About.All of the coaches at Step Ahead are professional, career educators with years of experience helping students thrive. With our one-on-one approach, students have the opportunity to close gaps and build skills that they may not have the ability to do in a whole-class environment. Our coaches are experts in identifying student strengths and honing in on and addressing areas of growth with personalized academic plans.
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Top-Quality Educators Unlike other tutoring and academic support organizations, our coaches are not just experts in their subjects, they are experts in student learning and development. All of our coaches have graduate-level degress in education with years of experience working with students.
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What Sets Us Apart We go beyond simple subject tutoring, and are passionate about building up students to be the best versions of themselves: capable of critical thinking, planning, organizing, and task execution. We focus on developing universally transferrable skills that will serve students throughout their lives. Our coaches help students problem solve the challenges that arise in their current academic work, so they can build the skills to do so independently.
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Our Coaches
Lindsey Drumond, M.S.Ed.
Johns Hopkins University
Founder, Coach
Lindsey has nearly a decade of experience helping students from first grade to college. Lindsey began her career in education teaching English in Jordan. Although she had plans to pursue a career in foreign policy when she made the move abroad, she fell in love with the vocation and couldn't turn away. Lindsey moved to the DC area on a contract to develop language curricula for the military special forces. While she enjoyed the instructional design involved in the project, she knew had to get back to working with students and began working as an Executive Function Coach on the side. After balancing the two positions for several years, she decided to pursue a career in teaching full-time and joined the Urban Teachers program at Johns Hopkins University.
Since graduating with a Master's of Science in Education and receiving dual-certification in both Secondary English Language Arts and Special Education, she has worked in Washington, D.C. as a middle school teacher. In her first two years of teaching, Lindsey was placed in a charter school already slated to be closed due to poor performance. Here, she was the sole ELA teacher for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Despite this placement and the challenges that came with it, Lindsey's students beat the city-wide average for ANET test scores. Some of the previously lowest scoring students showed up to 5 years of reading growth in just one academic year. This experience revealed to her that there is no situation, no student, and no school that cannot be improved with the right structures and routines.
Lindsey is curently a Special Education English Language Arts teacher at a DCPS middle school. After just one year in the school system and in the role, Lindsey has already earned the highest performance rating, Highly Effective. Lindsey has also been identified as a leader in executive functioning and has delivered multiple grade-level and school-wide professional development workshops on how to develop executive functioning skills in the classroom.
Lindsey combines high expectations with a loving, no-nonsense approach. Lindsey is adept at making even the most reluctant learners excited about and engaged in their academic growth. Her expertise lies in working with students with high anxiety, histories of trauma, or behavioral concerns.
Since graduating with a Master's of Science in Education and receiving dual-certification in both Secondary English Language Arts and Special Education, she has worked in Washington, D.C. as a middle school teacher. In her first two years of teaching, Lindsey was placed in a charter school already slated to be closed due to poor performance. Here, she was the sole ELA teacher for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Despite this placement and the challenges that came with it, Lindsey's students beat the city-wide average for ANET test scores. Some of the previously lowest scoring students showed up to 5 years of reading growth in just one academic year. This experience revealed to her that there is no situation, no student, and no school that cannot be improved with the right structures and routines.
Lindsey is curently a Special Education English Language Arts teacher at a DCPS middle school. After just one year in the school system and in the role, Lindsey has already earned the highest performance rating, Highly Effective. Lindsey has also been identified as a leader in executive functioning and has delivered multiple grade-level and school-wide professional development workshops on how to develop executive functioning skills in the classroom.
Lindsey combines high expectations with a loving, no-nonsense approach. Lindsey is adept at making even the most reluctant learners excited about and engaged in their academic growth. Her expertise lies in working with students with high anxiety, histories of trauma, or behavioral concerns.
Alana Biegelson, M.S.Ed.
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