Biography
Dr. Smith is the founder and former Director of the TryUMF (pronounced "triumph") program in his hometown of Oakland, CA and formerly served as the Co-Director/Principal of the June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco.
He has served as a trainer and administrative coach in local school districts as well as a Center Director under the Foundation for California Community Colleges — the system for which he still consults as a trainer for the statewide Professional Learning Network. Nationally, Dr. Smith also currently serves as a national consultant for the Now is the Time Technical Assistance (NITT-TA) Center funded through the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Internationally, Dr. Smith serves as a professor to practitioners serving within the East Asian Regional Council of Overseas Schools and served as a lecturer and scientific reviewer for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) International Summer School in Warsaw, Poland.
- Appointments
- Co-Chair, School of Education Curriculum Committee, 2016-2019
- Education
- San Francisco State University, Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, 2012
- New College of California, MA in Humanities 2006
- UC Santa Cruz , BA in Sociology, 1996
- Experience
- Center Director, LearningWorks -Foundation for the California Community Colleges
- Co-Principal, June Jordan School for Equity, San Francisco, CA
- Founder/ Executive Director, Trying to Uplift My Folks (TryUMF), Oakland CA
- Research
- School Discipline and Culture
- Social Justice Leadership
- Equity in Higher Education
- Selected Publications
Smith, D. (2020). Thoughts on Equity and The California Community Colleges. In C. Platt, A. Hilton, C. Newman, & B. Hinnant-Crawford (Eds). Multiculturalism in Higher Education: Increasing Access and Improving Equity in the 21st Century. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Smith, D. & Yeh, C. J. (2019). Nurturing is Not Enough: A Case Study on Social Justice, Caring, and Discipline, Journal of Education, 199(2), 89-98.
Smith, D. (2017). A Critical Perspective on the use of the Trauma Narrative in American Education. In A. Odrowaz-Coates & S. Goswami (Eds). Symbolic Violence in Socio-Educational Contexts: A Post-Colonial Critique, 24-35.
Smith, D. (2016). A Humanizing Approach to Improving School Disciplinary Culture. Bank Street Occasional Papers Series, 35, 75-87.
Smith, D. (2015). Disciplinary Third Spaces: A Case Study of a School for Social Justice. The International Journal of Pedagogy, Innovation and New Technologies, 2(2), 10-22