On Experiences & Education

Muir’s early training at the Gesell Institute of Child Development at Yale shaped the lens through which she views education, focusing on the process a child manifests in problem solving and skill building. A later degree as an Educational Diagnostician and Reading Specialist added clinical tools to her assessments of student progress.

While a former head of both a Sacred Heart lower school for girls and then a school for children with learning differences, Muir empowered teachers to individualize instruction to meet the wide range of learners in their classrooms.

She has also worked for the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., designing curriculum for teachers and parents of children demonstrating exceptional potential and, in addition, has directed a high-powered internship program for The Kinkaid School in Houston, for several years placing over a hundred seniors each January in internships around the globe.

Muir is questioning what educators need to do differently to serve a new generation of digital learners, while also researching how we might improve the quality of life for our aging population.

These haunting questions brought her to investigate a graduate program at Harvard University from which she graduated in 2008 in Mind, Brain, and Education because it brought together insights about the architecture of brain development and regression from medicine, genetics, biology and education through science we can trust. Muir translates science for public understanding.