Sixth Annual
Boston-area Education for Social Justice Conference
The Color of Justice: Race, Class and Public Education
Saturday May 21st, 2016
8:30 - 3:30
Location: Fenway High School
67 Alleghany St, Boston, MA 02120
#besj2016
Panelists
Mariamawit "Mari" Gashaw is a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School student heavily involved with organizing events around Black Lives Matter, including the “Hands Up Student Walkout” last year. She has also researched how empowerment and race affect the opportunity gap in education.
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Fania Joseph is a sophomore at Boston Community Leadership Academy. A member of the Boston Student Advisory Council, she actively fights for student rights at her school and across the district. She has been an outspoken critic of BPS budget cuts, harsh discipline practices, and high stakes testing.
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Edward Tapia, a sophomore at Excel High School and member of the Boston Student Advisory Council, recently organized 200 students from his school to protest BPS budget cuts during the March 7 walkout. He is an advocate for equitable public education for black and Latino boys.
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Malikka Williams is a parent whose children have attended public, charter, and private schools in Boston over that past decade and beyond. She advocates for all BPS schools to adhere to one code of conduct with respect, sensitivity and transparency. Malikka empowers herself with service work related to the school system: Parent Site Council, Citywide Parent Council, Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, and other community nonprofit organizations that believe in justice and equality for all.
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Carlos Rojas Álvarez, our panel moderator, graduated from Boston Latin School in 2012. As a high school student, he became increasingly uncomfortable with hiding his status as an undocumented American. He channeled his frustration and anger in the face of injustice and a broken immigration system into education policy and organizing. He became involved with the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM), Youth on Board (YOB), and the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC), where he led major campaigns for school discipline reform, the inclusion of student opinion in educator evaluations, and sat on the Boston School Committee as the student representative. When his status barred him from enrolling in college, Carlos became the Education Policy Associate at YOB, a core leader of SIM and eventually the organization's campaign coordinator, and the New England representative to the National Coordinating Committee of the United We Dream (UWD) Network. He currently works out of Youth on Board and the Youth United for the Now Generation (YOUNG) Coalition and is the Statewide Student Coordinator for the Save Our Public Schools campaign.
2016 Conference Schedule
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8:30 Registration & Breakfast
Free breakfast provided with generous donations from Iggys Bread, When Pigs Fly, Harvest Co-op, Stop & Shop, and Dunkin Donuts in Mission Hill 9:00 Welcome & Youth Performance 9:30 Workshop Sessions 1 10:40 Workshop Sessions 2 11:50 Workshop Sessions 3 1:00 Lunch & Resource Fair Rethinking Schools book sale (don't forget to bring some $) Artspiration interactive arts space Tabling & networking with various local organizations Free Lunch provided with generous support from El Oriental de Cuba & Bella Luna 2:15 Youth Performances: Boston Arts Academy Youth Asia Aviles, spoken word David Asturias, original song & keyboard Mackenzy Jakas, spoken word 2:30: "A Call for Justice" Interactive Panel & Discussion 3:30 Closing |
Workshops
First workshop session 9:30-10:30
Will Power: engaging our youth in a struggle for truth
“Struggle for wisdom...but do not pin your struggle on their conversion”-Ta Nehisi Coates Our purpose is for educators and administrators to recognize that the progression of a school and the closing of the achievement gap comes with changing institutional racism in our systems. In order to change a system, we need to listen to the most important people in it: the students. Through this presentation taught by Kate Kelly and her "junior professors," educators will recognize the importance of engaging staff and students in honest conversations about race as well as the significance of reciprocal teaching that encourages educators to view their students as fellow teachers when it comes social justice and expanding our moral universe.
Kate Kelly, Will Opara, Kenny Dulcio, Allegra Farrar, Noeli Fernandez, Naomi Fernandez, Jormani Feliz –Canton Public schools
Fighting Anti-Black Racism in Asian/Asian American Communities
This workshop will discuss how to fight anti-Black racism within Asian/Asian American communities. We will unpack the "Model Minority Myth" and discuss how this myth has been used to generalize Asian American communities and to divide communities of color in the United States. We aim to raise consciousness about how anti-Black racism appears in Asian communities, and brainstorm tools for how Asian American communities can act in solidarity with Black and Brown communities. Our goal is also to generate dialogue about people’s personal experiences around the role of Asian Americans in education. We hope to be part of building and supporting youth of color in Boston and we imagine this workshop to be part of this long-term process.
Uma Venkatraman and Carolyn Chou, Asian American Resource Workshop
Healing Broken Communities from Racism: Native Peoples and Truth and Reconciliation in New England
How do communities heal from centuries of land dispossession, racism, and other forms of oppression? We will screen a 13-minute documentary, First Light, about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Maine that concluded its inquiry in June 2015 between the Wabanaki People and the state’s child welfare agency over the decades-long practice of removal of Native children from their families for the purpose of forced assimilation. Maine was a province of Massachusetts until 1820. The short documentary contains powerful testimony from adults who were taken from their families as children. After viewing we will begin a conversation about how to teach rich historical content while promoting both critical and creative thinking and social emotional competencies, especially in relation to self-awareness and social awareness so more students understand structural racism and choose to become upstanders. By teaching disturbing chapters of our local history we can have meaningful conversations about genocide, identity, belonging, marginalization, and loss, and also improve relationships in our classrooms and schools. Ultimately the thoughtful use of social issue films and egalitarian discussion techniques can help cultivate anti-bias awareness and proficiency, embed social emotional learning in content-rich lessons, and encourage a strong commitment to justice.
