Each month we feature one of our Prentiss Charney Fellows. The fellowship offers support for a cohort of people’s history educator leaders to study, learn, and organize together.
Gabriel Tanglao
Union organizer.
In the summer of 2023, Gabriel took on the role of manager at the National Education Association’s Human and Civil Rights division to continue supporting justice-centered union movement-building work across the country. Advancing educational equity through organized labor enables Gabriel to honor a tradition of his Filipino ancestors fighting for justice as union leaders. Gabriel focused his fellowship work on bringing that legacy to the page, examining the ways his personal history shaped the path he has taken in organizing, and the politics he promotes through his ongoing labor activism.
Gabriel began his teaching career at Bergenfield High School in one of the most diverse communities in New Jersey. Gabriel’s passion grew in the classroom, community, and union spaces. Remaining grounded as an educator, Gabriel has advocated for the respect of the profession across the country in various leadership roles, including as chair of the New Leaders Council (NLC) National Diversity Committee, member of the NLC National Board of Directors, member of the National Education Association Young Professionals Caucus, Northeast Regional Director of the Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus, member of the NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellowship Advisory Council, and more.
Gabriel has facilitated countless leadership training and professional development around issues of racial justice and equity at the local, national, and international levels. As a new father, Gabriel’s commitment to a more beautifully just world has never been so clear.
Rabiya Kassam-Clay
Social studies teacher in Los Angeles.
Rabiya has taught for 15 years in Philadelphia, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Currently she teaches social studies at Marshall High School in Los Angeles Unified School District. Her teaching repertoire includes world history, United States history and government, composition, and literature. In the Rethinking Schools article, “Our Stories: Students Curate the Museum of Corona History,” Rabiya shared some of the creative curriculum she designed in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Rabiya coached teaching fellows with Breakthrough Collaborative, and founded the Flux Teacher Institute, a collective of over 30 expert teachers who provided a diverse array of workshops to over 300 participating teachers.
Rabiya is an educational advisor for Monument Lab and wrote the teaching guides for 1919 by Eve Ewing and There are Trans People Here by H. Melt. In the Spring of 2023, Rabiya led workshops for the Prentiss Charney Fellows and other K–12 educators grounded in Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance. She continues to lead rest workshops for educators as spaces for teacher colleagues, in partnership with their students, to imagine roles for creativity, comfort, play, and nature in our schools.
Rabiya is a lifelong devotee of science fiction and poetry, a budding gardener and native plants educator, and a proud member of the House of Representatives of United Teachers Los Angeles. You can find out what she is up to in the classroom by visiting @welcomebrilliantminds.
Destiny Andrews
Elementary school teacher in Oakland.
Teach Truth Day of Action in Vallejo. Destiny Andrews in the center with the #TeachTruth photo frame.
In her eight years in the classroom Destiny has organized a Teaching for Black Lives study group and is an active member of her local union. She is currently working with her colleagues to design and implement a K–5 ethnic studies curriculum centered around self, systems, social movements, and solidarity.
During her fellowship, Destiny has worked on updating, revising, and elaborating a lesson she began designing and writing when she participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Institute on the Grassroots History of the Civil Rights Movement in 2021. The lesson introduces elementary students to the life, activism, and organizing philosophy of Ella Baker. By encountering dozens of snapshots of Baker’s long life, young people are equipped to identify the ways her theory of leadership and faith in grassroots activism challenge master narratives about the Civil Rights Movement. Destiny hopes to eventually share the lesson on the Zinn Education Project website and in the pages of Rethinking Schools.
In June of 2023, Destiny organized a Teach Truth Day of Action event in Vallejo. They rallied at Alibi Bookstore and then marched through a farmer’s market to the John F. Kennedy Library.
Sally Stanhope
High school social studies teacher in Atlanta.
Sally Stanhope talks about the 90-foot carving on the side of Stone Mountain, the largest Confederate monument in the world, during the Stone Mountain Action Coalition led Teach Truth Walk on June 12, 2022. Photo by Dean Hesse.
