EduCon 2024

Madeline “Desi” Kobayashi (she/her) is a Chicago-born and raised Boricua writer, educator, curriculum designer, and literacy specialist. She earned her Bachelors in Secondary Education/History from DePaul University, and spent 14 years as a classroom teacher, for which she received the 2014 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her teaching experience includes middle and high school Social Science, English Language Arts, and College and Career Readiness, serving youth in four schools across Chicago. She has also worked as a literacy specialist with the Chicago Public Schools Department of Literacy. She holds two Masters Degrees: the first in Secondary Education/English Language Arts, and the second in Literacy Education with a Reading Specialist endorsement. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and her research interests include liberatory literacies and healing-centered pedagogy. She is passionate about supporting collaborative spaces for folks to design culturally responsive curricula that attend to the academic and human needs of Black and Latinx youth. Desi is the co-founder of Critical Learning Collaborative LLC, an education consultancy that builds communities of practice to transform classrooms into the liberatory spaces our youth need and deserve.