MEET OUR TEACHERS!!

Andreal Davis

Andreal Davis is a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt and Statewide Culturally Responsive Practices Coordinator in Wisconsin. She is also CEO/Founder of Cultural Practices That Are Relevant, LLC. whose signature event is the annual Black History Education Conference held annually in Madison, Wisconsin for the past two years. She received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Elementary Education in 1986 and a Master of Science Degree in Curriculum and Instruction in 1995 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds a Master of Science Degree in Educational Administration from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. Convinced of the importance of family and community in a child's education, Davis has been instrumental in forming family-school-community relationships ever since she began her teaching career in 1986. She has served in various capacities in the public education arena including formerly serving as an Elementary Educator, Title I Reading Instructor, Parent Involvement Coordinator, Instructional Resource Teacher for Cultural Relevance, Assistant Director of Equity and Family Involvement and the nation’s first Director of African American Student Achievement with the Madison Metropolitan School District in Madison, Wisconsin. She was also formerly co-director, for twelve years, along with her husband Arlington, of the African American Ethnic Academy, an academic and cultural enrichment program that convened on Saturday mornings. As a product of the research she did while serving as co-director at the African American Ethnic Academy she was propelled by her own three sons and countless other Black children across the country and devoted her life's work to researching and utilizing best practices and models around Culturally Responsive Practices that speak to the unique identities and world views of these children.   

Reflecting on her own educational experiences as a child and those she has had as a classroom teacher and mother, she has held deeply in her heart the people, purposes and passions that shaped and have had a profound effect on the educational leader she is today. Many of these experiences remain in her institutional memory and call her to create and share this work through creating the Black History Education Conference, publishing books, writing/creating curriculum and engaging in speaking opportunities across the nation. Included in her repertoire of tools and resources that she has created is a professional development model called Cultural Practices that are Relevant (CPR) that supports and strengthens Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching. Most recently she has published her first culturally responsive children’s book called, “Dreaming In Ethnic Melodies” that shares the hopes and dreams she continues to hold for her own three sons. She currently serves as Wisconsin's Culturally Responsive Practices Coordinator at the Wisconsin Response to Intervention Center. In that role she leads this work along with a team of colleagues, training practitioners across the state of Wisconsin and nationally from a model she co-created called the Model to Inform Culturally Responsive Practices that focuses on what it means to be culturally responsive starting with self and moving that work across an entire equitable multi-level system of support. 

As a result of this work Andreal has received various awards. She was the recipient of the NBC 15 News Crystal Apple Award in 2000, UW-Madison Lois Gadd Nemec Distinguished Elementary Education Alumni Award in 2004, Order of the Eastern Star Mother Full of Grace in 2004, the Milken National Educator Award in 2004 and the YWCA woman of Distinction Award in 2013.

Gwen Ebron

Gwendolyn W. Ebron, M.Ed, has a bachelors degree in Journalism and a Masters of Education in Counseling, and has been a counselor for adults and children for over 34 years. Gwendolyn is also the President and CEO of G. S. E. Enterprise, Inc. 

Gwendolyn developed the AfrIcan and African American History Studies curriculum for the former Wakisha Charter School and taught the course by immersing the students into the history of Africans and African Americans in a classroom decorated to represent an African Village. 

Through G. S. E. Enterprise, Inc., Gwendolyn has presented workshops; plays and interactive immersive experiences of African and African American History for schools; churches; Conferences; Colleges and Universities, and for the opening of the Visitors Center, the opening of The Constitution Center; the moving of the Liberty Bell; Welcome America and the July 4th Parade in Philadelphia, PA. Gwendolyn has produced, directed and  hosted a radio show called "Let's Talk It Over" and produced, directed, wrote and starred in a TV program for WYBE-TV called "Journey to Nubian World" - a show where she and three students went back in time to interact with historical Africans and African Americans.

Gwendolyn continues to infuse African and African American historical facts into her clinical counseling in schools with students who exhibit very difficult behavioral problems and the students have experienced excellent results of improved behavior.

Gwendolyn is a wife; a mother of four grown children, grandmother of five and a descendant of an amazing people and a glorious heritage.