Sally has taught for 18 years at various levels, from elementary to undergraduate, and has served in a variety of administrative roles including Academic Coach, Class Dean, and Service Learning Coordinator and at the Atlanta History Center designing virtual field trips. Currently, she teaches AP Psychology, history, government, and geography at Chamblee High School and is an active member of a Teaching for Black Lives study group.
Sally organizes with a variety of groups, including the Stone Mountain Action Coalition (SMAC) to free Stone Mountain Park from its Lost Cause legacy, the Atlanta Coalition for Education Equity to transform schools into places that meet the needs of their students and families, and the Teach for Freedom Collective to end government censorship of education and make schools spaces of liberation. Sally organized a Teach Truth Day of Action on June 10 with SMAC.
This summer, Sally will realize the focus of her Prentiss Charney fellowship work with a youth participatory action research project called In the Shadow of Stone Mountain: Historicizing Shermantown. For six days, students will investigate how citizens of Shermantown, an African American community in the shadow of the world’s largest Confederate monument, mobilized a variety of tactics to thrive despite threats to their community’s safety and wellbeing. Students will use archives, oral interviews, place-based investigations, and secondary sources to expose buried histories of convict leasing, interracial strikes in the granite industry, prison labor, and protest.
Elizabeth Williams Wesley
High school social studies teacher; Equity and Inclusion Director in Philadelphia.
Elizabeth Williams Wesley is an activist, organizer, Pan-Africanist, school leader, educator, mentor, equity practitioner, student, mother, wife, sister, daughter, world traveler, and basketball coach who enjoys gardening in her spare time.
At Central High School in Philadelphia, her primary role is Director of Equity and Inclusion; she has also taught African American History and an AP Seminar course with African Diaspora content, sponsored the Black Student Coalition, and coached girls varsity basketball. She values building meaningful relationships with students and colleagues and engaging in social justice work for radical change with local grassroots organizations committed to the well being and academic achievement of Black children.
This school year, Elizabeth is on a sabbatical for the purpose of healing. In addition to her participation in the inaugural class of Prentiss Charney Fellows, she will be participating in two potentially transformative experiences this summer: Sisters In Education Circle Retreat with Sister Dr. Akosua Lesesne, and a Full Circle Retreat in Ghana with Sister Dr. Cynthia Dillard.
As part of her fellowship work this year, Elizabeth is writing an article about Tricia Hersey’s book Rest Is Resistance. Her article focuses on Hersey’s critical engagement with “grind culture” as it applies to teaching and, specifically, to Elizabeth’s own experience navigating burnout as Black woman educator.
Ayva Thomas
Racial and Educational Justice Director for the Northshore School District in Washington.
In Northshore, Ayva developed and facilitates the Student Justice Collective, leads the planning of Northshore’s annual Student Justice Conference, and strives to cultivate youth leadership and amplify youth voice in all of her work with her team. Ayva also oversees the Racial and Educational Justice Teams at each of Northshore’s school sites and the District’s Racial and Educational Justice Committee. She has been a key leader in the development and implementation of Northshore’s P–12 Ethnic Studies Framework and high school Ethnic Studies course, joining a committed group of students, families, community members, staff, and administrators.
A skilled facilitator, Ayva moderated the Teaching for Black Lives study group orientation sessions in 2021 and 2022 (photo above). She also represented the Zinn Education Project on a podcast interview with the Teaching Artists Guild called “A Day of Purpose: Decolonizing Arts Education with Black Lives Matter at School.”
As part of her fellowship work, Ayva is writing an article that will grapple with how educators might conceive of educational justice work that is shaped with — not for — students. She will tell the story of her work with the Student Justice Collective (which she founded). The article will be an opportunity to reflect on her own leadership practices as an adult advisor, and provide a model for adult-collaboration with youth activists that can hopefully be a guide for other educators.
Her interview with Christopher Emdin, “Designing for Justice in and Beyond the STEM Classroom,” appears in the forthcoming spring issue of Rethinking Schools magazine.
Nick Palazzolo
Curriculum writer, organizer, and high school teacher in Philadelphia.
