Larisa Merriman-Raban

Larisa Merriman-Raban is a lover of all things language arts, curriculum, and assessment. She had the opportunity to begin her career as a teacher and curriculum lead at the inception of a secondary school, developing schoolwide language and literature programs and contributing to the vision and scope for the school's growth. Throughout her teaching, she was trained extensively in the development and implementation of I.B. programs. She then moved into writing curriculum for one of the largest school districts in the U.S. She has since worked at national ed-tech and educational publishing companies. Most recently, she was a part of a small but mighty team designing and developing a core 6-12 literacy curriculum product from its conception to implementation.

Larisa is passionate about curriculum and assessment innovation. Her goals are to create learning experiences that are authentic, sustaining, and deeply meaningful. Her favorite challenge is establishing rigor and then building the scaffolds to make it accessible to all students. She continues her contributions to international assessments and always thinks about curriculum through a global perspective. She believes that language is our students' most powerful tool and strives to create instruction in which students can read themselves in the world and then write themselves into the world. She is thrilled to be at PBLWorks where those goals can be achieved.