Paul Spies is a co-founder of the Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota (www.tocaimn.com) currently serving as its legislative action team lead and a member of its core steering committee. He is co-author of “Minnesota Grow Your Own Policy Spotlight: Organizing a Coalition for Systems Change” (Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2019).
After seven years teaching high school social studies and working for reform in diverse urban and suburban schools in Illinois and Wisconsin, Paul earned his doctorate in curriculum & instruction and education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a founding faculty member of the Urban Teacher Program at Metropolitan State University which in two decades has become the most racially diverse teacher education unit in the state in terms of total number and percentage of candidates of color, all served by a faculty/staff that is majority persons of color.