Andreal De-Ette Davis

Andreal De-Ette Davis is a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt and former Statewide Culturally Responsive Practices Coordinator in Wisconsin. Currently, Andreal is the CEO and Founder of Cultural Practices That Are Relevant LLC. & Professional Development Corporation. She received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Elementary Education in 1986 and a Master of Science Degree in Curriculum and Instruction in 1995 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds a certificate in Educational Administration from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. Convinced of the importance of family and community in a child’s education, Davis has been instrumental in forming family-school relationships ever since she began her teaching in 1986 at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. She was formerly co-director, along with her husband Arlington, of the African American Ethnic Academy, an academic and cultural enrichment program that convened on Saturday mornings and during the summer. As a product of the research she did while serving as co-director at the African American Ethnic Academy, she created a reading curriculum called “Ethnic Melodies” that focuses on African American children's literature and culturally responsive teaching. Andreal and her husband Arlington have three sons, twenty- six year-old Ari, thirty two year-old Armani and thirty-eight-year old Arlington, all of whom participated in the Academy. She formerly served as an Elementary Educator, Title I Reading Instructor, Parent Involvement Coordinator, Instructional Resource Teacher for Cultural Relevance, Assistant Director of Equity and Family Involvement and the nation’s first Director of African American Student Achievement with the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin. Combining all of those experiences she collaboratively created a professional development model called Cultural Practices that are Relevant (CPR) that promotes and supports Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching. She also previously served as the Statewide Culturally Responsive Practices Coordinator at the Wisconsin Response to Intervention Center and is CEO/FOUNDER of Cultural Practices That Are Relevant Educational Consulting Firm. In her former role as Statewide Coordinator she lead work along with a team of colleagues, training practitioners across the state of Wisconsin and nationally from a model she co-created called the Model to Inform Culturally Responsive Practices that focuses on what it means to be culturally responsive starting with self and moving that work across an entire multi- level system of support. Her most recent work lead her to create Wisconsin’s first Black History Education Conference in February 2018. Over 400 educators and students from across Wisconsin and the country attend the conference annually. The conference highlights 22 promising practices for celebrating and cultivating Black students’ strengths and supporting Black student success. In the past few years Andreal has received various awards. She was the recipient of the NBC 15 News Crystal Apple Award in 2000, UW-Madison Lois Gadd Nemec Distinguished Elementary Education Alumni Award in 2004, Order of the Eastern Star Mother Full Of Grace Award in 2004, the Milken National Educator Award in 2004 and the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award 2013.