Kathleen M Budge Kathleen M. Budge has 26 years of experience as a teacher and administrator plus 10 years dedicated to bridging the gap between the university and the teaching profession. She is an associate professor of Educational Leadership and hair of the Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Department at Boise State University, where her research focuses on poverty, rural education, school improvement, and leadership development. Budge is the coauthor of the award-winning and best-selling first edition of this book and Disrupting Poverty: Five Powerful Classroom Practices, and the video series, Disrupting Poverty in Elementary and Secondary Classrooms. Her speaking engagements include international and national conferences, webinars, podcasts, and symposiums on topic of poverty and the whole child. She earned her doctorate from the University of Washington in 2005. Budge continues to maintain that her most important and significant work has been teaching first graders to read. Read More Read Less