Youth Leadership Director& former Executive Co-Director
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We are always being, but also in the process of becoming. G "Poet G" Reyes likens himself to water that flows thru cracks & crevices creating opportunities for becoming more than what we are today. He is often seen walking in deep thought through crowded hallways of youth, bouncing to deep beneath slappin beats, sharing passionate secrets and wisdoms on microphones, and guiding teachers & learners towards seeking their own liberation. G is a warrior using transformative education, words, and concise ideas as weapons in the Oakland public schools, after-school programs, teacher education programs, universities, and in school reform institutions. He aspires to serve educators and youth towards transforming the self, schools, communities, language, knowledge, and the profession of education.
As a community leader, educator, & former Executive co-Director, G considers himself blessed with beautiful adults & youth with whom creativity, celebration, criticality, solidarity, struggle, and movement truly progresses towards transformative action. He actively seeks to build real relationships with folks down to ride and grind for serious progress. At the same time, G is an educator who meets you where you're at and then pushes you to become more...whether you are a 30 year teaching veteran or a youngsta navigating the public school system. As Oakland Leaf's Youth Leadership Director, he also teaches the high school youth in the critical media program, Youth Roots, as well as nurtures youth interns (a.k.a. "Ramas" program) towards becoming teacher intellectuals and Artivists By Any Medium Necessary (Asante, 2008). In doing so, G loves to create the culture to question the unquestionable, so that we could get to the heart of what's up, cuz "it is NOT what it is", as he often says. In understanding that, G believes that we could really start to flip the script and reclaim culture by producing our own culture in purposeful ways. So it's urgent that he works with both adults and youth...with teachers and administrators...with artists and activists...with families and community organizations.
When not acting as an Oakland Leaf leader & educator, G is working towards completing his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education's program in Language Literacy Culture and Society. His current research intersects Critical Media, Critical Social Theory, Literacy Theory, Knowledge of Self Theory, and Critical Pedagogy into Youth Development as a structural framework and Hip Hop as a Cultural Production framework. Through those intersecting discourses, he is advancing a concept he refers to as "Critical Collective Cultivation". In addition to his primary research, he actively seeks to progress the movement in Teacher Education, School Reform, and Teacher Professional Development, reappropriating the concepts of Flow, Layer, Rupture that Tricia Rose (1994) uses in Black Noise. He has presented & keynoted at numerous conferences across the country, university classes, and school staffs as well as written an out-of-print text called "Finding the Poetic High" and for journals such as California English, Multicultural Education, and the Institute for Social Justice and Education. To complement his academic work at UC Berkeley, he is an active Teacher with the Bay Area Writing Project as well as within Teacher credentialing programs, such as the Bay Area Teacher Center and Cal's Graduate School of Education.
Do you want in? Holla, cuz he's waiting for you...but only if you're ready to roll your sleeves up and ride hard.
Works Cited Love is an Action
Asante Jr, M.K. (2008). It's bigger than hip hop: The rise of the post-Hip Hop generation. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary america. CT: Wesleyan University Press.