Our story
Rooted in serving students
Kahli Romano and Stephen Fleenor founded Constructed Learning in 2026 from education careers devoted to improving students' experience.
The initial spark to serve
Stephen and Kahlí started teaching at Memorial High School in San Antonio, Texas, driven by a shared desire to make an impact on the lives of disadvantaged young people. They quickly learned that public education was no easy feat. In addition to the multitude of demands they faced every day, they were tasked with meeting the needs of extremely diverse classrooms — students acquiring English, recent arrivals, students with learning disabilities, students with chronic absenteeism, and students who made straight A's but rarely got the chance to think out loud – and the vast majority of their students were economically disadvantaged. They could see the big cracks in the system – dropping out and failing – but they also saw the small, almost invisible cracks: all of the students who went through the entire school day without saying a single word. They fell in love with the job immediately and they knew that serving all their students’ needs would become a lifelong pursuit.
What their students needed — and what Stephen and Kahlí needed as their teachers — were simple, clear instructional routines that got every student talking, made them feel safe and seen, and were realistic for teachers to actually implement. So they collaborated with other Science teachers in their department to develop those routines. And they saw what happened when students who had been quiet for years started using their voice.
Research and consulting
After several years in the classroom, Stephen and Kahlí took separate paths, while constantly thinking, “How could I better serve my students at Memorial High School?”
Kahlí completed her PhD in Applied Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, studying the school and neighborhood factors that shape educational outcomes for Latinx youth. She went on to postdoctoral research on mentoring for underrepresented students in STEM and program evaluation for after-school initiatives, building a rigorous research lens for understanding what helps students historically underserved in our education system.
Stephen joined Seidlitz Education as an educational consultant, helping schools and districts across Texas and beyond implement some of the same instructional routines that were effective in their classrooms, with a constant emphasis on having students participate in structured conversations using academic language. Early on, Stephen began to notice a pattern: while one-day trainings had a major impact, teachers didn't have the right instructional resources to support academic conversations. They were creating scaffolds from scratch, in time they didn't have.
The Visual Non-Glossary and building the team
In 2020, as the pandemic upended everything, Stephen created a resource to solve that problem: The Visual Non-Glossary. What began as a conversation support tool for a handful of Science classes grew, over six years, into a structured approach to developing academic language across K–12 Science, Math, and Social Studies.
As the VNG grew, so did the team behind it.
In 2026, Stephen and Kahlí rejoined forces. Seidlitz Education transferred management and development of the VNG — along with the VNG team — to a new company built around the belief Stephen and Kahlí had held since their first year in the classroom: that when educators have the right tools and the right support, they can create environments where every student finds their voice.
That company is Constructed Learning.
Ready to bring consistent, discussion-rich instruction to every classroom?
We’ll talk through your goals, challenges, and whether this is a fit.