Building Social Justice and Equity into the Curriculum and Classroom

About the Group

Now more than ever, there is a recognition that what we teach and the way we teach needs to strengthen social justice, enforce anti-racist approaches and boost equity. Facilitated by Jodi Lake, American International School, Cape Town and Melissa Schaub, American International School of Lagos, this affinity group invites educators of all grades who want to build social justice and equity into the curriculum and throughout the classroom.

About the facilitators

Jodi Lake

Jodi Lake is a teacher and administrator with 37 years in international school experience. She began her journey teaching grade 4 in a bilingual school in Mexico. From there she worked in Japan, Venezuela and Kenya and is now the Director of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation at the American International School of Cape Town. She is passionate about developing service learning programs as well as embedding global competencies into the curriculum when not digging into a good book or going for a walk on the beautiful South African beaches.

Melissa Schaub

Melissa, a self-proclaimed assessment geek, has had the pleasure and honour of spending the last 27 years in international schools in Mexico, Venezuela, Romania, Russia and currently, Nigeria working with students and with teams to enhance student learning. As an instructional leader, she has been an assistant principal of curriculum and instruction, an elementary principal and a PK-12 director of learning. Each chapter of her professional journey has provided amazing experiences that have deepened her commitment to “get assessment practices right”. She has worked across capacities to train and support teachers with fine-tuning their design tools for crafting authentic, meaningful and aligned packages of teaching and learning. Melissa has her Master’s Degree in Elementary Education and Administrative Certification through The College of New Jersey and is a graduate of the PTC Essential Skills program. She is currently preparing to complete her EdD in Instructional Leadership from Wilkes University.