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📚 What a great time at Eastside Charter School for the Read and Represent event with the Wilmington City Council! It was so much fun connecting with the students, educators, and everyone who helped make the event special.

Most importantly, I made so many great connections, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they lead🦉✨💫♾️❤️🧡💛💚💙💜♾️!

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

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🥹 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

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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

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🎶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)

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It’s never been about the title. It’s always been about learning, serving, impact, and evolution.

Yesterday, I walked across the stage and was publicly hooded as Dr. Brittany C. Powell. 🎓

However, inside of me, I walked with every version of myself that has been pruned, stretched, developed, and blossomed throughout this season.

In the last five years, not only did I earn my doctorate, but I partnered with community, built programs rooted in liberation and literacy, taught students, conducted research, created space, and learned what it truly means to live in purpose.

To the University of Delaware (@udelaware) — thank you for pruning me and teaching me that no challenge, obstacle, or chess move can outmatch God’s grace.

To Read & Represent (@readandrepresent )— thank you for proving to me that you really do have to be a villager to have a village. What started as an idea became a movement rooted in representation, literacy, joy, and communal care. Over 100 volunteers. Over 700 students. Countless stories changed.

To NOIR EDU (@noir.edu_ ) — thank you for pushing me beyond comfort and into calling. And to this community, thank you for allowing me to help create space for Black educators across Delaware to gather, be affirmed, be celebrated, and be poured back into. Community will always be part of the pedagogy.

To Delaware State University (@delstateuniv)— entering my first HBCU as an adjunct professor has been deeply affirming and full circle. There is something powerful about teaching in spaces built with us in mind.

To every version of Brittany that kept going when things felt uncertain, exhausting, overwhelming, or heavy… thank you. #GodDid

This degree belongs to every room, every student, every community member, every ancestor, every prayer, and every person who poured into me along the way, especially my mentor & chair @the_w_ , we did it!

Honored to be a part of the 3.1% of Black Women w/ PhDs thank you to the sisters that paved the way. @cohortsistas @blackwomenphds @donedisscoach @ourdoctoraljourney

H.A.G.S.— Dr. Powell ✨

📸: @rotimi7
💄: @the.dollvanity
Honorable Mention BTS: @just.usforall , @dr.krishanna @coco_l0ver

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Empower Play Field Day & Benefit Concert | April 19, 2026

From 10:30 AM – 3:00 PM, we’re bringing the community together for a day designed with our kids at the center.

Come out and connect with our incredible vendors:
• Ivy Rehab @ivykidswilmington
• Autism Delaware @autismdelaware
• ABA Centers of Delaware @abacentersofdelaware
• Spring Church / Spring City Kids @thespringchurch
• Read and Represent @readandrepresent

While you’re there, the kids can enjoy a full day of experiences including a moon bounce, adaptive play and sports activities, a live drum clinic, and hands-on arts and crafts—all designed to support every child in a fun, inclusive environment.

This is more than a field day. It’s what it looks like when we build together with intention, inclusion, and joy.

Pull up, bring the family, and spend the day with us.

Field day activities will take place outside and our benefit concert will take place inside the building, in the gym, due to forecast.

#UntilEveryVoiceIsHeard

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It's always great to be of service when Dr. P is in the building with @readandrepresent 📚 I absolutely love that the mission of @cus_xi is inclusive of public service and community involvement ❤️🖤 This is how we show up for our babies and yours! @patchworkhumanservicesllc

#readingisfundamental📚 #representationmatters #grababook #sharingiscaring❤️ #literacy

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Last Friday, undergraduates Jaila Maddrey (FA ‘23) and Redwana Tasnim (FA ‘24) traveled to Kuumba Academy for Read & Represent in honor of Black History Month where they read books to school-aged children highlighting pride in identity as well as empowerment and goal setting. It is always a pleasure to contribute to the education system in this way and our connection with Dr. Brittany Powell is one we hope to keep❤️ Thank you for having us📖🫂 please check out @readandrepresent to see all the amazing work being done in this community!

#readandrepresent #wisdomthrougheducation #chiupsilonsigma

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Celebrating Black History Month with the little scholars of Stubbs Early Learning Center was so fun! 🤎

Truly had the loveliest time reading to and talking with the kids - the big hugs, bright smiles, and tiny voices jumping in on every page made my heart so full. My favorite part was when a bunch of little girls tried my crown 👑 and sash on - they were so adorable! 🤩

Thank you Ken for having me! So great seeing my friend Erin Hutt and meeting Damere 📖

#BlackHistoryMonth #ILoveToReadMonth #EarlyLearning #ChildLiteracy #NetDE

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Omar The Owl visits another school to share the joy of reading and spread awareness about autism spectrum disorder ✊🏾🤞🏾♾️🦉💫❤️🧡💛💚💙💜♾️.

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I had a blast at the “For the Love of Black Educators” event. So many connections were made. It was a blessing to be around Black excellence. ✊🏾🤞🏾♾️🦉💫❤️🧡💛💚💙💜♾️. Pt 2 coming later today.

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