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Michelle Lopez, a bilingual educator dreaming big for her school and community

Michelle Lopez (MEdu’21) remembers sitting in her grandfather’s kitchen, surrounded by the smells of home cooking, and peppering him with questions about her family history. Lopez’s grandparents moved to Denver seeking opportunities for their six children, but they did not teach their children Spanish, worried it could interfere with their success.

Two generations later, Lopez went out of her way to learn her family’s language, and she honors bilingualism in her fourth and fifth grade students at Garden Place Elementary in Denver.

Dreaming of new worlds

Stephanie Toliver was in college the first time she read a science fiction and fantasy novel featuring a Black woman as a protagonist. Today, she's working to make sure that the next generation of Black girls don't face the same obstacles.

What we're reading

A quick look at the recent books from our faculty and community.

Community and liberation by design

By Brittni Laura Hernandez, Bethy Leonardi, Page Regan, María Ruíz-Martínez, Sara Staley and Robyn Tomiko

A look into the dreaming and designing of A Queer Endeavor’s Educator Institute for Equity and Justice (EIEJ), a two-day conference featuring over 80 educator-led workshops. 

Voices from the classroom

This has been a particularly unexpected and challenging time in education and beyond. We asked our alumni teachers: What have you learned over the past year and will be carrying into the future?

Essential supports for essential workers

The School of Education’s new Buffs for Front Line Service Employees (Buffs4FLSE) program offers in-person sessions, online academic support and a 5-week summer camp for the school-age children of the university’s essential employees at no cost. The program grew out of the need to provide immediate educational support to families disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but its equity mission and multigenerational educational support aims to endure beyond the pandemic.

Force of nature

Alumna Lianna Nixon’s lens on the natural world is changing education and environmental activism. From images of polar bears to vibrant blue sea ice, Nixon’s breathtaking photography, savvy social media skills and educational lens on climate change taps into our shared humanity and forges bold-but-accessible conversations about humans and the environment.