Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D.

Nurturing Roses

Duncan-Andrade's answer to a culture of compliance was to create a wholly different kind of classroom: the Roses in Concrete Community School he cofounded in 2015 and where he's now board chair.

Named after a Tupac Shakur poem, the kindergarten-to-eighth-grade East Oakland school offers a new model for urban education, one focused on racial and social justice where the curriculum includes art, music and performing arts, STEM and dual language, all within an ethnic studies framework. 

"Every subject we teach is a conduit for developing human beings with strong moral compasses, civic responsibility and a sense of justice," says Duncan-Andrade. 

Instruction in social justice starts early. A lesson for kindergarteners about where food comes from led to a discussion of how farm workers are often exploited. Fast-forward a few weeks and the 5-year-olds were handing out flyers they'd made about abusive labor practices in front of a neighborhood Safeway and meeting with the managers to insist that the store stop purchasing fruit from companies that use unjust labor practices.

"The Thing I Was Born to Do"

Duncan-Andrade joined the faculty of San Francisco State in 2004 while still teaching and coaching in Oakland public schools. "I chose San Francisco State because it heavily values teaching," he says. "To be in an environment where the thing I feel I was born to do is valued is affirming."

He felt an affinity with the university in other ways, too. "There were these amazing pockets that were educating [college] students in ways I'd always envisioned," he says. "The university has the only college of ethnic studies in the United States. And the education that's offered is inquiry-based, which means it's not built on the assumption of all-knowing professors." 

Lighting a Spark for Change

When Duncan-Andrade teaches his class on educational equity—which examines race, class and school inequality in the U.S.—he knows some students will become inspired enough to go on to become teachers themselves.

“These young educators are embracing their responsibility to change things and their potential…in ways that I couldn’t imagine,” says the father of 5-year-old twin boys.

“We’re talking about hundreds of San Francisco State graduates who are now teachers and are changing the education system from the classroom up.”

As well as being an associate professor at SFSU, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade is an author, co-founder of the Teaching Excellence Network, and co-founder of the Roses in Concrete Community School. “[San Francisco State] created a space for me to be a community member and a teacher in East Oakland as well as a faculty member.”

Duncan-Andrade’s class on educational equity, which looks at race, class and inequality in American schools, is often transformative. “The number of students that come through educational equity that become teachers is heartwarming,” he says. “I tell them every semester, this is not a class; 580 [the number of the class] is a tradition.”

When he considers the hundreds of San Francisco State graduates who are now teachers changing the education system, “it makes me really hopeful about the future,” says Duncan-Andrade. “As I like to say, ‘when roses come back to the concrete, they create rose gardens.’”

Duncan-Andrade created the Teaching Excellence Network with fellow SFSU professor Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales. “We were experiencing this growing desire among teachers, among community members to really transform the conversation about the purpose of public education in this country,” explains Duncan-Andrade. The network’s goal is to connect educators across the country to share solutions and “accelerate the model of change.”

Previous Next