2026: Bridging Boldly: Equity Across Boundaries and Leading with Purpose

12th Annual Leading Courageously for Racial Equity Conference

KEYNOTE PANEL

Our 12th annual conference opened with a keynote panel of influential Minnesota educational leaders with strong histories of working for racial equity:

Dr. Quennel Cooper, Assistant Superintendent of St. Louis Park Public Schools

Teacher, principal, and now Assistant Superintendent of the St. Louis Park Public Schools, Quennel Cooper has blazed a trail for equitable learning experiences for all students. His rapid rise as an educational leader is rooted in a passion for making a lasting impact on young people, especially Black males, by fostering a sense of belonging, empowerment, and opportunity in schools.

Dr. Salma Hussein, Principal of Gideon Pond Elementary School, Burnsville

Burnsville Elementary School principal Dr. Salma Hussein lives her calling every single day. As a school leader, consultant, community-builder, or social worker, Dr. Hussein’s focus never strays from fostering equity, belonging, and cultural responsiveness to create lasting change in our schools and communities.

Dr. Isabel Rodriguez-Mendoza, Principal of Wellstone International High School and Heritage STEM Academy in Minneapolis

Dr. Isabel Rodriguez-Mendoza draws from her own experiences as a Spanish-speaking educator to champion equity and opportunity for multilingual learners. Her leadership is grounded in culturally responsive practices that prioritize access, academic excellence, and the removal of barriers to student success.

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

From how to take culturally relevant pedagogy to a new level to looking at art to stimulate conversations about race, the 2026 Leading Courageously for Racial Equity conference offered an exciting range of sessions designed to enhance leadership practice:

Brenda Lewis
Superintendent, Fridley Public Schools

The Talent Pipeline: Removing Barriers & Expanding Pathways to Recruit and Retain Educators of Color

Across the nation, school systems continue to experience persistent shortages of teachers of color, limiting students’ access to a diverse, representative, and culturally affirming educator workforce. In Fridley Public Schools (MN), an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School District serving a richly diverse student population, leaders recognized that traditional hiring and preparation models were not producing a workforce that reflects the identities and brilliance of the students served. To respond, the district implemented a dual approach: an International & Domestic Talent Pipeline designed to remove barriers and create multiple entry points into the teaching profession. This session explored Fridley’s dual-track approach to diversifying its educator workforce through an International Talent Program utilizing H-1B visas and domestic Grow Your Own (GYO) pathways. The presentation highlighted how state funding successfully supported paraprofessionals with structured licensing advisement, ParaPro exam support, and affordable degree pathways. By showing how these initiatives strengthen student belonging and enrich multilingual environments, the presenter shared practical tools, mentoring frameworks, and higher education partnerships. Ultimately, attendees gained actionable guidance for designing sustainable, equity-centered pipelines that elevate educator voices across domestic and international recruitment channels.

Leslie Ann Locke
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Leadership
Minnesota State University, Mankato

Pedagogical Critwalking as Movement Building: Equipping Educators to Disrupt Institutionalized Racism through History

This presentation offered a transformative professional-development model designed to help K20 educators confront and disrupt institutionalized racism. While the nation’s student population continues to grow increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, the U.S. teaching workforce remains predominantly white—a demographic mismatch consistently linked to inequitable academic outcomes for students from marginalized groups. Dr. Locke’s work responds directly to this gap by bridging historical understanding with purposeful educator action. Grounded in critical race theory—particularly the concepts of critwalking and movement building—and informed by critical whiteness studies, Dr. Locke has developed an interactive timeline exercise that exposes the systemic, legalized, and deeply normalized nature of racism in the United States. This historical walkthrough traces policies and practices that have repeatedly denied access and opportunity to marginalized communities, demonstrating how institutional racism has been constructed, maintained, and rationalized across time.

Marielle Jenquin
Dean of Students, Eagle Ridge Middle School, Savage, Minnesota

Making Space for Affinity Groups in Your Schools

Many students do not feel connected to their school communities because their unique qualities are underrepresented among staff, hallways, and academics. To address this lack of belonging, the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District (ISD 191) integrated school-sponsored Affinity Groups into the middle school learning experience. This presentation examined a specific sample of Hispanic and Latino students in grades 7–8 who joined these student-led groups to discuss community challenges, celebrate shared cultural identity, and organize events that bridged academic knowledge with real-world cultural experiences. Research demonstrated that these groups were vital for cultivating inclusive environments, improving student agency, decreasing exclusionary discipline rates, and fostering a strong sense of community.