Mishy Lesser, learning director Upstander Project
Adam Mazo, director Upstander Project
Preventing Mass School Closures in Boston and Beyond
Join us for an interactive session on mass school closures: why they are a terrible idea for public education, why they don't save districts money, and how communities across the country are organizing to stop them. We won't let the City use faulty data as an excuse to dismantle our public schools. Participants in this workshop will leave with a greater awareness of how school closures have been used as an anti-public-education strategy; participants will also leave with a resource toolkit for use in their own advocacy efforts to keep our public schools open. We anticipate that the connections participants make with each other will lead to collaborative organizing to stop school closures in Boston and other districts.
Patricia Kinsella, Stephanie Bode Ward – QUEST Quality Education for Every Student
True Frames - A framing strategy for public education advocates
Right now, across the United States, communities have more power to shape the future of public education than they’ve had in at least two decades. Developing shared framing and strategic communications that ring true in the lived experiences of communities, teachers, and organizers committed to educational and racial justice NOW is essential to shaping the current and the future narrative on public education. Experience an interactive strategy focused on creating “True Frames” amongst educational justice advocates and discuss the lessons and implications of this effort. This session has two primary aims: 1) Create an interactive experience of the True Frames project as participants actively respond and help build shared frames, through video and social media, that support grassroots education advocates and communicators to develop a more powerful narrative about the future of public education. 2) Share the learning and discuss the benefits, impacts, and challenges of “strategic communications framing” that rings true in the lived experiences of communities, teachers, and organizers committed to educational and racial justice.
Manauvaskar Kublall, Media Sutra Inc, True Frames
Hate the Player, Not the Game
This student-centered workshop discusses the portrayal of video gamers in the media and the misconceptions that surround them. Video games have been shown to benefit their players in many areas, including learning retention and engagement, mental health, and team building. These benefits are gaining recognition as they are employed in various fields; surgeons are able to practice procedures virtually, businesses can promote problem solving skills and relax their employees, and they even improve communication for those with autism. Gaming has become a spectator sport as well; “e-sports athletes” make careers from sponsorships, donations, and college scholarships! Many students experience bullying for their hobby, and are told that they cannot be a productive person or live a fulfilling life if they are a gamer. While it is certainly detrimental to let games get in the way of work that needs to be done, it is wrong to make anyone feel bad for doing something they enjoy. Especially when that thing so beneficial.
Melissa Moore, Emerson College
Raise Your Voice: Using Documentary Theater to Empower your Classroom or Community Center
This hands-on workshop is designed to give educators and community-engaged theatre artists the tools they need in order to create an original piece of documentary theatre with their students and/or members of the community. Participants will learn how to engage students in the choosing of a relevant social, political, or cultural issue that matters to their classroom or community, and explore this topic through discussion, research, theatre games, and writing activities. Inspired by the work of the Tectonic Theater Project, Anna Deavere Smith, and The Civilians, this session will teach and engage participants in several techniques used in creating documentary theatre, including interview skills, improvisation, and moment work. Theatre is a powerful tool for learning about and changing the world around us, and this session will empower participants to adapt the theatrical form to meet the needs of their particular students or community, allowing the work to spring from and speak to the issues that matter most to them.
Melissa Bergstrom, The Perpetual Visitors Theater Company
!Sí se Puede! Elementary Students Can Learn to be Social Justice Activists
The workshop will use the example of an engaging, multi-disciplinary, project-based, inquiry-driven, thematic social studies curriculum on the theme of Cotton Clothing: From Seed to Shirt, that promotes academic development, the skills of the social sciences and illuminates stories and organizing strategies of people overcoming oppression and securing human rights. This curriculum demonstrates how after exploring and learning about the history of people's movements elementary students, and older, can deepen understanding and develop the skills of social justice activists. And that these skills can be used when contemporary issues arise such as the Flint Water Crisis.
Chris Hoeh, Cambridge Friends School (BPS parent activist, 2015 National Council for the Social Studies Elementary Teacher of the Year, 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center/Teaching Tolerance Excellence in Anti-Bias Education Awardee)
What is Quality and Justice in Education?
Redefining & expanding our roles to advance racial and class justice in the classroom
We will have a participatory circle raising the question of: how can we expand our understanding of what is possible for teachers to do in alliance with students, parents, admin and the community in way of co-creating powerful learning communities that advance racial and class justice? How can teachers re-envision and expand their/our roles in the quest for education for liberation and not just reproduce systemic injustice by primarily "doing what we're told to do or expected to do"...How can we expand our sense of what's possible in the classroom and beyond? What is it that teachers would really like to do if only they felt they could? What do students, parents, & community members wish teachers would do if they could? Each person will have an opportunity to share their ideas about what they see as socially just, quality education.
What kind of qualities & capabilities should graduates embody?
What are the key issues of the day that should be part of student learning?
We want participants to reclaim their own visions of what is quality and justice in education, and reclaim our own education for our own communities.
