A Teacher for Our Times

Photo: Lisa Miller

Before she became Program Manager of Culturally Responsive Instruction for St. Paul Public Schools, Courtney Bell was a servant leader intern with Minneapolis’ Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School’s program, which helps engage students in education and leadership activities. She was also a beloved social studies teacher at her alma mater, North High School in Minneapolis. A finalist for Minnesota Teacher of the Year in 2018, Bell was beloved by her students, whom she referred to as her “scholars.” In addition to encouraging her students to be who they are, she made it clear that they deserved a quality education and she did all she could to provide that.

Having experienced educational inequity firsthand growing up, Bell has long been passionate about finding ways to make inequity in the classroom a non-issue for students. That’s why, after graduating from North High School in 2007, she went to the University of Minnesota, first earning an undergraduate degree in sociology followed by a master’s degree in education.

Now finishing up her PhD in education policy and leadership from the U’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), Bell’s research focuses on community response to school closures. Disregard for community perspective plays a key role in educational inequity, particularly economic neglect of particular schools, she says.  “Community members, including parents and families are the most important stakeholders at the table. But they are often ignored, so educational institutions miss an amazing opportunity for engagement and creating better outcomes for scholars and their families.”

Bell’s mission is to “serve those who are being overlooked and under acknowledged.”

Working in partnership with UROC, which is just down the street from where she grew up, Bell has been asking community members what they think about school closures and is currently looking at her data. She describes her research as a way to “pass the mic” to her community. “There’s a lot of literature that talks about school closures being good for reasons having to do with test scores and funding and resource allocation, but I’ve found that communities often have a completely different perspective and that needs to be considered,” she says. “They see schools as the fabric of their communities, places where history has been made. Simply getting rid of schools doesn’t fix fundamental problems with the educational system.”

Rather than focusing blame on students, teachers and communities, Bell would like to see a comprehensive system-level examination of the roots of problems afflicting educational institutions today. She also thinks educators need to work harder to make learning more accessible and relatable to all students. “Speaking from a classroom teacher perspective, I believe much more needs to be done to help students be partners in their own education,” she explains. “They don’t see themselves in what they’re learning, and they don’t have opportunities to articulate what’s important to them, so their education isn’t really touching them.”

The result, she says, is not the so-called “achievement gap” but rather an “engagement gap” that could be fixed if we came changed our mindset that students are supposed to be passive when it comes to learning. “Students who aren’t engaged are not learning, which leads to the kind of inequities that plague the system,” Bell says. “Young people are brilliant, and I have seen scholars whom society would deem uneducable excel into uncharted territory, beyond what anyone thought possible, when they were valued as partners and engaged in the classroom.”

After 13 years of study, Bell is excited to defend her dissertation at UROC on May 11. “I grew up cutting through the parking lot of what is now UROC to get to school every day, and when I thought about who I wanted to partner with for my research, I knew I wanted it to be UROC,” she says, explaining that she interned there before the current location even opened. “Back then, I remember I was interning with UROC Executive Director Makeda Zulu-Gillespie, who was then the director of outreach, on setting up community forums. I was so grateful to see that the community’s voice was being heard. That really is the most important thing to me.”