Andy Joseph “A.J.” Robinson began teaching as a high school and college student, facilitating writing workshops with middle school students, foster youth, and marginalized communities across California. For the past 16 years, he has been a teacher at Title I public high schools in the Bay Area, creating and implementing primarily English/Language Arts & Performing Arts curricula, but also developing courses in Restorative Justice (as featured on the PBS Nova Documentary “School of the Future”), Ethnic Studies, Advisory, Film, and Media Arts.  He has directed, produced, and co-written seven full-length hip-hop and poetry-based plays with high school students and has been a guest teacher in courses at Stanford, San José State, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State.

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Robinson’s work is designed to empower young people with the knowledge that their voices, passions, and cultures are valued and transformative; that no wounds are beyond healing with the power of art, expression, ancestry, and supportive communities; that youth have unparalleled agency in shaping their communities and the global society. The chapter of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World which includes research and analysis of the impact of Robinson’s work argues that in an educational environment that consistently alienates low-income youth of color, his classroom is “giving students a place to engage and belong.” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p. 130) More recently, his writing, curricula, and extracurricular programs were featured in the book Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures with his chapter “Hip Hop, Whiteness, & Critical Pedagogies in the Context of Black Lives Matter” (Alim, Chang, & Wong, 2023, p. 322). The focus of his current work is to impact schools, teacher education, and community arts spaces so more young people can experience the healing, communal, metamorphic power of culturally sustaining, trauma-informed writing and arts education.