Colorful sticky notes on a blue wall. Each sticky note has a different person’s response to the question “What is the purpose of education?” Taken at the “Education as the Practice of Freedom” workshop facilitated by Amelia in 2018 at Parkwood Tech Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, sponsored by BottomUp.
“We will work, study, and listen so we may learn, learn so we may teach.” As a child, I attended an independent Black school in Newark, NJ where each day began with these words. This idea, that the true potential of study is unleashed only when one shares knowledge, grounds my teaching. I aim to co-create inclusive, engaging, and participatory learning environments where we can analyze texts and contexts and grapple with pressing questions in ways that stretch us beyond the limits of our experiences and assumptions. I seek to facilitate collective study that enables us to better understand reality, but also imagine and enact ways to transform it.
Currently, I teach “Education in the Global World” in the Department of Urban Education at Rutgers University - Newark. Previously I have been an instructor in courses in African American Studies, Comparative Ethnic Studies, Educational Studies, and Cross-Cultural Studies at Colgate University, Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. As a K-12 teacher educator, I have worked with NYC DOE teachers through the Center for the Professional Education of Teachers at Columbia University, Teachers College and with Cape Town and Johannesburg teachers through the Global Teachers Institute in South Africa. I started my career in Newark, where I taught 2nd grade for three years at Chancellor Avenue School and 8th, 9th, and 10th grade history for five years at North Star Academy. Below I have included a selection of syllabi and resources from my teaching and facilitating.
“The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.”
Selected Syllabi
Education in the Global World, Spring 2022, Rutgers - Newark
The American School, Spring 2021, Colgate
Race, White Supremacy, and Education, Spring 2021, Colgate
Selected Educator Workshops
“‘Research is Formalized Curiosity’: Lessons for Teachers and Students from Zora Neale Hurston’s Art of Ethnography.” Workshop Facilitated at Literacy Unbound Summer Institute on Their Eyes Were Watching God, Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, NY. 2019.
“Facilitating Culture Circles in Classrooms and Communities.” Workshop facilitated at the Reimagining Education Summer Institute. Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, NY. 2019.
“Education as the Practice of Freedom: Exploring K-12 Critical Pedagogy on the 50th Anniversary of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Workshop facilitated with Bottom Up: Reimagine Our Schools, Parkwood Primary School, Cape Town, South Africa. 2018.
(Participant write-up of this workshop.)
Creativity in the Classroom: Promoting Divergent Thinking. Workshop facilitated at the Global Teachers Institute Aspiring Teachers Summit, Wits University School of Education, Johannesburg, South Africa. 2016.