KINGSTON, R.I. – May 6, 2025 – Jennifer Melgar wants to create a classroom where her students are represented, respected and valued, something she felt was lacking in her own early education.

When she delivers her speech as the selected student speaker, then walks across the stage on May 17 to receive her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Rhode Island’s Feinstein College of Education, her mission of change and advocacy for the underserved in the classroom will have just begun.

As a student teacher at Norwood Elementary School in Warwick, Rhode Island, Melgar was able to develop lessons to encourage her students to be participants in their own educational process. Her daily GLOW AND GROW time gave the students an opportunity to express their successes of the day or what they felt they needed to help them learn.

The Providence native started her college journey intending to major in psychology, but she switched to elementary education after taking EDC 312, The Psychology of Learning, exploring diverse learning modalities that helped her identify the supports needed to help bilingual students, like herself, succeed academically. Other courses in learning development showed her that children grow and learn in different ways based on their environments, which also resonated with her.

The youngest child of Bolivian immigrants, and the first in her family to earn a college degree, Melgar didn’t learn English until she went to elementary school. She felt as if she was a burden to her teachers because she couldn’t grasp a concept or read quickly enough in English. She doubted that college would ever be in her future. This suppressed her and made her afraid to ask questions or seek extra help. And as a Latina, she felt her culture was being erased and replaced by Western ideology.

But her parents were strong proponents of education and encouraged her to persevere.

Once she entered URI, she received support and encouragement from the Talent Development program, the P.I.N.K (Powerful, Independent, Notoriously Knowledgeable) Women organization, and various leadership workshops, to guide her path to becoming an educator who “wants to hear every student’s voice.”

Melgar reflects daily on the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, when he said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

These words are just as relevant to her today as they were then. So, when she walks across the stage to receive her diploma, Melgar said it will be a testament to, “show that I am being valued for my character rather than for the color of my skin,” just as Dr. King dreamed.

To her, these words are also a reminder that becoming a multicultural educator is a responsibility not only for herself, but also for those who will come after her, to inspire them to embrace culturally responsive teaching.

Along with her commencement regalia, she will be wearing a sash that her students at Norwood Elementary decorated with words she asked them to write to describe her time teaching them. They wrote the words creative, kind, helpful, caring, inspiring, best teacher, and loving, among others.

That sash, she said, will also hang in her first classroom as a new teacher.