Who is Dr. Mapp and How Can Her Experiences Help Me and My Family?

Dr. Mapp's Background. As a child in a large low income southern family with civil rights activist parents and farmer grandparents, I had to find my way in growing up during a tumultuous period - but we knew we were loved with faith that sustained us! I attended good all Black schools and was supposed to have been lynched in the 4th grade. We were taught to be “twice as good as” with deeper learning, so I was academically prepared in the 11th grade when 4 classmates and I desegregated the home of the rebels. I attended a predominantly white university and participated in the Black ​Power movement. Because most schools were desegregated by then, I felt the need to go through a conscious metamorphosis to change how I felt about teaching and working with White people. I also vowed to serve as a change agent in future positions to help others change for the good of all students.

My husband and I had five children, four sons and one daughter, and we planned their education and sacrificed financially so they could all attend a Montessori school from the age of 3. We were vegetarians for awhile who worked on family projects together, participated in family and community life, taught our children to love people over things and to critically think about learning and life.  I volunteered for years in the community to inform my work and I still remember many of my students and their parents who taught me so much! More importantly than my career and education, I parented my five children to engineering degrees (1 daughter with a PhD and 4 sons with MBA, MS and 2 BS's) while it took me 13 years to earn my doctorate. I am a proud GrandMaMa to seven amazing grandchildren whose parents are their Best Teachers! My oldest granddaughter is a college graduate who is teaching in a program for two years prior to returning to work on advanced degrees.  

With five children as a single parent for some years and as a middle school teacher I had to constantly research information to help me be a better parent and professional. As a social studies teacher-leader of low income, predominantly Black students I used evidence-based research to better help my students excel academically while learning life skills. I later thought about my children and students as I wrote, trying to include their needs and what I could to make life easier for them. One of my students years later told me - "I wish I had done as you suggested - my life would have been so much easier!"  And years later, a young man told me at a New Jersey conference that I needed to share what I knew. That became the impetus for my writing.  I want it to be useful.

I used my research and experiences as a district curriculum coordinator and equity council member who helped write a school board adopted Multicultural Education Plan in 1998  and a violence prevention community program. With the changes during that period, those plans were probably not used. My next job was director of an HBCU first year counseling unit. I began and ended my work career in community agencies as a career counselor and later a short stint as director of a youth and family program. When I was later laid off three times in three years, with jobs being hard to get, I had to retool my skills and started my own business. There were a lot of tough years, but what I went through was nothing compared to the experiences that my parents and earlier generations - and many of you - went through all over the country.

My life experiences and research helped me to understand that teaching, learning, schooling and our families are linked and impacted by historical, political and social forces. This requires a holistic approach which acknowledges connections on different levels that bring to the forefront usually unspoken topics that have to be uncovered so we act to and behave in ways that improve our connected lives. My S.A.U.C.E; series of books show these connections on different levels with past, present and future actions  that readers can take to gain different perspectives to improve all our lives on many levels. 

Buy the books and other Learning Products so 2021 

becomes that year for healing and change 

in yourself, your family, our communities and our nation! 

Schooling Solutions and Dr. Mapp are poised to help you, 

your families and groups move through and beyond this 2020 turning point!