Professors challenging the status quo in education

In fall 2020, Roosevelt University welcomed two new full-time faculty members in counselor education and instructional leadership. The two College of Education professors plan to upend the status quo and discover new ways to reach their students.

Charmaine Conner

Assistant Professor of Counselor Education

When children walk into Dr. Charmaine Conner’s counseling office, they see a room full of toys: dolls, hand puppets, board games. You can play with these toys in lots of different ways, Dr. Conner tells her young clients. She reflects their feelings and communicates with kids in their language through play.

Conner, who joined the counselor education faculty in fall 2020, is a licensed professional counselor and play therapy expert. Play therapy, a developmentally appropriate way to work with children between 3 and 10 years old,  helps children learn self-control, problem-solving, decision-making and emotional regulation.

“Often adults want to speak to children as though they are adults,” said Conner. “Talk therapy can be very intimidating for children, especially young children who may not have the words to explain the feelings that they have in their bodies. Play therapy helps children to feel validated, seen and heard.”

As a McNair Scholar at Arkansas State, Conner realized she wanted to go into counseling for the field’s focus on a client’s potential, rather than their deficits. “As a counselor, we operate from a wellness model: amplifying clients’ strengths and helping them on their journeys of improving their mental health,” she said.

During her PhD program at the University of North Texas, her research focused on the experiences of children and adolescents. Conner now specializes in transracial adoption, play therapy with BIPOC children and multicultural issues in counseling.

Conner says she’s looking forward to finally meeting her students in person and bringing them into her research projects. She’s currently in the planning stages of two experiential group experiences: one to help counselor education students move towards antiracism, and one to help Black parents strengthen their relationships with their children.

“We are a teacher-scholar institution,” she said. “I’m interested in finding ways for students to be excited about participating in research and how research can impact their work with clients in the real world.”

In all of her Roosevelt courses, Conner hopes to expand advocacy in her profession.

Conner says she was drawn to the University and the counseling program for its commitment to social justice. Although clients come into counseling with presenting concerns, they also feel the impact of the world at large, and Conner wants students to acknowledge that in their work.

“Some people might not consider trauma to be a social justice issue, but when we look at who’s impacted by trauma and the statistics, a lot of trauma is related to the BIPOC community,” she said. “I have been an advocate for helping BIPOC children and adolescents learn to navigate their trauma.”

After the Jacob Blake shooting in Wisconsin and the insurrection at the Capitol, Conner created space for her Roosevelt graduate students to talk about their emotions and experiences. She hoped to model how conversations could show up in the counseling room while supporting her students through an emotionally fraught time.

“The students get to dictate how they want that space to look,” she said. “My role is only making sure that the space is there.”

Allison Slade

Assistant Clinical Professor of Education Leadership

Years before Michelle Obama made healthy school lunches part of the national conversation, Allison Slade founded Namaste Charter School on the principle that kids who are healthy and active perform better in the classroom.

Now in its 17th year of operation, Namaste serves 500 K-8 students. The dual language school has a chef on staff, teaching the students how to cook and the importance of what we put in our bodies.

“Every day we did things that people thought were crazy, but it worked for kids,” Slade said. “I hope to bring that same life to the leadership program at Roosevelt.”

Slade worked as a public school educator for more than 20 years, teaching bilingual primary students in Houston and leading Namaste as principal. She first started teaching at Roosevelt as an adjunct faculty member in the dual language teacher leadership program.

“I’ve loved my students in the program,” Slade said. “They’re the ones that motivated me to explore the opportunity to lead the instructional leadership program.”

The master’s in instructional leadership program prepares students to add the principal or teacher leader endorsement to their Illinois teaching licenses. Active teachers work on real projects to better their current skills and build a portfolio for their future leadership roles.

As the director of the program, Slade hopes to help Roosevelt graduates bring much-needed diversity to the school administration pool. The dual language teacher leadership program is more than 90% Latinx students, according to Slade, and only 7% of public school principals across the country are Latinx.

“I hope that our students will analyze and critically evaluate the curricula they use,” she said. “Just because teaching practices have been implemented for all this time doesn’t mean they’re meeting students’ needs.”

Slade’s classes encourage students to look beyond the way things have always been done to develop culturally competent learning opportunities for students. She brings a wealth of practicality to her classes and doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. Her students love asking her about the “dirty” side of leadership — the real, messy scenarios that crop up in schools.

Slade is currently teaching the year-long principal internship course, the final project for master’s students after finishing the rest of their course work. Slade completely restructured the class around a deep-dive self-assessment:  Students have used value cards to understand their personal values, how those values show up in their leadership, and how that could impact the school environment.

“In this day and age, especially in remote learning, leaders need to have a much higher level of emotional intelligence,” she said. “Teachers are going through so much, students are going through so much, and leaders need to have a very high emotional intelligence to push the work of the school forward while also being human.”

Slade says that the pandemic has proven that the status quo in education doesn’t work for students. She hopes to give her students the tools to engage their school community and find innovative ways to fulfill children’s needs.