Kristin Blais is the Program Director for Adult-Student Partnerships at Astra, and she keeps a foot in the classroom teaching literature and writing to ninth and tenth grade students. She has also taught middle school math and literature. Kris’ master’s work explored the critical nature of emotion in the learning process, a topic that continues to underpin her thinking and writing. As the Program Director for Adult-Student Partnerships, Kris steers Astra’s work strengthening relationships between adults and students in classrooms and school communities and expanding the ways in which both groups view their roles in education. Her work involves researching, visiting, and building partnerships with schools and educational organizations as well as sharing research, tools, and strategies that can transform classrooms. When Radically Reimagined Relationships are at work in schools - when adults and students can build connections based on equity, warmth, curiosity, shared responsibility and high degrees of agency and trust – amazing outcomes are possible for
both students and adults. Kris has been with the Astra Foundation since its founding in 2001, first working as a project manager and course developer with the Center for Neurodiverse Development, before earning a master’s in teaching and helping to establish the Center for Innovative Education in 2017.