Our Team
Our Team Heading link
Decoteau Irby, Ph.D. – Director
Decoteau J. Irby is an associate professor in the University of Illinois Chicago’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. He is founding director of Brothers Teaching and serves as a co-director for UIC’s Center for Urban Education Leadership. He is UIC’s 2024 Senior Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Faculty Award recipient, in recognition of his leadership and advocacy to make UIC a welcoming and inclusive place to work and learn.
His research explores how equity-focused school leadership can be used as a lever to improve Black children and youth’s academic achievement and socio-emotional well-being across a range of K-12 educational settings. His recent funded research projects include a William T. Grant Foundation Institutional Challenge Grant that supports a research-practice partnership with Chicago Public School’s Department of Principal Quality. In 2019, he was awarded a Spencer Large Grant to study district-level racial equity leadership and how equity leadership practices are institutionalized and sustained over time.
He is widely published in academic journals and serves on the editorial board for Educational Researcher and American Journal of Education. His books include Stuck Improving: Racial and Equity and School Leadership (Harvard Education Press), the award-winning co-edited book Dignity-Affirming Education: Cultivating the Somebodiness of Students and Educators (Teachers College Press), and the children’s picture book Magical Black Tears: A Protest Story.
His newest book Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change will be released in Fall 2025 by Teachers College Press.
Jeniece Morrison, M.S.Ed. – Program Coordinator
Jeniece Morrison has been on the Brothers Teaching team since 2021 and has nearly two decades of experience serving students both within and outside of schools. She is an Indianapolis, Indiana native but currently lives in Bronzeville with her husband, Corey. Her professional journey in education started when she served as a special education assistant and coordinator of a program that exposed high school students to careers in health care. She is a former School Counselor both in Indianapolis and Chicago. Her organization, Nurtured by Nita, emphasizes spiritual wholeness, physical wellness, and generational wealth. In her devotional, Lessons While Running, she provides inspiration for those wanting to build their spiritual faith while becoming a stronger runner. To this 2022, 2023, & 2024 Chicago marathon finisher, sometimes a prayer closet requires running shoes and fresh air.
She earned her B.S. in Social Policy and M.A. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University and her M.S.Ed. in School Counseling from Indiana University-Indianapolis. She currently is a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology at University of Illinois Chicago.
Duane Davis, Ph.D. – Postdoc
Duane Davis has spent almost three decades as an educator in Chicago and the Chicagoland area. Born and raised on the southside of Chicago. Duane grew up in South Shore and attended St. Philip Neri Elementary School and Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. After completing his undergraduate degree in English with honors at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, he began the Teachers for Chicago program which at the time was an alternative certification program partnering local universities with the Golden Apple Foundation and Chicago Public Schools to address the teacher shortage in Chicago. His first assignment was as an 8th grade Reading and Math teacher at Walter H. Dyett Middle School while attending Columbia College Chicago for a Master in the Art of Teaching. Duane, also while teaching full time, obtained his Masters in English from Loyola University Chicago. He’s worked in K-12 education, post-secondary education institutions, and non-profit organizations supporting student learning. He completed his Ph.D. in Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2023 with a focus on early career teachers and runs Raising Expectations LLC, a consulting firm that works with schools, nonprofits and businesses around the country. He resides in Bronzeville with his wife of over 20 years, Tamara and son, Ethan, a senior in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Ceily Moore, M.Ed. – Research Assistant
Ceily is a dedicated and experienced educator, evaluator, and facilitator determined to improve in and out of school experiences for youth of color. Ceily began her professional career by serving as an elementary school math and science teacher then transitioned into nonprofit management. Through these experiences she became more aware of the challenges that schools, nonprofits, and community-based organizations face collecting, analyzing, and using data. Ceily is passionate about reimagining the ways in which data are collected and reported, shifting from the focus on general outcomes to measuring the outcomes that matter most to the organization and demonstrate their full impact. A Chicago transplant, originally from Kansas City, Ceily is a proud resident of the Bronzeville community. She earned her B.S. in Health Sciences from Howard University and completed her Master of Education in Youth Development from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ceily is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, focusing on youth-adult relationships and identity development among Black youth.
Valentina Alpuin, M.S.Ed – Research Assistant
Valentina Alpuín, M.S.Ed, is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Curriculum and Instruction department’s Literacy, Language, and Culture program at UIC. She holds an M.S.Ed in Literacy Education focusing on Bilingual Education and ESL from Northern Illinois University. Her research interests include teacher education, Language ideologies, Women of Color Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Critical Pedagogies, and Antiracist Education. Before pursuing her doctorate degree, Valentina worked as an elementary school and EFL teacher in public schools in Montevideo, Uruguay, for 10 years. She is also a Fulbright Uruguay alumna, having participated in the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (Fulbright FLTA) program teaching Spanish in a liberal arts college in Indiana (2015–2016).