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Quinton Andre Freeman comes from a family of educators.  His wife, Adrienne, is a middle school principal. His parents, now a retired county agent and a retired special education teacher, met while student teaching, and his mother urged him to get a teaching certificate as a fallback plan after college graduation.

“What was supposed to be one year as a teacher in a 7th-grade life science classroom became five, then about the same number of years as an instructional coach in Houston,” he said. “I always had an inkling that, at least in part, teachers become teachers because of the teachers they interact with day-to-day.”

Freeman credits his one-year, non-traditional teacher prep program with helping prepare him for many things as a beginning teacher and someone would later support other new teachers. Freeman sought a doctoral program that could help him make sense of his journey and others’ paths, which led him to Learning Sciences and Human Development program area with an additional focus on Teacher Learning, Research and Practice at the CU Boulder School of Education. 

At CU Boulder, Freeman has been a committed teacher and teacher educator, and he is the 2022 Outstanding Graduate for Outstanding Teaching.

He taught undergraduate courses in for the School of Education’s elementary teacher education program, served as the teaching assistant in a required first-year qualitative methods course, and was an unofficial mentor to multiple cohorts of doctoral students in Learning Sciences and Human Development. 

For 5 years, he was a member of the EPIC research team where he taught the course on learning and social justice and supported undergraduates as they learned alongside children at the EPIC afterschool club at an elementary in Lafayette. EPIC is part of a long-standing university-community partnership with Alicia Sanchez International Elementary School that aims to: support learning opportunities for children from non-dominant communities, organize teacher education for social justice, and cultivate new practices at the university and the elementary school that can facilitate more humanizing educational experiences.

In these spaces, Freeman always embodied curiosity and extended grace for learners. He would, for example, stop a planned lesson to make time to understand people’s ideas and invite others to engage with him in turning problems around so that they could understand their complexity. 

As a scholar who read voraciously, he also regularly shared rich resources including books, articles, videos, and Twitter threads, that pushed his peers’ and students’ thinking in unexpected and creative ways. 

Freeman designed his pedagogy with great intention, so that undergraduates would be challenged and supported.

“He approached teaching undergraduates holistically – from inside the classroom to program design, to teacher educator learning and research on teaching,” his nominators said. “This robust approach to teaching is necessary if we, as a school of education, are going to support the development of grounded and innovative teachers and teacher educators.”

In his own words 

Please tell us a bit about yourself

I still consider home a small (population of 5,500) town in central Louisiana called Marksville. I am the oldest of three (younger brother and sister), and our parents are both from small Mississippi towns. So we were transplants, a somewhat unusual circumstance there among my friends. However, I now have numerous play cousins and other fictive kin that made growing up there, in many ways, a wonderful experience.

My parents met during student teaching. My father is a retired County Agent, and my mother is a retired Special Education teacher. I remember her telling me that I should get at least certified to teach regardless of any other plans. That advice came back to me as I faced college graduation with no idea of what I wanted to do next. What was supposed to be a year as a teacher in a 7th-grade life science classroom became five, then about the same number of years as an instructional coach in Houston. Both as a beginning teacher and someone who often supported teachers new to the profession, I felt Holmes (my one-year, non-traditional prep program) prepared me for many things. Yet, I always had an inkling that, at least in part, teachers become teachers because of the teachers they interact with day-to-day. And some of those teachers happen to be adults. I came to graduate school hoping to better understand what happened to me and what I surmised was happening to others.

A term, practice-linked identities, found on Susan Jurow's faculty page made my nascent theory more concrete. I don't even remember what I searched to come across her page. The first time I set foot in Colorado was Welcome Weekend. All I knew is that everything I read said (if you can) choose advisor over place. And that has made all the difference. . .”

What is one of the lessons from your time at CU Boulder that you’ll carry with you into the next chapter?

  For me, one of the best parts of being able to go to graduate school are the things you can learn and do outside of class, at least in part because of the kinds of collisions and connections supported by being in class/community with others. Many of my favorite moments happened in the C4C or over mounds of pork bulgogi or hanging in the Learning Sciences shared space or riding on Flatiron Flyers.”

What does graduating from CU Boulder represent for you and/or your community?

  I think this is one of those questions best answered with some time and distance. What graduating will represent will perhaps best be described by answering "And, then what?" . . .and probably better answered by someone else.”

What is your best piece of advice for incoming students?

  Remember why you came here. . .but also know that to learn is to change. Maybe a way to gauge the experience is not just asking "Did I do what I came here to do?" but also "Am I doing what I perhaps could or would not have done otherwise?"”

What continues to drive your passion for your work after graduation?

Two things come to mind.

First, I know what some of the ideas I have encountered in the Learning Sciences have done for me. What they have helped me to notice for example. There is still an open question of how we might "put a handle" (H/T Susan Jurow) on these kinds of perspectives. Particularly in places where attempting to move differently is at least marginalized or perhaps even regarded with hostility.

The second is related to the first. I am fascinated by the design work of others. People and communities make full, rich lives in the face of absurdity and cruelty. This is not to say that ingenuity requires indignities. Instead, to play on an argument Ruth Wilson Gilmore has made, we might remember that what the world could be already exists.

So, I'm driven by what we can all learn about our own micro-interactions, the ways we live together, by looking at the micro-interactions of others.”