Mary Jo Hetzel, educator and activist, CEQE, BEJA,CPS,
Sandra McIntosh, former parent coordinator, activist, CEQE, CPS, BEJA
Chris Summerhill, Boston Public School Educator
Marlena Rose, Boston Education Justice Alliance
Solving for Educational Injustice: Challenging Assumptions about Teaching Technology in Order to Bring Real Innovation to All Classrooms
The local innovation economy continues to grow at the same time our public school graduates are struggling to find employment. This is especially true for black and Latino males; and while this is a national problem, the disparity is even more pronounced in Boston due to higher skill-set demands in the local job market. In fact, black males in Boston are more than three times as likely to be unemployed than their white counterparts. Right now, we have the power to mold our youngest students into future innovators, who are ready to adapt to whatever needs our society presents to them. But there is work to be done. Our local high-tech companies must be convinced that there are mutual benefits to widening the scope of high-tech career recruitment efforts to include currently underrepresented groups. And our school systems need to understand that merely providing technological resources does not result in our graduates developing the computational fluency they need. This workshop will engage participants in brainstorming strategies for the deliberate integration of computational thinking into the curriculum earlier and more comprehensively. It will also provide a framework for participants to understand why computer science education is an important social justice issue.
Kellyanne Mahoney--Boston Latin Academy, Andrea So--Boston Green Academy/Massachusetts Asian American Educators Association/Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition, Juan Paniagua--Carnegie Mellon Unveristity/BPS Alumnus, Shihua Wu--Boston Latin Academy/Nxtfour
Second Workshop session 10:40-11:40
Comprehensive media literacy
Mass Media Literacy (MML) is a grassroots organization focused on teacher training, policy development, and curriculum building in media literacy. This interactive workshop works with teachers, youth advocates, and youth from MA in the basics of comprehensive media literacy learning, plus strategizes ways to include media literacy in class curricula across subject matters. Presenters will share work they have done in elementary, middle, and high schools across the state while also working with the audience on strategies for teacher training, curriculum development, and classroom inclusion. Inclusive of the conference theme, presenters will share ways to bring the discussion of race and class to the classroom through the lens of media literacy, including the “behind the scenes,” or political economy, perspective that examines the systemic obstacles students, teachers, and youth advocates face on a regular basis. Built curriculum can focus on social justice issues and Mass Media Literacy leader will work with interested teachers beyond the conference to develop desired trainings and lesson plans.
Allison Butler – Mass Media Literacy; University of Massachusetts Amherst, Erin Kinney – Mass Media Literacy; Manager of Engagement, Brookline Interactive Group, Dianna Morton – Mass Media Literacy, Alison Kinney – Mass Media Literacy
Activating Bystander Awareness
In this age of social media, several major movements—from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter—have bolstered individuals’ awareness of issues in matters of race, violence, gender, class, and sexuality. However, too often this inundation of information does little to help individuals navigate real-life situations. It is the mission of the Meraki Theatre Collective to counteract this phenomenon, and help develop citizens into Active Bystanders. Active Bystanders are people who, although perhaps not directly involved with an oppressive situation, are present and have the capacity to take action. In order to accomplish our mission, the Meraki Theatre Collective has developed a collaborative applied theatre process that not only highlights these issues, but allows individuals to rehearse different interventions as Active Bystanders. Our workshop will take participants through a condensed version of our process and will highlight some of the strategies we use as we make our way from Focus Group to Forum Theatre.
Lynn Mullin, Meraki Theatre Collective (MTC) Meraki Theatre Collective Teaching Artists Hyde Square Task Force’s ¡ACCIÓN! Community Theatre (ACT!)
#bpswalkout
On March 7th 2016 there was a protest against district budget cuts. Four students from Snowden International including me, decided to take a stand and show our frustration. A walkout was the way to go.
Nevaeh Dykes, Snowden International
Jania Carpin-Williams, New Mission
Kamiya Parkin, Boston Arts Academy
Julia Casilla Peguero, Snowden International
Talk about it: White Supremacy and the Public Education System
At one BESJ conference plenary session, 10-year old Chicago activist Asean Johnson excitedly shared one of his favorite chants “Education is a Right! Not just for the rich and white!” A hush fell over the auditorium and then we timidly said it back to him. Not naming race and over-privilege or using code language about it hurts progressive causes. In this workshop we will look at definitions of racism, white supremacy and privilege and talk about them in a circle process. Have you been uncomfortable speaking explicitly about race in conversations about education? Have you noticed people were reluctant to “name the elephant” in the room or used code words for race and racism even among friends and partners? Not naming race and over-privilege or using code language about them can undermine progressive causes. In this workshop, we will look at together at some definitions that may help and then talk about it in a circle process.
Talkabout Team at Union of Minority Neighborhoods
Asian American history: the Antidote to the model minority myth
The image of Asian Americans as the model minority was created in the mid-1960s to divide people of color in the U.S. and continues to stereotype Asian Americans today. Attempts in recent decades to debunk this myth have failed, which has sent progressive-minded educators and students in search of Asian American history and literature. Come learn about how a more inclusive curriculum can create a more inclusive school community and just society. We will take a look at the origins of the model minority image and talk about why the image was created to divide people of color in the U.S. in the 1960s. We will also work to identify ways in which Asian American history and literature can teach us about American history and society.
Vivian Wu Wong Milton Academy
Recognizing and Addressing Unconscious Bias
This session begins with several examples of how we all have biases that influence our behaviors throughout our daily interactions both inside and outside of school. Biases are ingrained and pervasive to our experience. Racial bias is no different. Participants will then see evidence of this in the findings of a national test of implicit racial bias. Participants will work with peers to examine research about unconscious racial bias in schools, specifically related to disciplinary proceedings but related to all interactions throughout the school day. They will then hear recommended strategies for combatting these biases, will have an opportunity to share their own strategies with the group. Finally, participants will work with peers to develop concrete plans to take home to their communities to combat bias within their schools.
