Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in Teaching and Learning with Lacey Robinson | The LP: EP 10
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Everyday choices and systems, both obvious and covert, hold truths about how we educate our children. Recognizing these truths allows us to course-correct and expand opportunities for students to receive grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction.
Author, speaker, and leader Lacey Robinson is a walking, talking testimony of this process. Her experience as a student, teacher, principal, and organization leader is woven together in her book Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in the Details of Teaching and Learning. Join me as Lacey, and I discuss the book and its purpose to help people see the power of our decisions in education and how they lend to the arc of justice or injustice in this country.
Key Takeaways
- Boldness is a main ingredient for the mindset required to produce grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction. Boldness doesn’t have to mean recklessness, so we can be bold and strategic in this pursuit.
- We don’t have to be dishonest about our students’ missing skills, we just have to use that honesty to explore ways to scaffold high-quality instruction and empathize by reflecting on the shortcomings we have overcome in our own lives.
- The science of reading needs to be seen as a package deal if we are to change the literacy rates in this country. We can’t afford to misrepresent what it takes to teach students how to read anymore.
- Grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction, or GLEAM can’t just be a catchphrase. Instead, it must remain a tool for us to catch the details in our teaching and learning in a way that promotes a just education. With folks like Lacey leading the charge, I look forward to this work and journey.
Lacey Robinson
President and Chief Executive Officer of UnboundEd and Author of Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in the Details of Teaching and Learning.As President and Chief Executive Officer of UnboundEd, Lacey Robinson sets the organization’s vision for equity-driven national change as she carries the pride and tears of her enslaved ancestors and the native sons and daughters of this sacred land to this work. While continually monitoring the design, delivery, and quality of UnboundEd’s antiracist work, Robinson concurrently maintains the nonprofit’s health, sustainability and future-driven vision for what teaching and learning can be in the 21st century.
Robinson engaged with industry partners to support standards-aligned, content-focused, equity-driven adult professional learning and development from the organization’s infancy as its Chief of Program and Engagement. She also supported vital design and execution elements for UnboundEd’s signature professional learning opportunity, the illustrious Standards Institute. Robinson’s contributions led to the rapid growth of the organization and positioned UnboundEd as industry leaders. Robinson spearheaded migrating this work into a virtual space during the pandemic to meet the needs of educators.
As a teacher, principal, and staff development specialist, Robinson maintained a focus on literacy, equity, and school leadership for more than two decades. Her life’s work aims to help educators in school systems disrupt systemic racism and all of its legacies in classrooms. Inspired by Langston Hughes, her path is to build temples for tomorrow, as strongly and bravely as she knows how, and to ensure that future generations can stand freely within themselves to be whomever they choose to be. As CEO, Robinson pursues this passion by leading an organization known for the highest integrity in professional development.
About Lacey Robinson
Lacey Robinson, President and Chief Executive Officer of UnboundEd and author of the book Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in the Details of Teaching and Learning, sets UnboundEd's vision for equity-driven national change as she carries the pride and tears of her enslaved ancestors and the native sons and daughters of this sacred land to this work. While continually monitoring the design, delivery, and quality of UnboundEd’s antiracist work, Robinson concurrently maintains the nonprofit’s health, sustainability and future-driven vision for what teaching and learning can be in the 21st century.
About The LP: Literature in Practice
UnboundEd's goal is to instill the GLEAM™ (Grade-Level, Engaging, Affirming, and Meaningful) instructional framework into classrooms across the nation with professional development, curated programs, and now with a brand new podcast series, The LP: Literature in Practice. Host Brandon White interviews the authors of today’s thought-provoking educational literature and connects the text to GLEAM.
About Brandon White
Brandon White is a former middle school ELA teacher and Restorative Practices educator for the Rochester City School District. He has worked for seven years as a servant leader intern and site coordinator for Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools Summer Literacy Programs in Rochester. He has also advocated for these practices through his participation in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Teacher Advisory Council and through providing professional development at BMGF-sponsored Elevate and Celebrate Effective Teaching and Teachers (ECET2) Conferences.
Episode Extras
Resources:
- Article: GLEAM™ in the Classroom
- Video/Keynote: Justice in the Details - Lacey Robinson and Brandon White
- Toolkit: Anti-Bias Toolkit
- Program: GLEAM™ Inventory