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Chris Bennett
Chris Bennett, EdD, is the executive director of middle schools and accountability for Cleveland County Schools in North Carolina. Under his leadership, Burns Middle School was designated a Model PLC School and earned Highly Effective Schools Accreditation.
Chris Bennett
Chris Bennett, EdD, is the executive director of middle schools and accountability for Cleveland County Schools in North Carolina. He began his career as a middle school math and science teacher and coach at Kings Mountain Middle School. Following his time in the classroom, he served as a high school assistant principal, elementary school principal, and middle school principal. His focus is helping schools build collaborative, sustainable systems and practices focusing on core and intervention academics, behavior, and social-emotional learning to ensure total school improvement.
Under his leadership, Burns Middle School was designated a Model PLC School in 2020 and earned Highly Effective Schools Accreditation in 2021. The school has been featured in Education Week, as well as publications by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and the US Department of Education (State Personnel Development Grants Program).
Dr. Bennett has been published in NASSP’s Principal Leadership and AMLE’s Focus on the Middle. He has presented at local, state, and national conferences on topics including MTSS, building and sustaining professional learning communities, adolescent literacy, and behavior and social-emotional strategies and practices. He was nominated as an Education Week Leader to Learn From.
Dr. Bennett earned a bachelor’s degree in middle grades education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a North Carolina Teaching Fellow. He also received a master’s in school administration from Gardner-Webb University, and an educational specialist degree and a doctorate in educational leadership from Appalachian State University.
PLC at Work®
PLC at Work® experts have proven success in leading the PLC at Work process in a school or district. Work with them to implement a focus on learning, build a collaborative culture, and create a results orientation that leads to sustained, substantive school improvement.
Presentations by Chris Bennett
- A Principal’s Role in Leading the Three Big Ideas As a Learning Leader
- Building a Collaborative Culture Focused on Total School Improvement
- Aligning Core Behavior and Social Emotional Expectations with the MTSS Framework
- Managing and Implementing Middle School MTSS
- Reaching the Top Through the Middle: Transforming School Culture
