Benjamin Wright
Single-Sex School Activist and Chief Administrative OfficerMetro Nashville Public Schools, Nashville, TN
Yes We Can, If We Choose: De-Traumatizing Black Boys
Ben Wright has over 35 years experience working to effect change and equity in public education systems, and is considered one of the top people in the field of education leadership. Wright is currently the chief administrative officer for Metro Nashville Public Schools. Prior to this assignment, he served as regional superintendent for Victory Schools- Philadelphia, where he created several single sex schools, inclusive of two stand alone high schools in the most depressed economic area of the city.
Previously, he served as an administrator in the Seattle public schools and as president of the Seattle School Administrators Principals' Association. Based on his success raising student achievement at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, he was selected as the Washington State "Principal of the Year."
Wright has worked at the elementary, middle and high school, voc-tech, and community college levels and pioneered the effective use of single-sex instruction.
He holds a master's degree in Public Administration from the University of Puget Sound and received his administrative credentials through a special leadership partnership of the University Of Washington School of Education and the Boeing Company.
Gloria Ladson-Billings
Professor Kellner Family Chair in Urban EducationUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
Past President, AERA
Boyz to Men? Teaching to Restore Black Boys Childhood
Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the immediate past president of the American Educational Research Association.
Ladson-Billings' research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education. Her published works include The Dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children, Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms, and Beyond the Big House: African American educators on teacher education, and more than 50 journal articles and book chapters.
Her work has won numerous scholarly awards and in the spring of 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Education and the National Society for the Study of Education.
Howard Stevenson
Associate Professor and Director of the Professional Counseling and Psychology Program (PCAP)
Applied Psychology and Human Development Division
University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education
Playing with Anger: Engaging in the Emotional Lives of Black Boys in Schools
Dr. Howard Stevenson is an associate professor and director of the Professional Counseling and Psychology Program (PCAP) in the Applied Psychology and Human Development Division at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1994 to 2002, he was Faculty Master of the W. E. B. DuBois College House at Penn.
In 1994, Stevenson was a Presidential Fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, where he participated with 35 other community activists and researchers from 30 countries to present their community health intervention projects. In 1995, he served as a member of a 12-member academic panel to consult on the development of a National Strategic Action Plan for African-American Males, sponsored by the National Drug Control Policy Office in the Office of the President.
Outside of academe, Stevenson spent 20 years as a clinical supervisor and therapist in family and child psychotherapy. Currently, he consults with various community-based mental health and social work agencies.
His research and consultation work identify cultural strengths that exist within families and seek to integrate those strengths in interventions to improve the psychological adjustment of children and adolescents and families. From 1998 to 2003, he directed two research projects that underscored themes of cultural relevance and empowerment and were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Jabari Mahiri
Associate Professor of Language and Literacy, Society and Culture
University of California Berkeley, Graduate School of Education
Why Black Males are So Over-Represented in School Discipline Systems and How This Can Be Changed
He is co-director of the Center for Urban Education and a principal investigator for the Diversity Project. He is also an Academy Instructor for the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) and serves on the board of the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (BAYCES).
Before coming to Berkeley, Mahiri helped found and chaired the board of an alternative school in Chicago. He also taught English in Chicago public high schools for seven years. He is author of Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools (1998), and editor of What They Don't Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (2003). He also wrote a children's book, The Day They Stole the Letter J.
Mahiri's research is on the literacy learning of urban youth--particularly African American students--in schools and outside of them. His focus is on writing development and effective teaching and learning strategies in multicultural urban schools and communities.
He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and M.A. in Education from Northeastern Illinois University.
Nelda L. Barrón
Assistant Professor in Elementary Education
Wheelock College
To Be Male, In School and Black: Connections and Consequences of Teacher Beliefs and Practice
Barrón first came to Wheelock as the Faculty/Director of a three-year mentoring project which partnered Boston middle school students with Wheelock undergraduates. Her current teaching includes Racial and Cultural Identities, Social Studies Methods, Student Teaching Seminar and Supervision, Capstone, and First Year Seminar.
