Don Allen is a Saint Paul native, U.S. Army veteran, husband, father and high school English teacher with concentrations in Public Speaking*, AP Literature and Composition, Journalism, Writing (S.E.A.), and Special Topics (Movies as Text, Superheroes and their Uniforms?). Mr. Allen said his favorite pastime is writing new curriculum for his classes, “…stuff that makes sense to build a pathway to high order thinking.”

During the last school year (2019-2020), Mr. Allen and another teacher facilitated the Humboldt High School Black Student Union because of academic and equity encounters that linger to distress our Black and Brown scholars in high school. This past summer, Mr. Allen taught high school English for Gordon Parks High School during sessions one and two.

Dr. Courtney S. Bell is one of four children born onto astounding mother and matriarch Tosha Bell-Wooten. She is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Courtney S. Bell Consulting LLC and works to co-create educational equity solutions with Pre-K-12 educational institutions.

Courtney was raised in the Sumner Neighborhood of North Minneapolis. Growing up on the Northside of Minneapolis afforded her the opportunity to attend North Community High School. In the fall of 2007, Courtney went on to attend the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities as a first-generation college student. Courtney completed her B.A in the Sociology of Law, Criminology, and Deviance in 2011 and went on to become an associate educator at North High School.

After witnessing the impact that caring relationships and high expectations had on children, Courtney decided to return to the University of Minnesota to pursue her M.Ed. and social studies teacher licensure. After completing her M.Ed. in 2014, Courtney returned to North High as the 9th grade African American History/ Human Geography teacher.

During her fourth year of teaching Courtney was nominated for and became one of 12 finalists for the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year. In June of 2018, Courtney transitioned from the classroom to pursue educational leadership and consulting, with the goal of spreading her love of education more broadly.

Dr. Rose Wan-Mui Chu has dedicated her professional life to the tireless pursuit of education equity and excellence for children and youth. Rose brings over 20+ years of rich and diverse cross-sector experiences. Her original Industrial and Systems Engineering background, coupled with her experience as a classroom teacher have continued to ground her life’s work in educational reform and transformation. She is professor emerita at Metropolitan State University​, where she has previously been a faculty and department chair at the Urban Teacher Program. Rose also held executive leadership positions as Assistant Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education, and as interim Dean of Urban Education at Metropolitan State University.

She currently serves as Senior Policy Fellow at Minnesota Education Equity Partnership, leading the TeachMN20/20 collective impact initiative to advance systems change to create and retain a racially diverse teacher workforce. TeachMN20/20 aims to demystify and elevate the teaching profession by changing the public narrative about teaching (see ImprintU.org), and to catalyze collaborative engagement towards collective action, accountability and impact.

Rose was recently elected to the school board of the Roseville Area Schools and began her first term in January 2020.

Justin Grinage is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. His research examines processes of racialization in school and classroom spaces with a particular focus on Black education, critical whiteness studies, and postcolonial theory. His scholarship has been published in journals such as Harvard Educational Review, Curriculum Inquiry, English Education, and Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. A former English language arts teacher, he worked in multiracial high school classrooms for over a decade.

Ezekiel Joubert III is an educator, community-engaged scholar, and creative writer. His teaching explores the theories, methods, and politics that undergird the psychological foundations of education and the ideological function, discursive practices, and material conditions of qualitative research methods in education. His scholarly interests focus on the intersections of racial capitalism and Black education, political economy of student movement, the history of educational inequality in Black rural communities near Metro Detroit and in the Midwest, and Black organic educational intellectual thought and activism. Additionally, he is currently working on a collection of speculative poems and short stories on teaching and learning in marginalized communities.

raj is a recovering criminologist, alcoholic, and survivor of sexual abuse, with over 20 years of community-based activism as a researcher and educator. Inspired by the resilience of our youth and the men in our prison systems, he trains school staff, probation agents, community members, and justice personnel on restorative practices, trauma and healing, value-centered leadership, community building, and unpacking implicit biases and raising consciousness utilizing restorative practices. In his latest work, raj explores the depths of our justice system and creates a framework in which knowledge becomes the root of our practices.

Erin Tande is a Behavioral Specialist at a magnet elementary school in the suburbs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolis. She believes a great leader and educational system must assist others in forming opinions about problems and issues to increase the capacity and confidence of staff whenhandling difficult and uncomfortable situations.

In her role, she facilitates restorative circles, coaches staff to create a stronger climate and culture within the classroom, and building. Under her support, school suspensions have decreased by more than 50% while creating a new school-wide behavior process and social-emotional intervention model.

Erin currently resides in Woodbury, MN with her three children and significant other. In her spare time, she has worked with outside agencies to assess anti-racism and social justice curriculum and create modules that provide restorative practices and social-emotional learning professional development.