Dr. Denise Davis is the Founding President of The National Teachers College.  This initiative
was inspired by Davis' 14 year tenure as the Director of the University School
Teacher Apprentice Program located in Cleveland Ohio.  This one-year, master's with
license model presented the most powerful experience for training new teachers
Davis had experienced. Additionally, the presence of the program in the K-12 school was
impactful.  It was this experience, and the incredible colleagues with whom Davis
worked, that inspired the founding of The National Teachers College.

 

As a sociologist, Davis understands the power teachers have to shape lives and how that power works in a classroom. It is the “soft bigotry of low expectation” that prevails, too often, in our nation’s classrooms that has directed Davis's work for decades.  From that, she understands how education, beginning with teacher preparation, can be a force of equity, transformation and hope.

 

Davis hails Maxine Greene, not only as her teacher and mentor, but as someone who inspired her work in founding The National Teachers College.  In Maxine Greene's book Releasing the Imagination, Greene writes: "What I am describing here is a mode of utopian thinking: thinking that refuses mere compliance, that looks down roads not yet taken to the shapes of a more fulfilling social order, to more vibrant ways of being in the world."  Davis believes we must endorse utopian thinking, for it gives us direction - something to strive for.  It rejects the status quo and opens up endless worlds of possibility.  

It is Davis's mission that The National Teachers College will be a transformative force in the  preparation of new teachers and in the education of K-12 students, especially those in urban settings.
 
Davis has dedicated her professional career to teacher education, serving as Director of
Teacher Education at John Carroll University, Associate Professor at Ursuline College, Director of the Teacher Apprentice   Program at University School and Director of Teacher Education at Case Western Reserve University - all located in Cleveland,   Ohio.  She has served on several advisory boards, including her current tenure on the Advisory Board for the Early Intervention Training Program at Case Western Reserve University.

Davis earned her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University in the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences,   majoring in sociology and education with an emphasis in Curriculum and Instruction. Her master's degree in Sociology was   earned  at the New School for Social Research in New York City and her B.A. degree in sociology was earned at Wittenberg   University, Springfield, Ohio.