Between Classrooms and Callings: Entering Year 34, Libra Sun/ Aries Rising/ Gemini Moon style

Okay so where has your girl been? AROUND! I ended up working Summer School this summer for NYCPS. While Sage Ali was in camp, an experience I grinded hard for, I worked and napped and spent quality time with both her and my partner. Now here we are back to school and guess what, my plate has not necessarily gotten lighter but things have redistributed itself. This year has been one of the most transformative chapters of my life, and I know I say this every year lol. But hear me out, I step into the 2025–2026 academic school year and into my 34th year of living with a deeper clarity about who I am, what I am building, and the legacy I am committed to leaving behind.

Hello,I am Shapel M. LaBorde, the hero, the villian and the legend. And as I am writing this, I have just successfully spilled Braggs Apple Cider Vingear Refresher Beverage all over my classroom floor. Goodnight.

Last Sunday in August at Church and ready to showcase Faith in Action.

So much has shifted, both within me and around me. I have completed my first full year as a doctoral student in Philosophy & Education at Teachers College, Columbia University surviving and thriving through the demands of rigorous scholarship while continuing to teach full-time in New York City’s public schools as an MLL educator. What they say? Favor ain't fair and I can attest to how I have pushed my limits last year to be able to dwell in this space this year. My research has sharpened, my questions have deepened, and my writing has begun to take on the contours of what will become my dissertation. I am grateful for God revealing my purpose to me and always making sure my desires are aligned. This semester I will be taking Black Feminist Survival and my second year of Professional Doctoral Seminar, totalling five credits of graduate level work in Philosophy between two institutions in NYC. At the same time, I have been entrusted with leadership roles both within my school building and as a Black Academic. In my school building, I serve as Language Access Coordinator, UFT Consultation member, School Leadership Team member, Building Response Team member, Lunch Duty team member and then teacher. Outside of that I am serving as Secretary for the Northeastern Philosophy of Education Society as well as Social Chair for the Philsophy and Education Graduate Student Committee , both roles I have had for what will be two consecutive years. I am grateful to be stepping into spaces where my voice helps shape not only conversations but policies and practices.

Ms. LaBorde is in full effect with my Pretty Soft in Pink aesthetic!

This year also marked expansion. I have continued to grow Blyssom by Shapel, my beauty and wellness brand, weaving scholarship, spirituality, and self-care into a business that speaks directly to Black women and femmes who, like me, insist on wholeness and brilliance in every arena of our lives. I became a professor, an adjunct at Montclair State University, adding yet another layer to my vocation as an educator. I am teaching a course titled, Foundations of Education:Social, Cultural, Political Contexts. It is a hybrid format and I am feeling good about getting better with the commute, childcare and community in the college setting.

Professor LaBorde is in full effect with my Pretty Soft in Pink aesthetic!

I also embraced new fellowships, speaking opportunities, and collaborations that allow me to bridge community, academy, and entrepreneurship in ways I once only imagined. Over the summer I became an Unbossed Ambassador.Being an Unbossed Ambassador is really about living out what I already believe in, standing up for Black women, femmes, and gender-expansive folks, and making sure our voices and leadership are never pushed to the margins. It’s not just a title, it’s me showing up as a connector, a storyteller, and an organizer in the spaces I move through every day, whether that’s my classroom, my scholarship, my brand, or my community. For me, this role is about bringing people in, building together, and keeping the vision of Black feminist futures alive and moving. Sometimes that looks like gathering pledges, sometimes it’s having conversations, sometimes it’s sharing resources or just naming out loud why this work matters. It’s about making sure our collective values of care, equity, and justice stay at the center.

Will you take the Pledge to VLBAF like me?

And honestly, the reason it matters most is personal,I want my daughter, and all our children, to grow up in a world where they see themselves reflected in power, freedom, and joy. That’s what keeps me committed to this work.

I am overjoyed to share that my work has been recognized in powerful ways this year. I was selected as an Emerging Scholar at NEPES 2025, receiving a stipend supported by the International Interfaith Research Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University. My proposal was praised for the way it weaves King’s vision of the Beloved Community with critical perspectives and introduces ancestral autoethnography as a methodological practice. I also had the honor of being accepted as part of a collaborative panel for the NEPES Annual Meeting, where our proposal was celebrated for its clarity, organization, and potential to deeply engage philosophical questions around sustaining beloved communities. These acknowledgments affirm not only my scholarship but also the collective work I am building with others, bridging theory, practice, and ancestral wisdom.

