Reflections from the Color of Education Summit: Honoring Legacy, Voices, and Agency

Raleigh, NC – October 5, 2026

The annual Color of Education Conference - a vital statewide convening hosted by the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity—brings together North Carolina’s educators, policymakers, students, researchers, and community leaders to explore the intersections of race, education, and social justice.

This year felt particularly transformative as we gathered to honor the incredible life, legacy, and 95th birthday of Dr. Dudley E. Flood himself. We also celebrated the release of The Boy Who Helped Change Schools, an inspiring new children’s book detailing Dr. Flood's story and lifelong dedication to desegregating and transforming North Carolina's public schools. His legacy serves as an urgent reminder of what happens when we empower young people to stand up and reshape the systems around them.

For me, it was a deeply meaningful space for reflection. Sitting in sessions alongside fellow educators, thought leaders, and advocates, I kept returning to a single central question: How do we truly equip youth to become active architects of their own futures rather than passive observers?

During my session, "Democratizing the Future Economy: Using Unplugged Computational Thinking to Amplify Rising Youth Voices," we put this philosophy directly into practice.

We proved that you don't need a $1,000 device or a computer science degree to build computational thinking. When we teach students to recognize patterns, extract features, and debug broken algorithms using simple, unplugged tools, we shift them from passive tech consumers into active creators. They learn that when a system fails them, they aren't broken—the algorithm has a bug. And most importantly, they hold the logic to fix it.

To every educator, coach, and community leader who joined my session, and to the entire Dudley Flood Center team for fostering this critical space: thank you for being the Human Bridge in your communities. Let’s keep dismantling hardware bottlenecks, honoring student context, and giving our youth the tools to design a better tomorrow.