We are excited to announce that Larry Simonsen has been named Assistant Principal of Da Vinci RISE High, replacing Edith Funes who resigned effective December 31, 2022.
Larry is a career constructivist educator and innovative school leader for instructional innovation and social justice. His 27 years of experience in secondary and post-secondary education in Los Angeles include the stewardship of unique schools for authentic stakeholder partnership and real world apprenticeship, among them LAUSD’s first start-up PILOT school.
Larry periodically serves as an adjunct professor for Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology, and his secondary students have presented rigorous project-based learning (PBL) science projects at the LA City, LA County, CA State, and National Levels.
Larry and his students have modeled effective PBL pedagogy for pre-service teachers, contributed to environmental engineering initiatives, and participated in rigorous research competitions.
His areas of professional passion are constructivist instructional design for diverse classrooms, and the development of authentic systemic approaches to assessment for deep and lasting learning.
Larry chose to join RISE High School because of its commitment to innovating transformative change in public education, challenging systems to evolve and serve all communities and student populations with equity.
Larry can be reached at lsimonsen@davincischools.org. Welcome to the Da Vinci family!
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