Letitia Basford

Letitia Basford is a professor in the School of Education & Leadership, co-director of the Masters in Teaching program, and Hamline’s director of the Student Project for Amity among Nations (SPAN) program. Letitia became a K-12 teacher-educator to inspire transformative teaching practices and policies that promote equity and access. Today, she remains deeply invested in these goals and infuses what she studies into her courses while tapping into the wealth of experience that her students bring into the classroom.

She has studied and written about teachers' experiences advocating for an inclusive curriculum, a family’s experience in the school-to-prison pipeline and schools that effectively prevent that pipeline, and the school experiences of Somali and Hmong youth in culturally specific charter schools. Most recently, Letitia has been studying the experiences of K-2 teachers as they implement a Science of Reading-informed literacy curriculum. Letitia’s work has been published in journals such as The Urban Review, Review of Research in Education, Journal of School Choice, and in books such as Six Lenses for Anti-Oppressive Education, From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and Proud to be Different: Ethnocentric Niche Charter Schools in the US.

Before coming to Hamline, Letitia taught middle and high school students English as a Second Language and was also a teen-parent teacher in northern California. When not teaching, she spends time with her two daughters and husband, traveling, listening to music, and enjoying time in nature.