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✨🥹 [ INSERTS TEARS] — 📚Read & Represent Continues To Be My Hilight of EVERY WEEK! This week we had so many firsts , keep reading to celebrate with us:

✨This week we had the MOST amount of BLACK MEN volunteering on the same day, since we started! (Only 1.3% of Educators are Black men, this representation is HUGE)
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✨ We had the most RETURNING volunteers on the same day! (Consistency & Community is being built right before our eyes🥰)
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✨ We were only TWO classrooms shy of filling EVERY SINGLE CLASSROOM! (THIS is my goal every week, help make this happen by signing up for next week! — link in bio)
✨ & We Celebrated a Volunteer Birthday!
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Thank You Immensely to every volunteer who pours into our community with their time, our kiddos are growing v glowing and experiencing a LOVE and JOY for reading and learning all aided by your presence ✨💕🥹 Thank You by @readandrepresent

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3 years ago

📚Read & Represent🙌🏾— A Dream Come True
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This is BCP Consultings Flagship Equity Initiative piloted in Wilmington, DE. The goal is simple to encourage Joy in Reading by Prioritizing Representation for Black & Brown Kids One Read Aloud at a Time. The books read center main characters & authors of colors. The readers also represent the dimensions of diversity!
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If you are interested in learning more or getting involved please do not hesitate to DM Me!
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#ReadandRepresent #RepresentationMatters #BlackEducatorsMatter by @readandrepresent

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3 years ago

In 2020, in the midst of the Pandemic, Black Lives Matter Movements & Tragic Book Bans - I decided to plant a seed as a method of activism for Black kids through starting a virtual book club & YouTube series entitled “Books with Ms. Brittany.” 📚✊🏾
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Fast forward to today, that seed has blossomed into an empowering movement ✨Read & Represent✨ & I couldn’t be more proud 🥹
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🚀📖 In 2023, we’ve welcomed volunteers to schools within Wilmington, Delaware– passionate individuals dedicated to shaping the narrative of representation, Blackness, and joy within elementary-aged reading. & even more excitingly served HUNDREDS of students.
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In 2024, our goal is to continue to serve and expand not only through our presence in schools but increasing our digital presence in the optimal development of Black students, through resources, reading tips, diverse books lists and more!
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Here’s to the magic of stories, the power of representation, and the joy that reading brings to every child’s heart. Thank you for being part of our journey! .🌟📚 .
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Follow: @bcp.consulting to stay in the loop
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📸: @dontjudgemeproductions
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#ReadAndRepresent #LiteracyJourney #VolunteerStories by @readandrepresent

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3 years ago

Week 3: ClassFit
We talking fashion & the literacy crisis! Let’s be the change we want to see. #fashion #blackeducators by @readandrepresent

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a month ago

We’re back & We’re Doing Things a Little Differently!

If you’re on our Volunteer ListServ please pay attention to your email THIS SUNDAY! We will be sharing a few volunteer opportunities! If you’re not on our ListServ (YET) & would like to join our Volunteer Village, use the link in the bio to do so 🙏🏾✨

Looking forward to a beautiful school year! by @readandrepresent

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a month ago

📚✨ Read & Represent is on YouTube!

In honor of National Literacy Month, we’re finding even more ways to bring stories centered in representation, belonging, and joy to our village.

Starting this month, we’ll be sharing a new Read & Represent read-aloud on YouTube every month! 🎥📖

And we’re kicking things off with a favorite: The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson. 🤎

Teachers, pull it up for a classroom read-aloud.
Families, watch together at home.
Community organizations, add it to your literacy programming.

And when screen time is inevitable, we’re giving our babies another way to spend it — with a good book. 🥹📚

Our goal has always been bigger than getting books onto shelves. We want to help build a village of readers wherever reading can happen.

🎥 The first read-aloud is live now!
Head over to YouTube, subscribe to Read & Represent, and come read with us.

One story every month. More access. More representation. More joy. ✨

📸: @dontjudgemeproductions
#ReadAndRepresent #NationalLiteracyMonth #TheDayYouBegin #ReadAloud #RepresentationMatters RaisingReaders by @readandrepresent

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a month ago

🥹 Y’ALL!!! Some dreams feel different when you can actually see them, touch them, and count them… 400 times over. 🤯🥹📚

This Back to School Szn, ONE SCHOOL DISTRICT made the decision to invest in a story centered in representation, joy, and belonging … AND place it directly into the hands of ALL its Elementary School teachers!!!

400 copies of The Perfect Lunch.
400 elementary educators.
Thousands of little readers experiencing a new diverse text by a local author.

My freedom dreams could never. 🥹

When I wrote The Perfect Lunch, I wanted our babies to see themselves in its pages, and to diversify bookshelves. To see Black children simply being children, experiencing joy, navigating friendship, and being fully human.

