
Today, my work brings those perspectives together: decades of experience inside schools with a deeper understanding of the human dynamics that shape them.
I’ve spent my career inside schools.
The Elephant Advantage.
Experience Inside Schools
More than three decades across classrooms, enrollment, program leadership, administration, school leadership, and governance provide a perspective shaped by seeing schools from many different seats—and understanding how those perspectives intersect.
Deep study and advanced training in trauma-informed practice, Compassionate Inquiry, Internal Family Systems, Polyvagal Theory, attachment, stress, and regulation inform a deeply relational understanding of human behavior—and what people need in order to thrive.
Relational Focus
Systems Thinking
An integrated approach that looks beyond presenting problems to understand the relationships, experiences, and structures shaping the whole school—and where meaningful change can begin.