Yamali Rodriguez-Gruger

Yamali Rodriguez-Gruger, proud daughter of Mexican immigrants and a first-generation college graduate, currently serves as the Director of the of Social Science Department in the Office of Teaching & Learning for Chicago Public Schools (CPS). With close to 20 years in education, she leads CPS’s K-12 social science strategy, ensuring culturally responsive, inquiry-based instruction across the district. Yamali’s journey began with a passion for history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and continued through teaching at Benito Juarez Community Academy and Social Justice High School. She now drives the district’s instructional vision for social science, professional learning, and other district-wide initiatives to empower educators and students, fostering academic excellence and equity in every social science classroom.

Yamali Rodriguez-Gruger will be speaking at the Museums & Schools Summit 2026 :

In it Together: Museums and Schools Partnering for Experiential Learning

In 2019 high school students visited the Chicago History Museum (CHM) and were dismayed by the lack of Latino/a/e representation. The students demanded change, which led to the initiative and exhibition Aquí en Chicago (Oct. 2025). This inspired the education team of CHM, the Social Science Department of the Chicago Public Schools and a cohort of classroom teachers to come together and reimagine the field trip paradigm. In this session we will share our collaboration model and the Experiential Learning Guide that allowed educators to customize their field trip. We will discuss the lessons we learned and the future we envision together.