Michael Alston
is a high school teacher and Ph.D. student in the Urban Educational Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Holding master’s degrees in both Criminal Justice and Spanish Education, his research explores the convergence of the criminal and juvenile justice systems with K-12 public education. He is interested in how these systems impact students’ educational experiences. Michael’s dedication extends beyond academia, as he is equally passionate about developing innovative interventions to empower and enable students and families entangled within the criminal or juvenile justice systems to thrive within the educational sphere and forge successful paths in their lives beyond the classroom.
Kelly Bare
holds an Ed.D. from Molloy University in Rockville Centre, NY, in Educational Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities. She is an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco and teaches in two programs located in Washington, D.C.: the Master’s in Public Leadership program, which enrolls students of all ages from all over the country, and the USF in D.C. program, which brings undergraduates to D.C. for internships. Her research concerns the building blocks of collaborative leadership across socially constructed lines of difference. She has a background in journalism and book publishing and enjoys pushing methodological (and other) boundaries.
Shawn F. Brown
is a twelve-year veteran principal at EBC High school in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and a graduate of the Urban Education Ph.D. program. He first fell in love with art as a graffiti artist growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Using various forms of artistic expression, Dr. Brown engages diverse students and staff members. His passion centers around helping newcomers to the country and students with learning disabilities find common ground through artistic expression, improving their academic performance.
Nicholas Catino
is a musician and educator who has been teaching in New York public schools for 12 years. An active trumpet and guitar player, he enjoys making music with others in a variety of settings. Nicholas’s research focuses on how improvisatory music making can change perspectives and encourage student agency. He
Chris Colón
is a visual artist, and scholar-activist from Brooklyn, NY. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Urban Education program at the Graduate Center. He uses auto-ethnographic, arts-based research to help us rethink the world around us as part of his overall interest in radical pedagogy through the arts. His visual practices are examples on how self-narration within a social context can lead towards an education that can be critically reflective on personal experiences as well as the cultural, political, and historical legacies that shape the spaces we interact with.
Abby C. Emerson
is an Assistant Professor in Elementary Special Education at Providence College. Her research and teaching centers on antiracist and abolitionist teacher education, a critique of whiteness in education spaces, parenting as a site of social change, and arts-based research methodologies. Previously, she was an elementary school teacher for 10 years in NYC public schools. During that time she was named the 2018 National Association for Multicultural Education’s Critical Teacher of the Year. Her writing about teaching and learning can be found in Radical Teacher, Whiteness and Education, Review of Research in Education, and Bank Street Occasional Paper Series.
Gene Fellner
After more than 25 years as a political activist and exhibiting artist, I returned to school to get a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language and then a doctorate in urban education. I am based at the College of Staten Island, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), where I teach special education pedagogy and research courses in the School of Education. I am also on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center where I teach a course called Arts-based research and visual methodologies.
Francie Johnson
is a passionate educator with over 20 years of dance teaching experience in K-12 and studio settings. She is a curriculum writer and facilitator for the Professional Development Office of Arts for New York City dance teachers. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Urban Education program at CUNY Graduate Center
Michelle Rendón Ochoa
(she/her/ella) is a first-generation Colombian-American educator who spent her formative years navigating between the vibrant landscapes of Medellin, Colombia, and New York. With over a decade of experience, she has taught English and Spanish Language Arts across K-12 settings. Michelle is passionate about crafting curriculum deeply rooted in the ethos of critical and abolitionist teaching praxis. Currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY, she is on a mission to blend community-based research, arts-based methods and the co-creation of digital archives within the classroom. Her commitment extends to preserving and reshaping the counter-narratives of the Latinx community in suburban Long Island, a vital endeavor she aims to interweave into curricula.
Ingrid Romero
is an artist, educator, and community organizer, born and raised in New York City. They have been organizing for over fifteen years and bring over a decade of facilitation, education, community arts and youth work experience. Ingrid has a BA in Art Education, with initial certification in Teaching Art K-12, from the City College of New York. He was a Create Change Fellow through the Laundromat Project, part of the Documentary Production Workshop at Third World Newsreel, participated in the Museum Education Practicum at the Studio Museum in Harlem and most recently a 2022–2023 artist-in-residence at The Children’s Museum of the Arts. As an organizer, they are a core member of Frack Outta Brooklyn (FOBK) and Mi Casa Resiste. Currently, he is pursuing an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College. They are also a lead instructor at The Moth, dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling, and work as an arts educator and resource coordinator at City-As-School.
Mariatere Tapias
is a doctoral candidate in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center and an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College. She is a founding member of the restorative justice group in the Urban Education program, where she co-facilitates circles for students and faculty. As an artist | teacher | researcher, her work examines how arts-based methods contribute to educational research as a practice of freedom, justice, and wellbeing. With over twenty years of experience teaching textile arts as a social and contemplative practice, she has worked in a variety of New York City environments: as an early childhood
Natalie Willens
(they, them) is an artist and educator originally born and raised in NYC. They have been designing and teaching arts-integrated curriculum for the last 15 years in contexts ranging from early childhood classrooms to elementary school libraries to university level arts and literacy courses. In their own work they use multiple exposure photography and poetry to explore gender identity, race privilege, and gentrification. They are a core member of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) at LaGuardia Community College and created the Arts Activist working group for faculty and students, which explores ways to use art-making to influence structural changes and personal healing. Natalie holds an advanced certificate in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy from the CUNY Graduate Center and is pursuing a Ph.D. in the Urban Education department where they are exploring the role of archiving in activism and ways to co-create arts-based archives that animate Queer histories – and futures – with students.