My doctoral research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studied DEI professionals across higher education — what they were asked to carry, what they were never given, and why the field keeps burning people out. What I found was a pattern so consistent it was almost impossible to believe no one had formally documented it before. Every practitioner had entered their role with no defined competencies, no structured pipeline, and no framework for reaching the people who resist most.
The Research
New Book - Now Available for Preorder
Reimagining Culturally Responsive Learning Spaces
Edited by Marlee Bunch, Yoon Pak & Lauri JohnsonDr. Laura L. Falk, EdD | DEI Professional & Educator
My contribution to this volume, Chapter 5 - "Before the First Lesson: Building Classroom Community with Intention Across K-12" - draws from a legacy that begins long before I ever had my own classroom.
My mother was an educator, a community curator, and a passionate advocate for social justice. She taught at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools for more than 20 years. Each year, before her students arrived, she transformed the classroom into a space that said: you belong here. She held potlucks with families. She listened to grandparents. She gathered the threads of each child's life and wove them into the fabric of the learning environment. This was not in her contract. It came from her knowledge of community, her passion for justice, and the generations of advocacy that shaped her.
I brought that same intention into my own classrooms. Before the first day of school, I held afternoon gatherings at the park - families, students, my own family - so that by the time we walked into the building together, we were no longer strangers. The space reflected who they were. Their names, their languages, their stories already lived on those walls.
Culturally responsive practice does not start with curriculum or policy. It starts with the teacher who asks - before a single lesson is planned - who is actually in this room? And equally: who is not? Every choice a teacher makes about what voices appear on the walls, in the texts, and in the examples either narrows or expands the world the classroom offers.
This chapter invites educators to build with intention, from the very beginning.
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