Urban Scholars Class of 2015 Returns to the Field

The Urban Scholars Fellowship Program began in 2006 with a simple mission: Provide financial support to talented educators in the Ed School’s master’s programs who have dedicated and will continue to dedicate their careers to urban education. Nine master’s students enrolled in the program that year. By 2014–15, the class had grown to 15.

“The Urban Scholar Fellowship provides students who possess a demonstrated passion for urban education the opportunity to come to HGSE with significant financial support and the ability to take part in a co-curriculum that exposes them to the leading researchers and practitioners in the field,” says Jennifer Petrallia, assistant dean for master’s programs. “Through the co-curriculum, fellows become a tightly knit cohort, sharing a beautiful and illuminating diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and goals that inform the depth of conversations and connections they have during their time at HGSE and beyond.”

After their year at HGSE, the Urban Scholars have returned to the field, grateful to be able to put what they learned from the Ed School faculty and their peers into action. Below is a snapshot of what some members of the most recent Urban Scholars class are doing now.

Molly McKay Bryson
Learning and Teaching
Hometown: Anchorage, Alaska
Experience: High school social studies teacher; curriculum designer; teacher coach
Future Plans: High school humanities teacher at the Dearborn STEM Academy in Boston

“Professor Deborah Jewell-Sherman spoke to us in the spring, and I remember talking about it after with two of the women in the fellowship and feeling simultaneously like an imposter and so filled up. I chose to focus on the latter. When we have the opportunity to be near heroes and colleagues who are five steps further than us on the journey of the work we want to be part of and the people we want to become — talk about good motivation to hustle!”

Kirstie Dodd
Teacher Education
Hometown: Orlando, Florida
Experience: Afterschool teacher
Future plans: 8th-grade social studies/ELA teacher

“I've seen the powerful effect of education on my own life, and I think that students with low socioeconomic status can use education as a gateway to a better life.”

Andrea Guengerich
Education Policy and Management
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Experience: High school teacher in Brownsville, Texas, one of the largest cities along the Texas-Mexico border; position at Breakthrough Austin, a community-based organization that provides a path to college, starting in middle school, for low-income students who will be first-generation college students; director of University of Texas Programs for Breakthrough; chair of the College Advising for Undocumented Students Taskforce, a collaboration between six nonprofit organizations and the public school district in Austin
Future plans: Teaching 6th grade at a project-based learning school in Mexico City that seeks to educate the whole child

“We have an opportunity gap along race and income lines that continues to widen in this country. Having access to a great education is the only proven way to reduce that gap, and I can think of nothing more meaningful than dedicating my life to becoming the best educator I can be.”

Sheeva Halati   
Prevention Science and Practice
Hometown: Irvine, California    
Experience: High school science teacher; college admission counselor
Future plans: Completing C.A.S. at HGSE; become a high school counselor

“Some of the most gifted and resilient students in our country come from underserved communities. I think that through working to serve students more holistically, including improving services or creating partnerships with services that will address health, psychological, emotional, and social well-being of students, there is a huge opportunity to begin altering the negative narrative that exists about students in urban communities.”

Jacqueline Iloh
Prevention Science and Practice, Adolescent Counseling Strand
Hometown: Upper Marlboro, Maryland
Experience: Special education teacher in Washington, D.C. Public Schools; youth development volunteer with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic
Future plans: Special education teacher in Boston

“My interests as an urban educator constellate around issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status. This made the Urban Scholars Fellowship and its focus on an interdisciplinary co-curriculum especially compelling. The fellowship was a perfect complement for my experiences as a special education teacher [and] college access facilitator, and my work with girls’ gender empowerment and with homeless youth in the Dominican Republic. When I found out that I received the fellowship, I cried as I reflected on the privilege it’s been to partner with such tenacious and dynamic young people.”