Antonia Felix
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership
Minnesota State University, Mankato

Beyond Words: Looking at Art to Examine Racism

Looking at art is a compelling way to evoke feelings about race and systemic racism while introducing experiences and histories individuals may not otherwise encounter. This impact is deeply rooted in how humans perceive information: we are neurologically impacted more by visuals than words, and the brain uses significantly more neurological territory to process and remember images than to process and remember text. Uncovering these visual narratives offers a multilayered experience, echoing the scholarly observation that creative approaches are necessary to construct efforts to resist or undo racism in a way that allows for complex, nuanced understandings. Making these discoveries collectively builds meaningful connections among participants. This session began with a research-based discussion on the role of art in understanding racism and examined why reflecting on race-themed images is a valuable individual or group activity for analyzing racist systems. Participants viewed several works of art, reflecting deeply on the meaning of various visual components and sharing their insights.

Dr. Rev Hillstrom and Nanette Yurecko
Minnesota Education Equity Partnership

Building a CLEAR Bridge Through Culturally Validating Pedagogy & Leadership (CVP/L)

In Minnesota, persistent opportunity gaps, disproportionality, and student disengagement call for approaches that move beyond compliance-driven equity efforts. CVP/L offers a timely, culturally grounded framework that responds to the diverse identities, histories, and communities present in Minnesota schools today, supporting academic excellence, authentic belonging, and collective responsibility. This session introduced the core values and conceptual foundations of Culturally Validating Pedagogy and Leadership (CVP/L)—a framework that moves beyond cultural responsiveness toward deep cultural validation. CVP/L is grounded in the foundational scholarship of Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1994) and Dr. Geneva Gay (2000), while intentionally extending this work through a shift toward Indigenous epistemology and ontology, centering relationships, belonging, and holistic ways of knowing and being.

Steve Rustad, Kristin Krusemark, and Brittany Ward
Mankato Area Public Schools

Leading With Purpose: How Kennedy Elementary Closed Racial Achievement Gaps Through Collective Teacher Efficacy and Equity-Oriented Systems
At Kennedy Elementary School in Mankato, Minnesota, equity was operationalized as a foundational institutional structure rather than an isolated initiative. Grounded in an Equity-Oriented Strategic Plan (EOSP), the school systematically redesigned teacher collaboration, leadership decision-making, and student intervention systems. These structural transformations yielded substantial academic gains for Black students and earned Kennedy recognition as an ESEA Nationally Distinguished School. This session detailed Kennedy’s structural journey toward closing racial achievement gaps by strengthening Collective Teacher Efficacy, embedding race-conscious data practices into Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), and aligning Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) with Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) frameworks. Presenters demonstrated how the school successfully cultivated an institutional culture characterized by collective adult efficacy, data-driven urgency, and consistent, unified expectations across all classrooms.

J. Scott Baker
Associate Professor of Secondary Education
St. Cloud State University

Self-Reflective Art as a Starting Point for Equity Conversations

Teacher identity—through the lens of past, present, and possible selves—in a teacher preparation course is vital for preservice teachers to not only understand their own biases, perceptions, and blind spots in an ever-changing society, but also explore what those mean for their future students. This daunting work is often overlooked with the impacts of state and federal standards pushing teacher educators to focus on skills over experiences; however, this presentation explored the use and value of arts-based inquiry to self-reflect on the need for and work of racial equity in schools. This presentation addressed how art-based reflections for preservice teachers through teacher identity can also be used in all school contexts—as a jumping off and returning point—for courageous conversations regarding racial/educational equity.

Hannah Nurmi
High School Instructional Coach

Bridging Gaps in Advanced Placement Equity: The Power of Counterspaces and Student Narratives

This case study leveraged Nurmi’s research expertise to examine how systemic biases, tokenism, and microaggressions perpetuate inequitable access for students of color in Advanced Placement (AP) classrooms. Drawing on student-led listening sessions with six diverse high schoolers, the session provided valuable insights into how subtle exclusionary practices reinforce structural racial inequities in rigorous academic tracks. The presenter outlined effective frameworks for deploying counterspaces and counterstorytelling to challenge dominant narratives, actively foster student agency, and build lasting resilience. Attendees left with actionable, expert-guided recommendations to transform AP programs, including implementing equity-conscious enrollment practices, training educators to mitigate microaggressions, and embedding supportive counterspaces into institutional school culture.