Dale has over 35 years of successful teaching experience working with students in elementary, middle school and high schools in the inner city, the suburbs, and on a First Nations reserve. While teaching bright, motivated kids was fun, he found this was not particularly challenging. He prefers teaching kids who other teachers find to be “challenging.”

In addition to teaching at all levels from K to 12, Dale has also served as the principal of five different schools at the elementary through to high school levels, as the superintendent of a rural school district, and as the superintendent of a large urban district.

In 2019, Dale wrote The Successful Teacher’s Survival Kit: 83 Simple Things That Successful Teachers Do To Thrive In the Classroom. His next book was The Tactical Teacher: Proven Strategies to Positively Influence Student Learning & Classroom Behavior, which was published in 2022. Dale spent the next two years interviewing award winning educators from across North America to explore the singular, most important question: what makes a teacher great? This research culminated in the publication by Solution Tree Press of Lessons From Great Teachers To Teachers Who Want To Be Great in 2024.

All three of these books help teachers learn effective ways to engage in learning and manage both classroom and academic behaviors. When teachers do this well, classrooms are places where kids want to learn, and they have a great deal of fun doing so. His teaching motto is: “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong!”

Dale received his PhD in curriculum design and educational leadership, and is currently teaching in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta.