We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marini Lee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marini below.
Marini, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you ever had an amazing boss, mentor or leader leading you? Can you us a story or anecdote that helps illustrate why this person was such a great leader and the impact they had on you or their team?
Joyce Elaine Millender Kelly was the best teacher I never had as a student, however, she was/is the most impactful mentor for me as an educator. Joyce was the Owner, Director and Kindergarten teacher of her small private preschool in my hometown. She was legendary in our community for the strength of her program; Kindergarteners routinely left her reading at a third grade level. I first met Joyce when I was in middle school. She had been my best friend’s Kindergarten teacher and once you had Joyce as a teacher, you were her kid and she was your mom/auntie for life. She also accepted stragglers like me and so I was fortunate to have her in my life at a time when life was developmentally awkward. That was when Joyce first became my “person.” I could (& did) tell her ANYTHING! She was the judgement free zone I needed but she always kept me accountable for my actions. When I came home from college on the weekends, the FIRST place I went was Joyce’s school and/or apartment. I had to catch her up on my life and get the advice and encouragement I needed to move forward. Fast forward to when I was graduating from Stanford University, I had applied and been denied admission into Teach for America. I had also been in a car accident that left me carless and with whiplash. One day, after moving back home, I was lamenting my life and Joyce told me that TFA was wrong. She believed I could be a great teacher and to prove it, she invited me to be a substitute for the three-year-olds’ class at her school. That week turned into three years of classroom teaching and the ignition of my career as a professional educator. Joyce taught me that teaching was loving children into the potential you see in each and every one of them. Joyce taught me how to meet parents with compassion and understanding even and especially when they didn’t extend the same courtesy. Joyce taught me to pick my battles as an educator. Joyce taught me that education can be fun, but it is also serious business. Excellence was our expectation.
One of the main reasons I moved to Michigan was to obtain a graduate degree in Education (from the then #1 teacher preparation program in the nation) so that I could return home to inherit the coveted position of Director/Kindergarten teach of Odyssey School. However, Joyce passed away before I completed my mission and I was DEVASTATED! It has taken me some time to recover from the guilt I have felt about not being able to let my mentor retire, assured her legacy would continue. I am now living Joyce’s legacy through GRACE Learning Village (GLV), the nonprofit organization I started in 2021 in response to the pandemic’s adverse impact on education for BIPOC.
GLV’s mission is “Healing Communities of Color through Education and Community Care.” We intend to do this at our reparations school(s) and accompanying community healing centre(s). These schools have Joyce’s love for children and excellence as expectation as their ideological foundation. Without Joyce’s mentorship and vision and faith in me, GRACE Learning Village would not, could not exist.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a phenomenal educator and an avid learner. Teaching and learning are the yin and yang of my personal and professional lifelong journey. While I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was in third grade, I didn’t find the courage to purse my passion until I was almost ready to graduate from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in African and African American Studies. After being denied admission into an alternative teaching certification program, I learned to teach by teaching when I was offered a week-long substitute position at my hometown mentor’s small private preschool and Kindergarten. At the time, I was allowed to continue teaching as long as I took early childhood education courses which I did so successfully, I was asked to tutor classmates at the community college I was enrolled in while working full-time.
Since then, I have also been an after-school program teacher, a substitute teacher, a residential high school summer program instructor and coordinator, a college professor, a higher education recruiter and an undergraduate retention specialist.
In August 2020, in response to the unique pressures the global pandemic applied to the educational system, I decided to pursue my dedication to the liberation of BIPOC by becoming an educational consultant full time, offering youth program creation and coordination services, anti-racist/racial equity training and yoga instruction.
In October of 2021, one of my most proud moments in life was founding the nonprofit organization that is the vehicle through which I am actualizing my commitment to the social justice and healing movement within communities of color, with my own particular calling to work within and for low to moderate income urban areas. GRACE Learning Village is fundamentally an organization committed to this healing work through education and community care. By education, we seek to open reparations schools which are private institutions funded by individuals and organizations who agree that Black people are owed tangible retroactive payment for nearly 400 years of free labor. These schools will eventually have a residential component for scholar activists in foster care and for families desiring a more comprehensive educational experience. By community care, we mean to serve as a social services hub primarily for the families of the scholar activists we serve in our reparations schools. Each school’s Neighborhood Resource Centre will offer scholar activist families the opportunity to contribute toward tuition via active and regular participation in as many NRC programs that enable their family to thrive. As such, we anticipate maintaining close partnerships with social service agencies like DHHS as we work with families toward unification and permanency goals.
It is important to know that GRACE Learning Village is a movement. As our name declares, we express our gratitude for those who have gone before on this social justice healing journey. We seek to contribute to The Revolution via our commitment to the abolition of systems of oppression. We believe this is the way in which the BIPOC community will experience the most positively impactful empowerment. It does indeed take a village to raise a child. We also contend that the village needs to be healed in order to raise a child who thrives.
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
YES!!!! If I could go back, I would tell my third grade self to never forget that she said she wanted to be a teacher in her All About Me assignment. Somehow, between third grade and high school, I forgot that’s what I’ve always wanted to be and I “wasted” a lot of time on pursuits that did not align with my passion and gifts. When I started college, I pursued medicine because I was under the impression that’s what Black kids who went to college were supposed to do: become a lawyer, doctor or an engineer. Since I loved helping people and children, I chose pediatrics. I struggled with the premed curriculum at Stanford but “found” myself when I began studying my people, finally ending up being an African and African American Studies major with a focus on literature. Remembering I have always enjoyed working with children (my first job was at my aunt’s daycare) and being inspired by my major, I decided to apply to Teach for America because I wanted to be placed in a high needs, Black community. I saw myself in Atlanta, teaching our babies. However, TFA saw differently. I didn’t get in. Discouraged and unemployed, I moved back home to regroup. As I cried on my mentor’s living room floor, I was invited to substitute teach for one of her teachers who was going on vacation for a week. That one week led me to recommit myself to becoming the educator I know I was born to be. After that week, my mentor invited me to stay on her staff as an assistant in her Kindergarten class. A few months later, the teacher of the 4 year old’s class quit. My mentor offered me the position and the rest is, as they say, history! I have since been an educator for every level of human development. Fittingly, not having been a traditionally trained teacher, I have flourished the most in non-traditional academic spaces. As such, I intend for GRACE Learning Village School(s) to be a non-traditional educational space where students like third grade me will be encouraged to pursue their passions despite what society says they “should” become.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Hope and faith. As educators and social justice warriors, I we understand that we plant seed we may never see come to fruition. You’ve got to remain steadfast that even though you may not see what you have been working toward, that your work in not in vain.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gracelearningvillage.org
- Instagram: @glv313
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100078322728019
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marini-c-lee-43ba697/