Ms. Djordjevich has been the senior associate in educational reform at Gibson & Associates since 2000. She has supervised the Education Team, providing support to diverse clients including universities, urban districts, individual school sites, and after-school program providers. She has written grants totaling over ten million dollars, including a three-year partnership grant between San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco, and the University of California. She facilitated meetings to lead partners to develop structures including pipeline initiatives strengthening community college preparation programs for entry into the state university teaching program. Other elements of this grant included extensive teacher professional development in science provided by the community college and state university partners, and onsite school classroom workshops conducted at community college facilities.
She recently revised the Oakland Unified School District’s five-year plan based on a needs analysis that included achievement data; focus group and survey data; and input from facilitated meetings of community leaders, the school board, and district officials. She has led the evaluation of several National Science Foundation initiatives in Oakland Unified School District including the University of California Berkeley’s ACCESS professional development provided to K-12 mathematics teachers, and the Education Trust, Standards-in-Practice professional development program for secondary educators. She has overseen the development of 40 individual site plans in 9 urban schools serving Title One students and designated as underperforming by state and federal laws. She directed a state-mandated school restructuring process for one elementary school to improve literacy, school climate, and teacher collaboration. As a result, the school made the highest academic gains of 70 statewide schools in this program. Ms. Djordjevich has also been centrally involved in the research and development of a new non-profit emerging from G&A’s work in education. As part of the Gibson Learning Communities design team she has visited schools on the East Coast, attended a Coalition of Essential Schools Conference, and conducted extensive research into elements of effective schools. She has been a key participant in ongoing design team meetings.
Ms. Djordjevich also has been a part-time community college instructor for City College of San Francisco for the past five years. For her creative writing, she has received fellowships and awards including a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and a Southampton Writers Conference scholarship. She has served as the Academic Dean for the Johns Hopkins University, Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth’s summer residential programs at Skidmore College. She was a humanities instructor at The Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she led several faculty initiatives including the development of student digital portfolios. She also worked for Teach for America as the Director of Auxiliary Operations at their summer training institute. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
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