Sarah E. Fiarman, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) in Public Schools as a Vehicle for Youth Activism
Boston public school students, their teachers, and a university-based researcher will speak about their experiences engaging in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to interrogate and create change in their communities. The presentation will be interactive, whereby youth presenters will engage in discussions with audience members about their YPAR topics and research findings. In addition, adult presenters will speak to their experiences using YPAR as pedagogy in public schools; they will also provide curricular resources and other helpful links for those who want to do this work inside or outside public schools.
Boston Arts Academy students; Boston Community Leadership Academy students; Dr. William W. Henderson School students; Dara Bayer; Op; Ross Kochman; Chris Buttimer
A Long road to Justice: Exploring the Nineteenth Century Struggle for School Equality in Boston
We need to know—and teach about-- the deep historical roots of the struggle for school equity in Massachusetts before we can fully engage questions of race, class, and power in schooling today. In eighteenth and nineteenth century Massachusetts, African American young people and parents were agitators and innovators who invented new forms of civic action intended to challenge segregation, exclusion, and damaging, discriminatory treatment in public schools. In this session you will sample learning activities from a new set of open-source, document-based lesson plans created by Primary Source to accompany the exhibit Long Road to Justice: African Americans and the Massachusetts Courts. This workshop is suitable for anyone interested in knowing our history!
Susan Zeiger, Primary Source, Roberta Logan, Boston Public Schools (retired)
What are they making us into? The new anti-bullying curriculum
Mandated bully prevention programs teach that there are three rigid actors in any situation: the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. Mainstream programs ignore the complicated relationships that race, class, sexual orientation, gender, and religion play in school-aged relationships. Lead by a cohort of Middle School students and their ELA teacher, What Are They Making Us Into? looks at a new way of teaching about power, relationships, and respect as students shape the world they want to see in the classroom and beyond.Participants will get on their feet and explore questions of labor, capitalism, for-profit education models, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Then, we will come together and brainstorm Black Panther Party-inspired ten point plans for the world we wish to see: in our classrooms, our hallways, our neighborhoods, our cities, and beyond.
Ariel Adelstein, ELA teacher at Van Sickle Academy, a public middle school in Springfield, MA; and students.
Defending the Early Years: Finding Your Voice as an Early Childhood Activist
Are you concerned about the current direction of early childhood education policy in our country?
Are you worried about the lasting negative effects that come from the loss of child-directed, hands-on play?
You are not alone! In today’s world, suspensions, expulsions and trauma from over-testing are impacting even our youngest students. What can we do? In this working session, participants will learn ways that early childhood teachers have been speaking out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices. We will share strategies and resources to help strengthen our abilities to promote quality early childhood education policies in our schools, our local communities and the nation.
Emily Kaplan, a writer and elementary school teacher living in Boston
Geralyn McLaughlin, BPS teacher and Co Director of Defending the Early Years.
Learning to Speak: My Fair Lady and the Entitlement of Standard English
This workshop uses the musical My Fair Lady, by Lerner and Loewe, as a starting point for looking critically at the English language and its implications. A series of theater activities explores the range of verbal communication, encourages thinking about how we communicate and what is important in communication, and delves into the hierarchy within the English language. Knowledge of My Fair Lady is not required for participation in this workshop. All activities are interactive and will include group post-activity discussions.
Kathryn Rebholz, Emerson College
Workshop session 3 11:50-12:50
Creating ‘Brave Space’ Communities in the Classroom
What is "Brave Space" and how is it different from "Safe Space"? How do brave spaces encourage risk taking, growth and community in the classroom? How can we work with our students to create intentional brave spaces in our classrooms? This session is an both an introduction to the concept of Brave Space (as first introduced in "From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces" by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens) and a practical workshop to give educators and students tools to create and foster brave spaces within their own classrooms and school communities.
Professor Amissa Miller, Emerson College
Lynda Bachman, Emerson College
Social Justice in the History Classroom: A Cold War Case Study
The history of the Cold War has long been reduced to a history narrowly encompassing the two titans, the USSR and the US. In this workshop, we will discuss the importance of social justice in the classroom as exemplified by a Cold War case study during which we will reorient the traditional focus and highlight the proxy wars, which impacted millions of lives around the globe. In lieu of discussing history within a factual framework, we will focus on the lived experiences of individuals during the proxy wars in Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the Cold War. We will then contextualize the current debates around immigration in the US as they relate to the Cold War in order to bring history to the present. This workshop will prioritize teaching different perspectives and historical bias in order to equip participants with the skills necessary to apply these concepts to different case studies.
Breeanna Elliott, Boston University,
Melissa Mongogna-Tiffney, Another Course to College
Exploring use of audio and video for social justice
According to the 2013 Pew Research Center survey, US citizens are increasingly using YouTube and other social networking sites to share news-related videos. Nearly half of adults ages 18 to 29 watch online news videos. Furthermore, YouTube is most popular among younger adults, blacks, and Hispanics. Therefore, the ability to comfortably use audio and video on several platforms including social media will continue to be crucial for engaging Millenials around social justice movements. Increasing teachers, students, and community activists’ capacity to integrate audio and video in their strategies for liberatory education is needed. This highly interactive workshop will explore how audio and video have been used as part of modern social justice campaigns. Participants will work in small groups to craft a plan around how video can be used to maximize the impact of their current social justice initiatives. Also, participants will learn about resources available to implement plans developed in the workshop. Ultimately, participants will leave with concrete ideas of how the use of audio and video can be integrated into their current work to increase the likelihood of their initiatives success.
Wilber Renderos, Audio Chemists
Starting from Scratch: Devising Scripts with ACCIÓN! Community Theatre (ACT!)