Prior to teaching in higher education she was Director of Admission and Finance and Curriculum Director in a K-8 school and an independent consultant. Her previous educational positions include college counseling, directing leadership development programs for grades 6-12, counseling and teaching 5th-12th grade urban students, and college admissions. She has been an educational and organizational consultant on equity, diversity, anti-bias and multicultural organizational development for schools and community organizations nationally.
Currently her international work includes working with teachers from the Middle East and North Africa through the University of the Middle East Project Teacher Education Summer Institute and with youth from Ireland and Northern Ireland through the Border Horizons Program. Her community involvement includes several school and community group boards and the School Site Council for a Boston Public School.
Her research interests are Culture, Identity, Race, Pre-service Teacher Ideology, Critical Pedagogy, Culturally Responsive Teaching, Urban Education and Multicultural Education.
Lilia I. Bartolomé
Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics
University of Massachusetts - Boston
To Be Male, In School and Black: Connections and Consequences of Teacher Beliefs and Practice
As a teacher educator, Bartolome's research interests include the preparation of effective teachers of minority and second language learners in multicultural contexts. In particular, Bartolomé examines teacher ideological orientations around their work with linguistic-minority students as well as their actual classroom practices with this student population. Her published works include The Misteaching of Academic Discourses; Immigrant Voices: In Search of Pedagogical Equity (with Henry Trueba), and Dancing with Bigotry: The Poisoning of Culture (with Donaldo Macedo).
Stephanie Cox Suarez
Assistant Professor in Special EducationWheelock College
To Be Male, In School and Black: Connections and Consequences of Teacher Beliefs and Practice
Cox Suarez primarily teaches graduate-level courses in curriculum design, special education assessment, portfolio development, and supervises graduate students in full-time teaching internships.
Before joining the Wheelock faculty, she was a classroom teacher for 15 years in public schools and at Perkins School for the Blind. She also worked as a Peace Corps volunteer and consultant to government and non-governmental organizations to train teachers of the visually impaired, and initiated a national special education program for the kingdom of Nepal.
Her current research interests include exploring ways to make learning visible for pre-service teachers and the children they teach. She has been part of the Making Learning Visible research at Project Zero (Harvard School of Education) and has extended this work in collaboration with other teacher educators. Stephanie is also active in organizing and participating with faculty to understand anti-racist practices in education.
Her most current publication is entitled, "Making Learning Visible through Documentation: Creating a Culture of Inquiry among Pre-Service Teachers" (2006, The New Educator 2(1), pp. 33-55).
Cox Suarez received her Ph.D. from Boston University and her M.Ed. from the University of Connecticut.
Felicity Crawford
Assistant Professor in Special EducationWheelock College
To Be Male, In School and Black: Connections and Consequences of Teacher Beliefs and Practice
Crawford brings the perspective of an experienced preK-12 educator who has worked for many years, and at every grade level, in racially and culturally diverse classroom settings.
Prior to coming to Wheelock, Crawford served as Project Coordinator on a previous project at the University of Massachusetts-Boston where she successfully recruited, supervised, and taught several cohorts of master's-level students seeking dual licensure in special and general education at the secondary level.
Her research interests include teacher ideology, the social context of urban special education, and pathways toward effectively transforming the experiences of students from diverse racial, cultural and linguistic backgrounds in urban special education classrooms.
She earned her Ed.D. at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and her M.Ed. from Suffolk University.
Paula Elliott, Ed.D.
Educational ConsultantTo Be Male, In School and Black: Connections and Consequences of Teacher Beliefs and Practice
Paula R. Elliott, Ed.D. is a teacher educator and educational consultant. Elliott’s professional experiences include: teaching in elementary and special education settings, directing a national school assessment program for independent schools, constructing curriculum and facilitating public school teacher professional workshops.
Her work in undergraduate/graduate pre-service education infuses theories, principles and practices of multicultural/anti-racist education, critical pedagogy, critical race theory, racial identity development within course work and teacher education programs. She has served as faculty in a multi-year professional development project, providing program consultation and mentor services to new teachers working in five urban schools districts. Her work has been published in Equity and Excellence in Education and is in print with Peter Lang Publications.
Underscoring her work and service to underserved communities is a focused attention to the influence and consequences of race, racism, racial identity development and ideological assumptions located in varied contexts of teaching and learning.