Read & Represent started with 4 classrooms and a little over 50 babies, rooted in a simple belief that our children deserve to see themselves in the stories we place in front of them. And somehow, that little freedom dream just keeps getting bigger. 🤎

My largest bulk order to date. 🥹📚#GodDid

& to schools and districts thinking about what it could look like to invest in representation in your classrooms… I’d love to dream with you, too. 🤎📚

📸: @rotimi7

#nationalliteracymonth #localauthor #readandrepresent by @readandrepresent

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a month ago

September 1st 2026.

Back-to-school season is my absolute favorite, this one feels a little different tho.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, September came without a classroom waiting for me.

No seat to take as a student & No room to prepare as a teacher.

For so long, I knew how to measure becoming:
school years and semesters,
lessons taught and lessons learned,
degrees earned and classrooms filled.

And if I’m being vulnerable, there’s something both beautiful and unsettling about becoming new again. New spaces. New responsibilities. New expectations. Parts of myself I haven’t quite met yet.

I guess I’ve always known the most important lessons wouldn’t all be taught in a classroom. Some, you simply have to live.

So, in this season of all new everything, I’m committed to remaining a forever learner:

Humble enough to be the student
Prepared enough to be the teacher
& Wise enough to know when I need to be both.

I’m praying for wisdom for what I don’t yet know.
Discernment for what deserves my yes.
Courage for what requires me to grow.
And grace for the lessons I’ll have to learn along the way.

No syllabus for this one.
Just faith, purpose, and a willingness to keep becoming.

Class is forever in session. 🎓

📸: @rotimi7
👔: @gracefully_knotted
🧥: @newdy302 x @webackoutsidedsu taken in School Of Life by @readandrepresent

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2 months ago

🎶Google Scholar Me, Baby 🥹

My dissertation is officially published and available to read on ProQuest. 🥹🤍📚 Meanwhile I’m still processing the fact that I graduated 😂

“Gotta Be a Villager to Have a Village: Towards a Village-Led Communal Literacy Framework” is now part of the scholarly record.

This work was born from listening, learning, and witnessing the power of community, particularly the Black volunteers, families, and educators who continue to show that literacy has always been bigger than reading. It’s about identity, relationships, joy, liberation, and the villages that raise us.

To everyone who participated in this study, encouraged me, challenged my thinking, and believed in this vision before I could fully articulate it, thank you! This milestone belongs to all of us.

Here’s to research that doesn’t just sit on shelves, but serves communities. 💙

Dr. Brittany C. Powell ✨

📸: @rotimi7 on the photos
🎥 : @dontjudgemeproductions on video (slide 6) by @readandrepresent

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3 months ago

Senior Dayyyyyy ✨🙌🏾
Had the pleasure of addressing the graduating seniors of the 2026 Upward Bound Cohort. Kept it real simple: JUST KEEP SWIMMING 🙌🏾 by @readandrepresent

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5 months ago

On May 27th (my mama’s birthday) I had the honor of serving as the graduation keynote speaker for Delaware Tech’s Workforce Development and Community Education Graduation.

To say this was an honor doesn’t quite capture it. It was an opportunity to love on my mom a lil bit out loud. Her sacrifice, Her discipline … my becoming ☺️

When we first moved to Delaware, we didn’t have much of a support system, so my mom took me everywhere with her. I sat in the back of classrooms while she worked toward her GED. Years later, when she decided to pursue her associate degree one class at a time, I was still right there beside her. Straight from HS track practice, dinner in the car, then off to Del Tech’s writing center where she received support and I did my homework ( & sneaking on MySpace 😅).

Then came Upward Bound, Del Tech became part of my story too: summer programs, Saturday sessions, SAT prep, college tours, and opportunities that expanded my vision of what was possible.

In my keynote, I touched on three things that every graduate walking across that stage knows well: Sacrifice. Discipline. Becoming.

My mother modeled those lessons long before I understood them. Her sacrifice and discipline created pathways for my own becoming. So standing on that stage, on her birthday, speaking to graduates who have their own stories of perseverance, felt incredibly special.

Congratulations to every graduate. Your journey is proof that becoming isn’t one big moment, it’s a series of choices, sacrifices, and acts of faith that shape who you are over time. There’s not just one route, no perfect time, all of our journeys are our own.

Thank you, Delaware Tech, for this incredible honor and for being part of both my mother’s story and mine. 💙🎓

& shout out to @angelvict0r for capturing some of these moments. by @readandrepresent

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5 months ago

This year I had the pleasure of being a dual enrollment professor through Rodel at Glasgow High School and Cape Henlopen High School, and I loved every bit of it. 🖤

One of the most powerful parts of this experience was watching students grow into their voices and realize that their perspectives belong in conversations about education. Throughout the year, these students didn’t just earn college credit, they met with school board members, spoke about issues impacting students, and ultimately led their own professional development sessions at the annual GYO Leadership Summit.

Watching them step into leadership, advocate for change, and command rooms full of educators reminded me that students are not just the future of education, they are active participants in shaping it right now. So proud of each of them and grateful to have been part of their journey. by @readandrepresent

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5 months ago