Virtual Information Session to learn about our accelerated Preliminary Administrative Services Credential with optional second year to earn a Master's in Educational Leadership. For those interested, we'll also provide a brief overview of our Clear Administrative Services Credential Program. Faculty and a current student will discuss the curriculum, structure, and application process, which will be followed by a Q&A. Please RSVP. A Zoom link will be sent prior to the event.
Virtual Information Session to learn about our accelerated Preliminary Administrative Services Credential with optional second year to earn a Master's in Educational Leadership. For those interested, we'll also provide a brief overview of our Clear Administrative Services Credential Program. Faculty and a current student will discuss the curriculum, structure, and application process, which will be followed by a Q&A. Please RSVP. A Zoom link will be sent prior to the event.
Virtual Information Session to learn about our accelerated Preliminary Administrative Services Credential with optional second year to earn a Master's in Educational Leadership. For those interested, we'll also provide a brief overview of our Clear Administrative Services Credential Program. Faculty and a current student will discuss the curriculum, structure, and application process, which will be followed by a Q&A. Please RSVP. A Zoom link will be sent prior to the event.
A Conversation with Drs. Farima Pour-Khorshid, David Stovall, and Crystal T. Laura.
A Discussion with Dr. Ijeoma Ononuju, Dr. Ramona Bishop, Jessi Fernandez, and John Jones III.
A Dialogue with Drs. Crystal T. Laura and Muhammad Khalifa.
Dr. Pour-Khorshid has taught at the elementary grade level as well as at the university level for over a decade. She has also supervised pre-service teachers and facilitated teacher development workshops throughout California and the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua where her family emigrated from and where she lived between 2010-2012. She graduated with her Masters degree and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and is currently an assistant professor and teacher supervisor at the University of San Francisco. She has held leadership roles in Teachers 4 Social Justice , the People’s Education Movement-Bay Area, the national Education for Liberation Network, and the Radical Healing Team at Flourish Agenda. Read More
Dr. Crystal Laura is a former high school history teacher turned tenured, full professor of Educational Leadership in Chicago. Dr. Laura’s work has focused on the social foundations of education, diversity and equity in schools, and building the capacity of urban educators to promote social justice with conviction, confidence, and great care. Dr. Laura’s scholarship has been published in such peer-reviewed journals as Race, Ethnicity and Education, Cultural Studies- Critical Methodologies, Urban Review, Gender and Education, Critical Questions in Education, in many collected volumes, and also in her three books— including the best-seller Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline. She is an international speaker, a critical PD facilitator, and a frequent presenter at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, within which she now serves as immediate past Chair of the Equity and Inclusion Council. Dr. Laura is a gifted truth-teller about the current context of urban education and the hopeful possibilities of how things can be otherwise.
David Stovall, Ph.D. is Professor of Black Studies and Criminology, Law & Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His scholarship investigates three areas 1) Critical Race Theory, 2) the relationship between housing and education, and 3) the intersection of race, place and school. In the attempt to bring theory to action, he works with community organizations and schools to address issues of equity, justice and abolishing the school/prison nexus. His work led him to become a member of the design team for the Greater Lawndale/Little Village School for Social Justice (SOJO), which opened in the Fall of 2005. Furthering his work with communities, students, and teachers, his work manifests itself in his involvement with the Peoples Education Movement, a collection of classroom teachers, community members, students and university professors in Chicago, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area who engage in collaborative community projects centered in creating relevant curriculum. In addition to his duties and responsibilities as a professor at UIC, he also served as a volunteer social studies teacher at the Greater Lawndale/Little Village School for Social Justice from 2005-2018.
Jessi Fernandez is a proud leader among his formerly incarcerated comrades. He is an undergraduate student researcher majoring in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Growing up with childhood trauma, lack of social support, and his positionality, negatively impacted the way he navigated life. He’s witnessed family and friends find their demise by the violence of others; bullets missed him as he saw friends die. Mr. Fernandez currently advocates for marginalized people of color on campus, focusing on mental health support and peer support. Additionally, Mr. Fernandez is a Berkeley Underground Scholar, where he engages the Cal community openly about his formerly incarcerated status to help demystify the pathways to success at Cal. Prior to transferring to UC Berkeley, he was the educational liaison in the education department at Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program in the world. Mr. Fernandez plans to earn a Ph.D. in Sociology, which he will use to empower his community as a college professor, while also addressing and eradicating the normalized conditions of structural institutions. Mr. Fernandez chose long ago to help his community pull themselves out of violence as well as break the cycle of incarceration through education and he has dedicated his life to making that happen.
