The Center for Education in Small Urban Communities has announced the keynote speakers for their upcoming TEACH Academy.
Marlee Bunch, Ph.D. '23 EPOL, will speak on Wednesday, July 16 at 9 a.m.
Bunch is an interdisciplinary educator, scholar, and author. She advocates for students and educators and uses writing and history to encourage dialogue and self-reflection. Her research focuses on Black female educators in Mississippi who taught between 1954 and 1970. Her publications include The Magnitude of Us, Unlearning the Hush: Oral Histories of Black Female Educators in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Era, and Leveraging AI for Human-Centered Learning: Culturally Responsive and Social-Emotional Classroom Practice in Grades 6-12, co-authored with Brittany R. Collins.
Margarita Machado Casas will speak on Thursday, July 17, at 9 a.m.
Machado Casas is a Dual Language and English Learner Education professor at San Diego State University. Her research interests include immigrant, transnational indigenous, and bilingual/multilingual education, as well as minority agency in the fields of education, literacy, assessment/evaluation, and community/family engagement. Machado-Casas is the editor of several prestigious journals and edits the “Critical Issues in Education around the World book series with Peter Lang. She is the Co-Chair and creator of the National Bilingual Education Student Organization (BESO), the largest bilingual education student organization in the US.
The 2025 TEACH Academy will take place July 16-17 at the Campus Instructional Facility in Urbana. The event is free and open to all.