And if that wasn't enough, all these things are happening, and I am thrilled to share that my abstract was also accepted for presentation at the 5th Biennial Conference on Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. My work was recognized for its innovative engagement with comparison in anthropology and education, particularly for the way it challenges Eurocentric frameworks and foregrounds ancestral, indigenous, and non-Western ways of knowing. The committee highlighted the potential of my research to transform anthropological theory and practice through critical, decolonial, and deeply ethnographic approaches. To be in dialogue with such a community of thinkers and to contribute to shaping future conversations about anthropology, education, and comparison is a profound honor.

I am a big girl now, real Grown Woman, and feeling grateful to my Ancestors.

In addition to these conference acceptances and emerging scholar recognitions, I am honored to begin serving as a Student Conduct Committee (SCC) Member at Teachers College. In this role, I will serve as an impartial panelist for hearings on both academic integrity and general misconduct, helping to uphold the institution’s standards of fairness, accountability, and restorative practice. This responsibility requires careful listening, critical analysis, and collaborative decision-making with fellow panelists to ensure that all students are treated with respect and due process. I see this work as deeply aligned with my broader commitments to justice, education, and community care because for me it’s about not only maintaining integrity within our academic community, but also fostering opportunities for learning, growth, and transformation. This acceptance and decision to serve was not the easiest one to step into.

I’ve joined the George Clement Bond Center for African Education as a Student Affiliate! The Center is dedicated to advancing research and teaching about education in Africa and across the African Diaspora, fostering community among students, faculty, and staff, and building meaningful connections with African universities and scholars. This opportunity matches up with my work in philosophy, education, and Black feminist thought—especially my commitment to exploring how knowledge, history, and lived experience shape educational practice and liberatory futures. I look forward to contributing to interdisciplinary conversations, engaging with visiting scholars, and deepening my own research within a community committed to Africa-centered and diasporic perspectives. I enjoyed the experience of presenting earlier this year at the Pan-Africanism & Education: Interdisciplinary & Critical Approaches in the 21st Century Mini Conference.

And last but certainly not least, I am completely outdone to announce that I have been awarded a Rise Up Foundation Scholarship to attend the 2025 Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in Denver, Colorado this November! 🎉

This opportunity covers my full convention registration, an exclusive writing workshop with author Alane Adams, special luncheons, and a private hosted dinner. To be chosen for this honor means so much, as NCTE has long been a space where literacy, literature, and educational justice converge—areas that are at the heart of both my teaching practice and my scholarship. I look forward to engaging with educators, writers, and thought leaders from across the country, expanding my own work in literacy and philosophy, and bringing these insights back to my students and community.

But beyond the titles and roles, this year has been about re-centering myself as a woman, a mother, a partner, and a believer in the transformative power of education and love. My daughter Sage Ali continues to be my compass, reminding me why I press forward even on the hardest days. My relationship has stretched me, teaching me patience, vulnerability, and the importance of building a life grounded in care and commitment. My health and wellness journey has reminded me that discipline is also an act of devotion, to myself, to my body, and to the generations that come after me.

Here She comes 1st Grade!

I enter year 34 carrying the wisdom of grief and the sweetness of new beginnings. I have traveled across oceans and stood in ancestral places that reawakened my spirit. I have presented at conferences where my words met others in dialogue and possibility. I have written essays that stitch together memory, theory, and prayer. I have learned to pause, to breathe, and to remember that the work of becoming is not linear but is in fact cyclical, layered, and sacred.

So here I am. Still standing. Still becoming. This space—my website—is not just a portfolio of my professional life. It is a living archive of all the ways I embody my commitments: to education as liberation, to beauty as ritual, to scholarship as testimony, and to community as covenant.

Welcome to the Academic Year 2025–2026, and welcome to my year 34. May this year bring more becoming, more blossoming, and more truth.

xoxo,

Shapel Monique