Black lives matter.

​After completing my master’s degree, I joined Teach for America and was placed in Baltimore City Public Schools, where I taught for two years before my school was closed. This forced me to consider my own role in perpetuating systems of white supremacy. This experience, along with my academic research and teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, shape my understanding of equity, inclusion, and justice, as well as my ongoing commitment to anti-racism.

At the core of this is the necessity to listen.  This means taking time to get to know students, understanding who they are and where they come from, and respecting and embracing their individuality. It is also important to listen to what is unspoken; diversity does not only include visible and salient identifiers, such as race and gender, but age, nationality, sexual orientation, and on. Working to honor these meaningful pieces of students' truths and experiences is necessary in listening and finding equity, inclusion, and justice for all.

In addition to listening to students, I work to engage students in the co-creation of and participation in our learning space. In the spirit of Paulo Freire, I approach my students as student-teachers who have experiences, knowledge, and understanding to bring into our site of knowledge-building. I strive to embrace and include texts in my classroom that demonstrate theories, perspectives, and opinions from authors with varied backgrounds and allow us to engage with ideas beyond our own experiences. I also work to employ a variety of teaching methods to access different learning styles and support differently-abled learners, allowing students to connect and engaged differently with the course materials.

Diversity, equity, and justice must extend beyond individuals. It is necessary to challenge institutions, too. This includes questioning how they perpetuate oppression or subjugation of certain voices and interrogating the material consequences on groups' lived experiences. In the context of education, this means bringing attention to the ways inequality is perpetuated through meritocracy, standardized testing, and the hidden curriculum. 

Different perspectives, philosophies, and lived experiences all contribute to a richer, more complete education. The presence of diversity alone, though, is incomplete without inclusion and justice. Diverse voices need to be actively included in conversations, decisions, and growth within the university community. Justice is also essential in reshaping oppressive systemic structures of the academy and working to remove them. Equity, inclusion, and justice are important at all levels of my practice. I look forward to further opportunities to incorporate this into my teaching, research, and service. With this understanding, I hope to create an enriched environment in which my students and I learn, grow, and achieve.