2024 ICTE Fall Conference

Kirstey Ewald is just shy of 30 years in education. She is a 20-year veteran teacher of high school English. The highlights of those years 

during which time she was a DLT/BLT member, department chair, and PLC facilitator.

Kirstey Ewald

is an English Language Arts teacher who currently gets to work as an educational services consultant at Central Rivers Area Education Agency. Her everyday work at Central Rivers allows her to partner with schools and AEA colleagues to continuously improve the achievement, well-being, and future readiness of each student by supporting teachers in secondary literacy, writing instruction, universal instruction, MTSS, strategic planning, leadership, and infrastructure.

Spending twenty years in a high school ELA classroom, she has experience in a wide range of classroom contexts. She’s taught in rural and urban school districts with all levels of students in core and elective English courses. Her passions in literacy education are reading and writing workshop, writing process, student conferring, and independent reading. She blends this past expertise and knowledge in her current role where she looks at building and district system structures. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Secondary Education from Wartburg College and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Northern Iowa in English, with a TESS (Teaching English in the Secondary School) emphasis. Along her professional path, her love of teaching and learning has been supported through her work as the co-director of the Iowa Writing Project, her membership in and service on the executive board of the Iowa Council of Teachers of English, and her membership in the National Council of Teachers of English, where she served as chair the Standing Committee of Affiliates from 2018-2022.

Though her work is extremely gratifying, Kirstey also enjoys activities outside of education: taking weekend road trips/SUV camping, seeing live music, binge-watching tv, reading books, and taking lots of naps.