Kim Bearden

Kim Bearden is the cofounder, executive director, and language arts teacher at the Ron Clark Academy, an internationally renowned middle school and educator training facility in Atlanta, Georgia. A multi-award-winning educator, she has been inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame and received honors including the Disney American Teacher Award for Humanities and the Milken Family Foundation Award for Excellence in Education. Over more than three decades in education, she has served as a teacher, instructional lead teacher, curriculum director, school board member, staff development trainer, and middle school principal.

Bearden is the author of Fight Song: Six Steps to Passion, Power, Peace, and Purpose and Talk to Me: Find the Right Words to Inspire, Encourage, and Get Things Done, as well as the bestselling book Crash Course: The Life Lessons My Students Taught Me. Her work focuses on communication, relationships, and school culture, and more than 15,000 educators visit her classroom at the Ron Clark Academy each year to learn strategies for engaging students and creating environments for success.