University Events

Description: Prior to joining Clark University's faculty, Dr. DeMeulenaere taught middle and high school social studies and English and coached soccer in Oakland and San Francisco, CA. He also co-founded and served as the principal of an innovative small public school in East Oakland that focused on social justice and increased academic outcomes for youth of color. Before opening the school, Dr. DeMeulenaere earned his Ph.D. in the Social and Cultural Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. Dr. DeMeulenaere consults with educational leaders nationally and internationally to transform their organizational cultures to promote greater racial and social justice.

A community engaged scholar, his research employs participatory action research and narrative inquiry methods and draws extensively from critical theory to examine how to create more effective and liberatory learning spaces for students of color both in and out of school spaces. Dr. DeMeulenaere is the co-author of Reflections from the Field: How Coaching Made Us Better Teachers (2013) and The Activist Academic: Engaged Scholarship for Resistance, Hope and Social Change (2020).

This talk/workshop will explore the challenges of getting unstuck from our educational conventions, so we prepare learners not only for how to live in our current reality, but how to reimagine our world and become agents of change. We will do this by reimagining relationships, relevance, and rigor in education. This presentation will engage participants with a variety of interactive games, activities, and storytelling, to enable us to collectively reimaging education.