This workshop will introduce participants to the devising process used by ACCIÓN! Community Theatre (ACT!) to develop scripts that address social justice issues in the community. We will employ theatre games, drama activities, and writing prompts in both large groups and individual exercises to generate scenes and monologues. This process has been employed by the Hyde Square Task Force’s youth theatre and community organizing team to address diverse issues including gentrification, bullying, gun control, sexual harassment, school policies and disciplinary actions, discrimination and racial profiling, teen suicide, standardized testing, and adultism. Most recently, ACT! has been developing a series of pieces through this process for a collection we are calling POWER PLAYS. In this scenes and monologues, we explore themes of power dynamics within relationships, through race, class, gender, ability, and faith. This work can be used for developing performances, but it can also be used within a classroom or community setting to reflect on these issues without having to develop a public performance.
Christina Marín, Vanessa Snow -, Mohamed Ahmed, Kemmara Bailey, Giani Bermudez, Tereza Castillo, Shayne Clinton, Christian DeLeon, Mikaela Figueroa, Mabel Gondres -, Lena Gordon, Rosiris Lara, Lordania Lopez, Roberto Martinez, Ritchelle, Lizmery Ovalles, Lorrie Pearson, Johnny Peguero, Ayub Tahlil, Jonathan Vo
All participants are from the Hyde Square Task Force
Concrete Ways to Shift Toward Anti-Bias Practice
Eight years ago, teachers at Peabody Terrace Children’s Center were proud of our cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity. But we had no shared way to talk about our differences or acknowledge our privileges with each other. with children or their families. Today, anti-bias education is part of our center philosophy and we’ve made many changes in order to learn about fairness and affirm the diverse identities of all of our children, their families and teachers. We started by examining Louise Derman-Sparks’ four goals of anti-bias education, adopting them and transforming our practice over time. To paraphrase the goals, we want all children to (1) have a positive self-concept, (2) have “comfortable, empathetic interactions with people from diverse backgrounds”, (3) to recognize injustice and (4) to stand up against injustice. We know that each organization’s path is different and cannot be replicated. We will tell the stories of staff-initiated changes that took place in our center. Participants will explore the elements of our culture that supported these changes together. Finally, we’ll try out two of the concrete steps that teachers took that changed our teaching, our classrooms and helped us change the culture of our workplace.
Kendra PeloJoaquin, Pedagogista Peabody Terrace Children's Center, Irene Ushomirsky, Infant Teacher, Peabody Terrace Children's Center, Organizer Free Minds Free People conference
Micro- aggressions in Youth Work
Learn to identify your cultural identity and the influence it has on our everyday work with young people. In this workshop we seek to understand/appreciate the perspective of a young person’s journey. As youth workers we should challenge our understanding of the population we serve and the biases we carry. Workshop Objectives · Understand the difference between intention versus impact · Be aware of how your cultural identity can impact your work with youth · Unpack your own implicit biases
Tiffany Lillie, Framingham Public Schools
Raquel Castro-Corazzini, City of Worcester
Familes Creating Together: A Sense of Belonging
Families Creating Together is a Program of Community Caring/Tree of Life Coalition and a city wide award winning multigenerational community based program that welcomes and includes children with and without disabilities, participants that are deaf and Grandmothers raising Grandchildren in an inclusive setting. This participatory Workshop will draw from experiences in creating Magical Environments and Creating Original Stories using recycle materials and simple art materials. The workshop will address strategies for adapting these expressive arts activities to support a wide range of learning styles through the creation of individual and collective works. This will be a handout for all participants. We will share a 3 minute DVD called Our Neighborhoods And Stories as a way of seeing our teaching approach.
Ed Pazzanese, Director of Families Creating Together
Maria Cabrera, Community Relations Manager at the Museum Of Science and member of the FCT Advisory Board
Judy Battat, FCT Program Evaluation.
NCLB's Gone. Good Riddance. Now, What Does the New Federal Education Law Mean for Grass Roots Education Activists?
In a rare moment of bipartisan harmony, Congress passed and President Obama signed last December the Every Student Succeeds Act to replace the discredited No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The new law maintains the old law’s testing schedule, but it also makes big changes. What do the new rules mean for the opt-out movement? Can we use them to stop the testing juggernaut? What are the implications for teacher evaluation? Will destructive state takeovers and "turnarounds" continue unabated? How are people already organizing to win needed changes. We will outline the shifts and explore the opportunities for organizing Massachusetts parents, teachers, and students for better schools.
Citizens for Public Schools Executive Director Lisa Guisbond,
Citizens for Public Schools Executive Board member Alain Jehlen.
Teaching Social Studies for Social Justice
In this presentation Social Studies teachers with strong social justice leaning reflect upon the daunting journey that they have faced to uphold their commitment to teach for social justice while meeting administrative and accountability expectations. After this reflection, presenters draw on research that they are conducting with Urban Education faculty at a university and their teaching experiences to share strategies that can provide Social Studies teachers with openings to teach for social justice in their classrooms. We will also share advice and provide specific Social Studies lesson plans that illustrate various ways that social justice teaching can be incorporated into History curriculum at the middle and high school level.
