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Audrey Appelsies
Audrey Appelsies works part-time at the Children, Youth and Family
Consortium as a fellow on the educational disparities theme. Over
the course of the next year she will be working to bring University
researchers, local community leaders, and educators together in order
to improve the educational opportunities and outcomes for all children
in the state of Minnesota. She has taught courses in teacher education
at the U and Hamline and continues to work as a thesis adviser to
graduate students at Hamline University.
Dr. Appelsies received her PhD from the University of Minnesota
in 2006 from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the
College of Education and Human Development. Her research interests
include the history of race in America, critical whiteness studies,
the politics of education, and the socio-cultural contexts of learning.
Her dissertation research focused on the experiences of white urban
teachers working with students of color in urban schools. Her findings
indicated that their experiences, understood through a critical race
theory lens, are more complex than previously discussed in the literature.
She used a life-history narrative methodology to retell and examine
the stories of the teacher participants. She is currently developing
her dissertation into a book.
Prior to her graduate work, she was a public school teacher for
six years. It was during those years, in Chicago, Austin, Texas and
Minneapolis that she began to explore the meaning of race and education.
Specifically she considered the ways that her own whiteness mediated
the learning experiences of her students--primarily African-American
and Latino children. She wondered how the gulf of race and culture,
class and experiences became part of the classroom experience for
her students and if there were ways of transcending those differences
in order to provide the best sorts of learning for her students.
Public school teaching was challenging work in many ways. Although
she has been gone from the classroom over seven years, she is still
in contact with some of her former students and is still interested
in their growth and development into fine young adults.
Staff
Karen Cadigan, Ed.S, Policy Director
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