“I believe in community organizing that works to dismantle systems of oppression and replace them with systems designed to allow collective dignity and power.”
~Charlene A. Carruthers
Coach RaVonya
Our Founder
RaVonya Knight is a coach, facilitator, storyteller, and culture shaper. She supports educators, administrators, and education decision makers with a vision of all students experiencing schools as safe spaces where they are affirmed in their identities, their excellence is embraced, and they are equipped to transform the world. She comes to the work with over 20 years of leadership, mentoring, teaching and coaching experience and has been formally organizing school communities to dismantle oppressive systems for over five years. As a Black woman educator within the education system, Coach RaVonya recognized the deep commitment to upholding institutional racism. She responded with urgency, creating alternate pathways to liberation, using grassroot organizing tools to form educator alliances, and as a result, Be Gr8rr was born. Coach RaVonya is committed to supporting educators in an effort to create a mighty collective force to actualize this vision of social transformation for our children, schools, and communities. She seeks to organize national forces where educators work in solidarity with communities to resist, agitate, dismantle, reimagine, and transform oppressive systems. Be Gr8rr intends to cultivate a culture that reimagines what education can be.
Who We Are
Be Gr8rr is a consulting firm that offers racial equity learning and coaching support to educators, educator leaders, school districts, and education organizations. Our coaches are former educators, and all our learning and coaching is centered in the pursuit of Black liberation and the liberation of all peoples. We offer small and large group workshops, as well as 1:1 and small group coaching. We walk alongside our clients as they embark upon the journey of creating liberated learning spaces for their students.
Be Gr8rr is committed to achieving racial equity within education, and we believe the equitable outcomes must produce liberated learning spaces. We are an educational consulting firm dedicated to dismantling institutional and structural racism within schools.
Our Coaches
Coach RaVonya selects Be Gr8rr coaches and staff with intention to ensure the integrity of our work, and our team creates intentional coach-client matches to fit the needs of each client. Our coaches lead from a space that is informed by their lived experiences as educators, organizers, and as racialized beings with a commitment to liberation for all. Be Gr8rr recognizes we are all on individual journeys; however, Be Gr8rr promotes a collectivist approach to disrupting and dismantling systems of oppression. This is evident in the way we will build our learning and coaching tracks. We recognize the legacies of the racist systems we fight to dismantle are fueled with anti-Black policies, practices, and beliefs; therefore, our approach to this work is unapologetically infused with Blackness. We stand on the shoulders of the ancestors who have developed tools, shared their stories, and given their lives for full liberation. We honor their legacies by using their works as our maps in our continued struggle for the freedom of all peoples.
Special Collaboration with DTW EQUITY
DTW Equity Consulting (DEC) is a training and consulting company committed to education for social justice. Founded in 2021 by Darnell T. Williams, DEC partners with educators to achieve a greater social impact for improving classroom teaching and school leadership. Our services can be combined and tailored to meet your needs – from individual leadership development to larger-scale social change.
The goals of DTW Equity Consulting are to…
- Institutionalize diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies across the curriculum and foster a school culture that acts with courage in dismantling White supremacy culture and inequities
- Transform classroom teaching by working with educators to decolonize curricular materials and teaching strategies that provide “mirror-images” of Black and Brown students’ experiences and identities throughout the curriculum as well as “windows” into other students’ cultures
- Work collaboratively to create a school-wide learning community that integrates academic, social, and emotional development to support student success
- Work with school leaders to strengthen facilitative management and leadership skills in culturally responsive and sustainable practices that support the school in becoming more anti-racist
- Collaborate with educators on practices that support teacher effectiveness and student achievement
- Work with educators to customize professional development and resources with practical strategies grounded in the values of equity, community, and civics to engage their students in real-world learning that prepares them to make positive contributions in school, work, and life
