About M. Colleen Cruz

M. Colleen Cruz is an educator, professional development provider, and author committed to making rich literacy education accessible.

She has written several popular books including: The Unstoppable Writing Teacher, the bestselling Writers Read Better: Nonfiction, and the YA novel Border Crossing, a Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Books Finalist. Her latest book is Neurodiversity in the Literacy Classroom: The General Educator’s Guide to IEPs, Dyslexia, ADHD, Autism, and More.  In addition to authoring texts, Colleen has also served as a co-editor for the highly regarded Not This But That series, alongside Nell Duke.

Colleen spent several years as a Brooklyn public school teacher in both general education and co-teaching settings. Then, for almost two decades, Colleen worked at Teachers College, Columbia University as their Director of Innovation, where she taught professional development courses on writing and reading pedagogy to in-service teachers, was instrumental in designing new curriculum, developed practices to support students with IEPs in general education classrooms, led a partnership with the Child Mind Institute, devised and produced a comics-based summer school phonics and phonemic awareness curriculum for elementary through middle school, aligned best practices in literacy with Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and architected a large-scale tutoring project. 

Colleen currently supports organizations, districts and schools who are interested in working with an independent expert. People turn to her for high quality and personalized professional development and specialized guidance because she brings a unique combination of integrity, humor, real-world practicality, and a rare depth and breadth of scholarship with her. Her student-centered, research-driven work is used by classroom teachers, administrators, organizations, and teacher education programs nationally and internationally. 

Colleen has been described as someone who doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff, while staying firmly grounded in joyful practice. She does this through listening closely, considering relevant research, and building relationships while developing and demonstrating actionable steps. Whether working with a teacher on revamping their writing instruction to more closely align with their students’ needs, or teaching a series of workshops on reading interventions, or meeting with a school-wide team to audit systems that might be in need of change, Colleen makes sure that those she serves get the honest, warm and practical support they need.

She lives in Brooklyn with her family, her persnickety dog Charlie, and way too many books.