Telia Kapteyn
Learning and Teaching
Hometown: Atlanta
Experience: Taught kindergarten as a Teach For America corps member in Brooklyn, New York; high school English teacher in a rural fishing village in Malaysia on a Fulbright Scholarship; elementary school teacher at a KIPP school in the Arkansas Delta
Future plans: First-grade teacher at Brooke Charter School in Roslindale, Massachusetts; cohort leader in Teach For America’s Education 4 Justice pilot program, which seeks to prepare teachers to incorporate social justice pedagogy into their classrooms

“I was able to meet and learn from some of the most brilliant and groundbreaking educators in the country. The experience was invaluable to my professional development and opened my mind to new ways of approaching problems in education.”

Ali Nomani
School Leadership
Hometown: Lahore, Pakistan
Experience: Teaching and school administration
Future plans: Principal at Community Charter School of Cambridge

“The program allowed me to sit with like-minded people who are committed to improving the quality of education available to all students, without regard for race, socioeconomic status or ability. It made me realize that I am not alone on the long and arduous journey towards ensuring equity in our country.”

Tyler Samstag
Mind, Brain, and Education
Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; currently New York City
Experience: Special education teacher at a residential psychiatric hospital in New York City, implementing an intensive reading intervention program for adolescent non-readers
Future plans: design entrepreneur intern at the IDEO Bits + Blocks Lab, which runs for nine weeks at the Harvard iLab; HGSE Education Entrepreneurship Summer Fellow, designing a mobile application to provide students with print disabilities greater access to classroom material

“I am a product of urban, public education. As a graduate of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, I have been fortunate enough to have had committed teachers throughout my schooling. Education is a human right and every student deserves ample opportunities to succeed in school.” 

Elizabeth Schibuk
Special Studies
Hometown: Vancouver, Canada. More recently, Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Experience: High school chemistry and physics teacher at Blackstone Academy Charter School, a small urban charter school in Pawtucket that focuses on service learning and civic engagement
Future plans: 7th- and 8th-grade math and science teacher at Conservatory Lab Charter School in Dorchester, Massachusetts

“My hope was to use this year to really explore and integrate the literature on urban education, science education reform, public understanding of science, and racial/gendered discrimination in science. Concurrently taking Gender and Science at the College and an independent study with Tina Grotzer on public understanding of science gave me the chance to really think about what a radically inclusive and culturally relevant STEM program might look like. If I do decide at some point to pursue doctoral work, I have a much more nuanced understanding of the types of questions I would want to ask and bodies of literature I would want to read.”

Sarah Stuntz
Learning and Teaching
Hometown: currently Somerville, Massachusetts
Experience: 8th-grade English teacher
Future plans: 9th-grade English teacher and instructional leader

“There are amazing students in our cities, and they deserve teachers who are committed to teaching and learning with them. I’m thankful and humbled by the teachers who have come before me in Boston and I’m privileged to get to be one of them now.”   

Sarah Tucker
Language and Literacy - Reading Specialist Strand
Hometown: Newton, Massachusetts
Experience: Elementary school literacy teacher in Washington, D.C. and Denver
Future plans: Literacy coordinator at Exceed Public Charter School in Brooklyn, New York

“I love making students excited about literacy and supporting teachers as they implement engaging, lively, and creative reading instruction. While all students innately love books and stories, the process of learning to read can make school frustrating and distressing. This is the case in classrooms across the country, but especially so in urban settings, where many students need literacy instruction that addresses their difficulties while still nurturing their love of reading. This type of instruction is very challenging to implement, but also absolutely essential if we are going to provide all children with schooling that empowers, engages, and excites them.”

Patrick White
Technology, Innovation, and Education
Hometown: Greenville, North Carolina
Experience: 9th-grade math teacher in Bridgeport, Connecticut
Future plans: Director of curriculum and instruction at Match Next charter school in Boston (a blended learning school)

“While teaching in urban Bridgeport as a TFA corps member, I became extremely attached to and inspired by my students. I taught at a public school in a tough part of town and my students came to me many years behind academically. I constantly saw extreme potential in my students that was very hard to unlock because of how the complexities of the school system had left them unprepared for high school.  I worked tirelessly with them to try and catch them up while also providing them with unique opportunities to learn and was constantly inspired by their resilience and dedication once I earned their trust. At HGSE, I wanted to be a part of a group of students who had some of those same understandings of the many problems that exist in urban school systems and who also wanted to be leaders in the sector to start fixing those problems.”