Dr. Honey Walrond is a postdoc at the UC Berkeley School of Education, focusing on expanding educational opportunities for students. She earned her PhD in English Education from prestigious Teachers College at Columbia University, specializing in education policy and literacy education. Walrond earned her undergraduate degree at Hunter College.
As an experienced teacher in public schools across New York City, Walrond said she has been inspired by the communities that she taught in. “I want to research communities with the community that I'm serving. I want them to be part of the research, not just extract information, but as a way to also give back,” she said.
Walrond primarily wants to focus on learning about structural issues that concern teachers going through certification, and how that impacts their curriculum-making process. “I'm hoping I continue to develop that love of research within education and really think more about how to support students of color,” she said. The project is currently in its research phase where principals, facilitators and teachers are being interviewed.
“Its ethnographic sort of design can really inform your area of research where maybe quantitative methods [and] numbers cannot,” she said. The research focus is informed by the hands-on approach that involves being in the field and observing what’s happening in classrooms with students and teachers involved.
Walrond takes this community-focused inspiration from her maternal grandmother, Maude White Katz, a civil rights activist who shared intellectual spaces with prominent sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. She described her grandmother as someone who pushed for a curriculum that students of color can relate to, which is culturally asset-based, not coming from a deficit model, but one that lifts students up.
“She was a fair advocate for a culturally aligned curriculum for students within the Harlem community,” Walrond said. With big shoes to fill, she vows to take Katz as an example of building resilience in both her scholarship as well as activism.
Currently, Walrond is working with the Center for Research on Expanding Educational Opportunities (CREEO), which also supports teachers in the Oakland school district becoming nationally board-certified. “CREEO uncovered that Oakland was one of the districts that not many, or none, school teachers were certified through the national board, and now the aim is to elevate that and increase the number,” she said.
Walrond hopes to provide her expertise in underserved school districts like Oakland through her work with organizations that work closely with crucial parties involved.