Raphael E. Rogers, Clark University Laura Colket, Clark University Nina Hoey, Worcester Public Schools Alex Hoyt, Hudson Public Schools Greg MacPhee, Worcester Public Schools Katherine Pinard, Worcester Public Schools Cecelia Spencer, Worcester Public Schools Hannah Weinsaft, Worcester Public Schools
Working the System: Advocacy for Systemic Change
Youth are keenly aware of the issues that affect them and their hopes for a better community. Less often do they have the tools needed to carry-out effective action and make long-term, systemic change. This highly interactive workshop will explore how not only youth but educators and civic participants can leverage a detailed advocacy process to make systemic change in their schools and local communities on issues that affect them. Participants will learn this process by doing. They will choose a current issue that matters to them and will practice the advocacy steps necessary to go from caring passionately about an issue to engaging in action. Discussion will focus on how to apply this advocacy framework in different settings: classroom teaching, school leadership advocacy, and larger community efforts.
Gillian Pressman Generation Citizen
Will Power: engaging our youth in a struggle for truth
“Struggle for wisdom...but do not pin your struggle on their conversion”-Ta Nehisi Coates Our purpose is for educators and administrators to recognize that the progression of a school and the closing of the achievement gap comes with changing institutional racism in our systems. In order to change a system, we need to listen to the most important people in it: the students. Through this presentation taught by Kate Kelly and her "junior professors," educators will recognize the importance of engaging staff and students in honest conversations about race as well as the significance of reciprocal teaching that encourages educators to view their students as fellow teachers when it comes social justice and expanding our moral universe.
Kate Kelly, Will Opara, Kenny Dulcio, Allegra Farrar, Noeli Fernandez, Naomi Fernandez, Jormani Feliz –Canton Public schools
Fighting Anti-Black Racism in Asian/Asian American Communities
This workshop will discuss how to fight anti-Black racism within Asian/Asian American communities. We will unpack the "Model Minority Myth" and discuss how this myth has been used to generalize Asian American communities and to divide communities of color in the United States. We aim to raise consciousness about how anti-Black racism appears in Asian communities, and brainstorm tools for how Asian American communities can act in solidarity with Black and Brown communities. Our goal is also to generate dialogue about people’s personal experiences around the role of Asian Americans in education. We hope to be part of building and supporting youth of color in Boston and we imagine this workshop to be part of this long-term process.
Uma Venkatraman and Carolyn Chou, Asian American Resource Workshop
Healing Broken Communities from Racism: Native Peoples and Truth and Reconciliation in New England
How do communities heal from centuries of land dispossession, racism, and other forms of oppression? We will screen a 13-minute documentary, First Light, about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Maine that concluded its inquiry in June 2015 between the Wabanaki People and the state’s child welfare agency over the decades-long practice of removal of Native children from their families for the purpose of forced assimilation. Maine was a province of Massachusetts until 1820. The short documentary contains powerful testimony from adults who were taken from their families as children. After viewing we will begin a conversation about how to teach rich historical content while promoting both critical and creative thinking and social emotional competencies, especially in relation to self-awareness and social awareness so more students understand structural racism and choose to become upstanders. By teaching disturbing chapters of our local history we can have meaningful conversations about genocide, identity, belonging, marginalization, and loss, and also improve relationships in our classrooms and schools. Ultimately the thoughtful use of social issue films and egalitarian discussion techniques can help cultivate anti-bias awareness and proficiency, embed social emotional learning in content-rich lessons, and encourage a strong commitment to justice.
Mishy Lesser, learning director Upstander Project
Adam Mazo, director Upstander Project
Preventing Mass School Closures in Boston and Beyond
Join us for an interactive session on mass school closures: why they are a terrible idea for public education, why they don't save districts money, and how communities across the country are organizing to stop them. We won't let the City use faulty data as an excuse to dismantle our public schools. Participants in this workshop will leave with a greater awareness of how school closures have been used as an anti-public-education strategy; participants will also leave with a resource toolkit for use in their own advocacy efforts to keep our public schools open. We anticipate that the connections participants make with each other will lead to collaborative organizing to stop school closures in Boston and other districts.
Patricia Kinsella, Stephanie Bode Ward – QUEST Quality Education for Every Student
True Frames - A framing strategy for public education advocates
Right now, across the United States, communities have more power to shape the future of public education than they’ve had in at least two decades. Developing shared framing and strategic communications that ring true in the lived experiences of communities, teachers, and organizers committed to educational and racial justice NOW is essential to shaping the current and the future narrative on public education. Experience an interactive strategy focused on creating “True Frames” amongst educational justice advocates and discuss the lessons and implications of this effort. This session has two primary aims: 1) Create an interactive experience of the True Frames project as participants actively respond and help build shared frames, through video and social media, that support grassroots education advocates and communicators to develop a more powerful narrative about the future of public education. 2) Share the learning and discuss the benefits, impacts, and challenges of “strategic communications framing” that rings true in the lived experiences of communities, teachers, and organizers committed to educational and racial justice.
Manauvaskar Kublall, Media Sutra Inc, True Frames
Hate the Player, Not the Game
This student-centered workshop discusses the portrayal of video gamers in the media and the misconceptions that surround them. Video games have been shown to benefit their players in many areas, including learning retention and engagement, mental health, and team building. These benefits are gaining recognition as they are employed in various fields; surgeons are able to practice procedures virtually, businesses can promote problem solving skills and relax their employees, and they even improve communication for those with autism. Gaming has become a spectator sport as well; “e-sports athletes” make careers from sponsorships, donations, and college scholarships! Many students experience bullying for their hobby, and are told that they cannot be a productive person or live a fulfilling life if they are a gamer. While it is certainly detrimental to let games get in the way of work that needs to be done, it is wrong to make anyone feel bad for doing something they enjoy. Especially when that thing so beneficial.
