About

Dr. Kathleen (Kate) Wolfe Maxlow received her Bachelor’s in History from the University of Virginia, then spent a year and a half dressing in colonial garb working as a historical interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg. Upon realizing her favorite part of the job involved working with school groups, she decided to attend the College of William and Mary, where she earned her Master’s in Elementary Education. She worked for seven years in the Newport News Public School system in Newport News, Virginia, first as a third and fourth grade teacher, and later as an instructional coach and Supervisor of Employee Development. Dr. Maxlow then worked for two years as both a research associate at William and Mary and an educational consultant for Stronge & Associates. During this time, her work focused on teacher evaluation and the alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Dr. Maxlow led the project to design a desk audit of curriculum, instruction, and assessment alignment for the Virginia Department of Education, as well as designing simulations to increase interrater reliability during teacher observations with Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

In 2014, she returned to work in public schools by accepting a job as the Professional Learning Coordinator at Hampton City Schools. During her work there, she attended and graduated from ODU with a PhD in Educational Leadership and became the Director of Innovation and Professional Learning. During this time, she helped lead the charge to revamp the entire HCS curriculum—-a key component of HCS going from 41% to 100% of schools being fully accredited without conditions in four years. In 2023, she became the Director Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. Today, Dr. Maxlow supervises an outstanding team of curriculum leaders, teacher specialists, and digital learning specialists in efforts to design engaging, rigorous curriculum that prepares students for success in college, careers, and life. 

One of her greatest accomplishments has been leading the design and opening of the Future of Learning Experience (FLEx) only school for students in grades K-6. This one-of-a-kind program provides families with a combination of highly engaging virtual live lessons and asynchronous/independent activities guaranteed to inspire young people to love learning. The daily lessons and activities use games, role-plays, puzzle quests, escape rooms, hands-on projects and more.

Similarly, Dr. Maxlow is incredibly honored to lead the Hollywood to Hampton project—another innovative program that helps high school students write, direct, and produce professional short films with the help of professional entertainment industry mentors. Working in conjunction with Next Generation Storytellers, the inaugural year saw all four short films accepted into the Virginia Film Festival—a truly amazing experience for the incredibly talented young people of Hampton City Schools.

Additionally, Dr. Maxlow designs and implements training in the form of workshops, model teaching, coaching, and more. Dr. Maxlow has co-written multiple books with Dr. Karen Sanzo (among others), including 20 Formative Assessment Strategies that Work (Routledge); Look, Listen, Learn, LEAD: A District-Wide Systems Approach to Teaching and Learning in PreK-12 (IAP); Creating, Grading, and Using Virtual Assessments: Strategies for Success in the K-12 Classroom (Routledge Eye on Education); and Design Thinking: Research, Innovation, and Implementation (IAP). In 2020, Dr. Maxlow received the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (VASCD) Leadership Award for her work coordinating efforts to innovate the Hampton City Schools curriculum.

In her spare time, she adores spending time with her husband, James, two delightfully precocious children (Lyra and Esmerelda) and their muppets/doodle dogs (Barkley and Pippin). As a family (minus the dogs), they both frequent and build their own escape rooms and enjoy singing off-key to Broadway musicals.