Joy was a college softball player at Winthrop University where she got a B.S. in Elementary Education with a Spanish minor. She went on the get an MA in Policy Studies in Language and Cross-Cultural Education at SDSU, and a Ph.D. in Foundations of Education and a graduate certificate in Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina. She has taught students from PreK through doctoral levels and her primary experiences in K12 were working as an ESOL teacher.
Dr. Howard has taught a wide-variety of courses on such topics as: Diversity and Equity in Education; Language, Literacy and Culture; Qualitative Research; Community-Based Educational Leadership; Curriculum Studies; Equity Education; Shaping School Culture; Teaching Adult Learners; and Social Justice in Education. Dr. Howard enjoys designing courses where students are deeply connected to their life's work and they are able to create meaningful projects that they can carry with them outside of the classroom.
Joy Howard’s work focuses on leadership for constructing humanizing educational communities. She is especially interested in humanizing efforts of spacemaking, shared leadership, and beloved communities within a racist society. <br>Joy identifies as a motherscholar, and is informed by her sons’ schooling journeys which deepen her understanding of Black mixed race children’s experiences in schools.