Melissa Moore, Emerson College
Raise Your Voice: Using Documentary Theater to Empower your Classroom or Community Center
This hands-on workshop is designed to give educators and community-engaged theatre artists the tools they need in order to create an original piece of documentary theatre with their students and/or members of the community. Participants will learn how to engage students in the choosing of a relevant social, political, or cultural issue that matters to their classroom or community, and explore this topic through discussion, research, theatre games, and writing activities. Inspired by the work of the Tectonic Theater Project, Anna Deavere Smith, and The Civilians, this session will teach and engage participants in several techniques used in creating documentary theatre, including interview skills, improvisation, and moment work. Theatre is a powerful tool for learning about and changing the world around us, and this session will empower participants to adapt the theatrical form to meet the needs of their particular students or community, allowing the work to spring from and speak to the issues that matter most to them.
Melissa Bergstrom, The Perpetual Visitors Theater Company
!Sí se Puede! Elementary Students Can Learn to be Social Justice Activists
The workshop will use the example of an engaging, multi-disciplinary, project-based, inquiry-driven, thematic social studies curriculum on the theme of Cotton Clothing: From Seed to Shirt, that promotes academic development, the skills of the social sciences and illuminates stories and organizing strategies of people overcoming oppression and securing human rights. This curriculum demonstrates how after exploring and learning about the history of people's movements elementary students, and older, can deepen understanding and develop the skills of social justice activists. And that these skills can be used when contemporary issues arise such as the Flint Water Crisis.
Chris Hoeh, Cambridge Friends School (BPS parent activist, 2015 National Council for the Social Studies Elementary Teacher of the Year, 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center/Teaching Tolerance Excellence in Anti-Bias Education Awardee)
What is Quality and Justice in Education?
Redefining & expanding our roles to advance racial and class justice in the classroom
We will have a participatory circle raising the question of: how can we expand our understanding of what is possible for teachers to do in alliance with students, parents, admin and the community in way of co-creating powerful learning communities that advance racial and class justice? How can teachers re-envision and expand their/our roles in the quest for education for liberation and not just reproduce systemic injustice by primarily "doing what we're told to do or expected to do"...How can we expand our sense of what's possible in the classroom and beyond? What is it that teachers would really like to do if only they felt they could? What do students, parents, & community members wish teachers would do if they could? Each person will have an opportunity to share their ideas about what they see as socially just, quality education.
What kind of qualities & capabilities should graduates embody?
What are the key issues of the day that should be part of student learning?
We want participants to reclaim their own visions of what is quality and justice in education, and reclaim our own education for our own communities.
Mary Jo Hetzel, educator and activist, CEQE, BEJA,CPS,
Sandra McIntosh, former parent coordinator, activist, CEQE, CPS, BEJA
Chris Summerhill, Boston Public School Educator
Marlena Rose, Boston Education Justice Alliance
Solving for Educational Injustice: Challenging Assumptions about Teaching Technology in Order to Bring Real Innovation to All Classrooms
The local innovation economy continues to grow at the same time our public school graduates are struggling to find employment. This is especially true for black and Latino males; and while this is a national problem, the disparity is even more pronounced in Boston due to higher skill-set demands in the local job market. In fact, black males in Boston are more than three times as likely to be unemployed than their white counterparts. Right now, we have the power to mold our youngest students into future innovators, who are ready to adapt to whatever needs our society presents to them. But there is work to be done. Our local high-tech companies must be convinced that there are mutual benefits to widening the scope of high-tech career recruitment efforts to include currently underrepresented groups. And our school systems need to understand that merely providing technological resources does not result in our graduates developing the computational fluency they need. This workshop will engage participants in brainstorming strategies for the deliberate integration of computational thinking into the curriculum earlier and more comprehensively. It will also provide a framework for participants to understand why computer science education is an important social justice issue.
Kellyanne Mahoney--Boston Latin Academy, Andrea So--Boston Green Academy/Massachusetts Asian American Educators Association/Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition, Juan Paniagua--Carnegie Mellon Unveristity/BPS Alumnus, Shihua Wu--Boston Latin Academy/Nxtfour
Second Workshop session 10:40-11:40
Comprehensive media literacy
Mass Media Literacy (MML) is a grassroots organization focused on teacher training, policy development, and curriculum building in media literacy. This interactive workshop works with teachers, youth advocates, and youth from MA in the basics of comprehensive media literacy learning, plus strategizes ways to include media literacy in class curricula across subject matters. Presenters will share work they have done in elementary, middle, and high schools across the state while also working with the audience on strategies for teacher training, curriculum development, and classroom inclusion. Inclusive of the conference theme, presenters will share ways to bring the discussion of race and class to the classroom through the lens of media literacy, including the “behind the scenes,” or political economy, perspective that examines the systemic obstacles students, teachers, and youth advocates face on a regular basis. Built curriculum can focus on social justice issues and Mass Media Literacy leader will work with interested teachers beyond the conference to develop desired trainings and lesson plans.
Allison Butler – Mass Media Literacy; University of Massachusetts Amherst, Erin Kinney – Mass Media Literacy; Manager of Engagement, Brookline Interactive Group, Dianna Morton – Mass Media Literacy, Alison Kinney – Mass Media Literacy
Activating Bystander Awareness
In this age of social media, several major movements—from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter—have bolstered individuals’ awareness of issues in matters of race, violence, gender, class, and sexuality. However, too often this inundation of information does little to help individuals navigate real-life situations. It is the mission of the Meraki Theatre Collective to counteract this phenomenon, and help develop citizens into Active Bystanders. Active Bystanders are people who, although perhaps not directly involved with an oppressive situation, are present and have the capacity to take action. In order to accomplish our mission, the Meraki Theatre Collective has developed a collaborative applied theatre process that not only highlights these issues, but allows individuals to rehearse different interventions as Active Bystanders. Our workshop will take participants through a condensed version of our process and will highlight some of the strategies we use as we make our way from Focus Group to Forum Theatre.
