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CEO / Special Education Advocate & Consultant
“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
-Toni Morrison
Leroy’s life work is centered on empowering all students and the caring adults who educate and care for them. Leroy began his journey of empowering students when he was 4 years old supporting his maternal grandmother with children in her home-based daycare. His passion for education began with noticing the inequities within his educational experiences and his brothers’ educational experiences. Leroy benefitted from highly qualified and caring educators while his brothers were disadvantaged by ineffective and absent educators. The social, academic, and economic impacts of education privileged Leroy and harmed his brothers. He pledged to educate and empower all students regardless of their background or perceived abilities so they have fulfilled lives.
Leroy received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Vocal Music and Pedagogy from Gettysburg College in 2012 and dual Master of Education degrees in Elementary and Special Education from Lesley University in 2014 as a fellow in the alternative teacher preparation program Urban Teachers. Leroy used his skills in music, education, empowerment, and advocacy to educate students from historically marginalized communities in Baltimore, Maryland, Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Washington D.C. as a career special education teacher for more than 10 years.
During Leroy’s 10 years as a special education teacher and leader he consistently increased the academic and social-emotional outcomes for students with learning challenges and disabilities. Leroy was able to secure multi-year academic growth, in one school year, in reading, writing, and mathematics for students with disabilities throughout his career. Most notably, Leroy’s work as a special education teacher and intervention leader at the National Blue Ribbon dual language immersion school, Oyster Adams Bilingual School, in Washington D.C., led to high academic outcomes for the entire school’s student population in mathematics. Leroy collaborated with colleagues to develop and deliver professional learning opportunities on evidence-based strategies and interventions to increase all students’ proficiency with solving word problems in their mathematics classes from pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade. Leroy led the work on researching, developing, and delivering professional development and coaching opportunities on implementing the schematic-approach to teaching mathematical word problems to support students' conceptual knowledge of how to group word problems, and steps within word problems, in order to determine the operation(s) necessary to solve those problems. Additionally, Leroy developed a mathematical graphic organizer that walked students through an evidence-based approach to comprehending the word problems prior to solving that was bilingual through the collaboration of fluent Spanish-speaking colleagues. Prior to Leroy’s work, Oyster Adams Bilingual School, during the 2017-2018 academic year had 57% of students proficient in mathematics according to district-wide diagnostic assessments. By the end of his tenure at Oyster Adams Bilingual School, during the 2021-2022 academic year, 88% of students were proficient in mathematics on those same assessments. Additionally, prior to Leroy’s work on training his colleagues and school leaders on evidence-based strategies and interventions to solve word problems, only 50% of students with disabilities were proficient in mathematics during the 2017-2018 academic year. However, by the end of his tenure, during the 2021-2022 academic year, 72% of students with disabilities were proficient in mathematics. Moreover, Leroy’s deep content knowledge and understanding of learning sciences make him an invaluable leader in any educational environment.
In August of 2020, Leroy founded Realized Solutions, LLC (doing business as Realized Curriculum Solutions) to support parents, caregivers, and educators with increasing the academic outcomes of students with learning challenges and disabilities. This work has included developing culturally responsive English language arts and mathematics curriculum materials for historically marginalized students who receive virtual tutoring services through small to large educational companies like The Innovative Learners, LLC and Carnegie Learning, Inc. Additionally, he has served 70 families, and counting, as a special education advocate. During his work as a special education advocate, Leroy represented families to secure essential services, accommodations, modifications, placements, etc. related to their child’s Individualized Educational Program (IEP). Most of Leroy’s advocacy clients include students who are wrongfully mistreated, under-identified for specific disability categories, and over-identified for specific disability categories, who identify as Black/African-American. Moreover, Leroy continues to train case managers and other special educational professionals on the rights of students with disabilities throughout the United States of America.
In addition to providing curriculum and advocacy solutions, Leroy provides professional development offerings to educational professionals and organizations on culturally responsive pedagogy, universal design for learning, social-emotional learning, social justice, multi-tiered systems of support and response-to-intervention, and special education compliance. Some of his work includes his partnership with the Center for Civic Education with supporting social studies curriculum writers/educators, from across the country in 2022, with adapting their nationally recognized We the People civics curriculum for middle and high school students through the James Madison Project Legacy Expansion. He equipped curriculum writers/educators with the knowledge and skills to make lessons more inclusive and empowering for students with disabilities and students from historically marginalized communities by including training on how to maximize student efficacy in lessons, expand the choices students have to learn particular content, and modeling how to consider multiple modalities of learning for students with disabilities and different cultural backgrounds.
Leroy’s work in education has impacted more than 4,000 students throughout the United States of America who are from historically marginalized communities. Leroy continues to advocate for legislation on the local, state, and federal levels to effectively train educational professionals on how to increase the academic outcomes of students with learning challenges, students with disabilities, students from economically disadvantaged/impoverished communities, and students from different cultural backgrounds. He continues to fight against institutional challenges such as ableism, racism, classicism, etc. that maintains the status quo of students failing due to their backgrounds and perceived abilities. In conclusion, Leroy is committed to living in a nation and world where all students succeed, at high-levels, regardless of their backgrounds and perceived abilities.