Michael S. Knapp

Michael S. Knapp is a retired professor and rejuvenated retiree. His work over many years as a classroom teacher, policy researcher, and professor of education was fertile soil for a number of books that concentrated on leadership, policymaking, and instructional renewal. During the latter years of his career, his research and thinking demonstrated how leadership of schools and school districts could enhance learning—and was itself a learning process for adults as well as young people. That work is summarized in “Connecting Leadership with Learning: A Framework for Reflection, Planning, and Action” (2006), and “Learning-Focused Leadership in Action: Improving Instruction in Schools and Districts” (2014).

Retiring five years ago, Dr. Knapp found himself smitten by an unexpected urge to reflect on his life, to connect past and present, to explore the meanings that might lie in memories. This has produced an entirely different kind of writing. The impulse found expression in several more books, and with more likely on the way. His first step down the reflective path concentrated on his career as a professor of education, recounted in “To Build a Bridge: Reflections on an Academic Career in Education” (2016). More recently, the urge to reflect has led him to revisit personal and professional episodes across his entire life, from age seven to seventy-four, captured in “Dropping Pebbles in the Pond: A Collection of Memories and Meanings” (2020).