Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Content Warning: This section contains discussions of racism.

Shalaby is an education researcher who has held positions that include leading the elementary master of arts in teaching program at Brown University and directing elementary education at Wellesley College. Her teaching journey began in her New Jersey hometown. She earned her BA in English from Rutgers College, an MEd in elementary education from Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and both an MA and PhD in culture, communities, and education from Harvard Graduate School of Education. A professor of education, Shalaby has extensive firsthand experience: teacher training and a career dedicated to studying issues of race, identity, and engagement in classroom settings. Shalaby’s scholarship on “troublemaking” students mirrors the book’s mission to fundamentally question why children are so often labeled as problems in need of containment or remediation.

Shalaby’s perspective as a woman of color also positions her to critique racism’s embeddedness in the classroom environment. In Troublemakers, for example, she cites school discipline policies that punish Black children at disproportionate rates. Statistics on preschool suspension echo Shalaby’s data-driven argument that education often seeks individual quick fixes to systemic problems. Shalaby’s motivation in Troublemakers stems from her refusal to dehumanize children and her recognition that their behaviors signal institutional harms.