Kristine Mraz

Kristine Mraz is a teacher, writer, and instructional coach specializing in early childhood and elementary education. A former staff developer with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, she has worked as a classroom teacher and currently coaches in grades preK–2 while consulting with schools on literacy, play, and child-centered classroom practice. She is based in Southern California.

Mraz is the coauthor of several influential professional texts for educators, including Kids First from Day One: A Teacher’s Guide to Today’s Classroom and A Mindset for Learning: Teaching the Traits of Joyful, Independent Growth (both with Christine Hertz). She also coauthored Purposeful Play: A Teacher’s Guide to Igniting Deep and Joyful Learning Across the Day with Alison Porcelli and Cheryl Tyler, and, with Marjorie Martinelli, Smarter Charts K–2: Optimizing an Instructional Staple to Create Independent Readers and Writers and Smarter Charts for Math, Science, and Social Studies: Making Learning Visible in the Content Areas. Her work extends to the popular “Chartchums” blog, where she and Martinelli share practical strategies for using charts to support student independence.