Dr. Ijeoma Ononuju is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Education Program at Touro University California. Having completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Education at UC Davis, focusing on diversity and equity in school administration, Dr. Ononuju’s current research examines community action and ownership within K-12 school leadership and administration. Specifically, Dr. Ononuju works with schools and communities in the development of community-driven strategies to address the learning and achievement of Black and Brown youth, with a particular focus on establishing community-based educator pipelines and anti-racist instructional & leadership practices. Dr. Ononuju has taught within teacher preparation and school administrator credential programs for the past 8 years in Arizona and California. When he is not teaching, Dr. Ononuju consults with schools and school districts throughout the State of California to lead professional development opportunities for teachers and secondary school administrators on implementing youth-center culturally responsive practices. In his free time, Dr. Ononuju is busy working on his web series, Blackademx, a show that highlights student voice through a teacher competition.
John Jones III is currently on staff for Just Cities as the Director of Community and Political Engagement. A father of three and third generation East Oakland resident, John is also a formerly incarcerated advocate seeking to transform his community. After being un-sheltered and unemployed for eighteen months, John became involved in community organizing and advocacy to empower himself and others by utilizing his personal story of pain, trauma, faith and transformation to inspire young people, as well as fight for policy change. John has worked on several local and state campaigns and ballot measures, and most recently, the Fair Chance Housing ordinances in the cities of Oakland and Berkeley. John is a passionate and vocal advocate for affordable housing, employment, ending mass incarceration and racial equity.
Dr. Bishop graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Richmond and received her Bachelor of Arts, in English, from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her teaching credential from the University of San Francisco where she was Student of the Year. She earned her Administrative Credential and Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from California State University, Hayward. Finally, she earned a Doctorate in Educational Administration from the University of Pacific. Dr. Bishop has served as a Superintendent, Associate Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, Director, Principal and Teacher in several urban school districts. She is known as a strategic turnaround administrator due to her ability to go into failing organizations and work with staff, community and students to improve their status and put them on a trajectory toward success. She has served as an Adjunct Professor in the Education Doctorate Program at Sacramento State University, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at the University of California at Davis, a guest lecturer at the Leadership Institute at Georgetown University, and featured speaker at the White House at an Education Conference focused on School Discipline Reform. Colleagues and community members have recognized Dr. Bishop for her excellence in education. She has been responsible for building multiple systems that enhance outcomes for all students. As a principal, she led a staff that facilitated API growth of 122 points in one year. In another principal position, she lead a staff that facilitated growth in similar schools ranking from a four to an eight. Her success as a teacher and principal helped her as she ascended and became responsible for supervising schools and providing the support they needed to improve. As a Superintendent Dr. Bishop worked with staff to implement innovative research-¬proven strategies while removing a district from state control (the district achieved positive budget certification for several years in a row the credit rating went from no credit rating to a Standard and Poors rating of A+). In her various roles at the Executive Cabinet level she worked with staff members to implement programs that are receive state and national attention and have a strong impact on student outcomes, including. but not limited to: Wall to Wall College and Career Academies for all high school students, a Full-¬Service Community School District, systemwide implementation of PBIS, RJ and Trauma-¬informed Care, K-¬8 STEAM programming, and innovative magnet school programs. She has received honors including but not limited to Ida B. Wells Risktaker Award (National Alliance of Black School Educators), Principal of the Year and Superintendent of the Year (Association of CA School Administrator), and Superintendent Leadership Award (Coalition of Community Schools). Dr. Bishop has served as the elected president of the California Association of African American Superintendents Administrators, elected President of the Superintendent’s Advisory for Linked Learning, Member Keeping Kids In School Task Force, as appointed by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Dr. Bishop is the Co-Founder and President/CEO of ELITE Public Schools, a public charter school network that opened it’s first school in Vallejo, California in August of 2019. ELITE is designed to eliminate the opportunity gap for all students, particularly African-American and Latinx students. Dr. Bishop considers this her legacy work in that she has dedicated her career toward improving the lives of students in communities that have been historically underserved. Dr. Bishop is supported by her family, including her husband, Dwayne, her daughters Kilan and Malia, and her mom and dad, as well as extended family and friends.