By Megan Shearin

Future teachers from Old Dominion University will hear a keynote address from 2019 National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson during the University's 2020 Teacher Internship Orientation event.

The orientation is held at the beginning of each fall and spring semester to prepare ODU students for their teacher internships and the teaching profession as they begin their future careers as educators. More than 120 future teachers will hear Robinson speak on the ODU campus.

Robinson, who was also the 2019 Virginia Teacher of the Year, has been a Richmond Public Schools teacher for 20 years. In 2015, Robinson started teaching at a school inside the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center, where he targets the school-to-prison pipeline at the ground level. He is now traveling the country to share his messages of economic and cultural equity in education and how to end the school to prison pipeline.

Robinson has been published four times by Yale University and has received numerous awards for his accomplishments in and out of the classroom, most notably the R.E.B. Award for Teaching Excellence. He is a member of Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney's Education Compact Team, which includes politicians, educators, business leaders, and community leaders, and is working with city leaders and local colleges to recruit underrepresented male teachers into the field of education. He has also worked with Pulitzer Award winning author James Foreman on developing curriculum units on race, class, and punishment as a part of the Yale Teacher's Institute. He was recently named as one of the top 10 influential African Americans by the Root magazine and HBCU Alumnus of the year by HBCU Digest.

As part of the daylong teacher internship orientation, ODU students will hear from faculty experts who have taught in the schools as well as the Student Virginia Education Association.