Nick Palazzolo teaches African American History, Queer Studies, and IB History at Central High School in Philadelphia. Prior to his last five years in the classroom, Nick designed and facilitated political education for high schoolers and worked on the leadership team of Teacher Action Group — work that cemented his plans to move into the classroom. He has also served on the leadership team of BARWE (Building Anti-Racist White Educators), collaborating to produce a monthly antiracist inquiry series that educators across the nation have used to ground their anti-racism work in schools.
Nick is currently revising for publication a classroom simulation he designed, Queer Liberation Movements from 1950–2016. According to Nick,
The simulation identifies six major dilemmas or debates within the various iterations of the Queer liberation movements of the latter half of the twentieth century through today. The aim with the dilemma protocol is to engage students in wrestling with questions of organizing goals or strategy salient at various points in our history.
In the face of the current wave of policies, bills, and laws banning Queer and Trans books and curriculum, Nick’s forthcoming curriculum is an important act of resistance.
Esther Honda
Teacher and media specialist in San Francisco.
Esther has been teaching young people in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 30 years, in multiple subjects and grade levels. She has taught 7th- and 8th-grade science, 7th-grade humanities, middle school economics, 8th-grade history, and been both an elementary and middle school librarian — and that doesn’t even cover all her roles.
Constantly creating a wider circle, Esther has hosted Zinn Education Project workshops for her school district.
Coursing through all of Esther’s education work is her love of and belief in the power of well-designed, socially relevant curriculum. This year, she has engaged her 6th-grade English Language Development students in a multigenerational oral history Voice of Witness storytelling project that links students and local elders living in senior housing. Convinced that oral history provides both students and elders unique opportunities to build community ties as well as academic skills, Esther is currently at work on an article outlining the project for other educators who may want to attempt something similar in their own communities.
Nataliya Braginsky
High school social studies teacher in Connecticut.
In the last year, Nataliya Braginsky has moderated several critical conversations about educational justice: “Youth Rising,” “Beyond Schools in Crisis,” and “Where Do We Go From Here.” (See recording below.)
They organize with the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective in Connecticut, where they taught and lived for many years. In 2021, Nataliya was selected as the 2021 History Teacher of the Year.
Nataliya’s recent article In the Wake of Uvalde: A Teacher’s Plea for Police-Free Schools in Rethinking Schools is a must-read. They write, “This moment . . . calls for reimagining what true safety means, and working with our students to make that a reality.”
In March, Nataliya joined Daisha Brabham in leading a workshop for educators in Vermont on Reconstruction in Brattleboro.
Jessica A. Rucker
Doctoral student in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Ra’mya Davis, Dr. Frank Smith, and Jessica Rucker. 2022 D.C. Teach Truth Day of Action at the African American Civil War Memorial.
Prior to her graduate work, Jessica A. Rucker was a high school teacher in her home city, the U.S. colony of Washington, DC, teaching courses centering African American history and culture. She has also served as a volunteer docent at both the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History. Jessica was the MC for the DC 2022 Teach Truth Day of Action. In this one minute video clip, Jessica shares why she is committed to teaching truthfully about U.S. history.
T. J. Whitaker
High school language arts teacher in the New Jersey South Orange-Maplewood School District.
T. J. Whitaker draws on his decades of experience as a teacher and organizer to support students in New Jersey and teachers around the country.
T. J. advises his high school Black Student Union, helps run the MapSO Saturday Freedom School classes, and serves as Assistant Affirmative Action Officer for his school district. Along with Dr. Kelly Harris, T. J. is organizing a statewide Model Gary Student Convention to help students develop political platforms on issues that impact their lives today. T. J. is hosting a Fugitive Pedagogy study group for young Black teachers and he hosted an online panel in February to discuss Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st–Century Revolutions.
T. J. is also an active participant in our online Teach the Black Freedom Struggle classes and related curriculum workshops.
We are lucky to teach, learn, and organize alongside all the Prentiss Charney Fellows. Check back periodically for more spotlights.
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