Lynn Mullin, Meraki Theatre Collective (MTC) Meraki Theatre Collective Teaching Artists Hyde Square Task Force’s ¡ACCIÓN! Community Theatre (ACT!)
#bpswalkout
On March 7th 2016 there was a protest against district budget cuts. Four students from Snowden International including me, decided to take a stand and show our frustration. A walkout was the way to go.
Nevaeh Dykes, Snowden International
Jania Carpin-Williams, New Mission
Kamiya Parkin, Boston Arts Academy
Julia Casilla Peguero, Snowden International
Talk about it: White Supremacy and the Public Education System
At one BESJ conference plenary session, 10-year old Chicago activist Asean Johnson excitedly shared one of his favorite chants “Education is a Right! Not just for the rich and white!” A hush fell over the auditorium and then we timidly said it back to him. Not naming race and over-privilege or using code language about it hurts progressive causes. In this workshop we will look at definitions of racism, white supremacy and privilege and talk about them in a circle process. Have you been uncomfortable speaking explicitly about race in conversations about education? Have you noticed people were reluctant to “name the elephant” in the room or used code words for race and racism even among friends and partners? Not naming race and over-privilege or using code language about them can undermine progressive causes. In this workshop, we will look at together at some definitions that may help and then talk about it in a circle process.
Talkabout Team at Union of Minority Neighborhoods
Asian American history: the Antidote to the model minority myth
The image of Asian Americans as the model minority was created in the mid-1960s to divide people of color in the U.S. and continues to stereotype Asian Americans today. Attempts in recent decades to debunk this myth have failed, which has sent progressive-minded educators and students in search of Asian American history and literature. Come learn about how a more inclusive curriculum can create a more inclusive school community and just society. We will take a look at the origins of the model minority image and talk about why the image was created to divide people of color in the U.S. in the 1960s. We will also work to identify ways in which Asian American history and literature can teach us about American history and society.
Vivian Wu Wong Milton Academy
Recognizing and Addressing Unconscious Bias
This session begins with several examples of how we all have biases that influence our behaviors throughout our daily interactions both inside and outside of school. Biases are ingrained and pervasive to our experience. Racial bias is no different. Participants will then see evidence of this in the findings of a national test of implicit racial bias. Participants will work with peers to examine research about unconscious racial bias in schools, specifically related to disciplinary proceedings but related to all interactions throughout the school day. They will then hear recommended strategies for combatting these biases, will have an opportunity to share their own strategies with the group. Finally, participants will work with peers to develop concrete plans to take home to their communities to combat bias within their schools.
Sarah E. Fiarman, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) in Public Schools as a Vehicle for Youth Activism
Boston public school students, their teachers, and a university-based researcher will speak about their experiences engaging in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to interrogate and create change in their communities. The presentation will be interactive, whereby youth presenters will engage in discussions with audience members about their YPAR topics and research findings. In addition, adult presenters will speak to their experiences using YPAR as pedagogy in public schools; they will also provide curricular resources and other helpful links for those who want to do this work inside or outside public schools.
Boston Arts Academy students; Boston Community Leadership Academy students; Dr. William W. Henderson School students; Dara Bayer; Op; Ross Kochman; Chris Buttimer
A Long road to Justice: Exploring the Nineteenth Century Struggle for School Equality in Boston
We need to know—and teach about-- the deep historical roots of the struggle for school equity in Massachusetts before we can fully engage questions of race, class, and power in schooling today. In eighteenth and nineteenth century Massachusetts, African American young people and parents were agitators and innovators who invented new forms of civic action intended to challenge segregation, exclusion, and damaging, discriminatory treatment in public schools. In this session you will sample learning activities from a new set of open-source, document-based lesson plans created by Primary Source to accompany the exhibit Long Road to Justice: African Americans and the Massachusetts Courts. This workshop is suitable for anyone interested in knowing our history!
Susan Zeiger, Primary Source, Roberta Logan, Boston Public Schools (retired)
What are they making us into? The new anti-bullying curriculum
Mandated bully prevention programs teach that there are three rigid actors in any situation: the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. Mainstream programs ignore the complicated relationships that race, class, sexual orientation, gender, and religion play in school-aged relationships. Lead by a cohort of Middle School students and their ELA teacher, What Are They Making Us Into? looks at a new way of teaching about power, relationships, and respect as students shape the world they want to see in the classroom and beyond.Participants will get on their feet and explore questions of labor, capitalism, for-profit education models, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Then, we will come together and brainstorm Black Panther Party-inspired ten point plans for the world we wish to see: in our classrooms, our hallways, our neighborhoods, our cities, and beyond.
Ariel Adelstein, ELA teacher at Van Sickle Academy, a public middle school in Springfield, MA; and students.
Defending the Early Years: Finding Your Voice as an Early Childhood Activist
Are you concerned about the current direction of early childhood education policy in our country?
Are you worried about the lasting negative effects that come from the loss of child-directed, hands-on play?
You are not alone! In today’s world, suspensions, expulsions and trauma from over-testing are impacting even our youngest students. What can we do? In this working session, participants will learn ways that early childhood teachers have been speaking out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices. We will share strategies and resources to help strengthen our abilities to promote quality early childhood education policies in our schools, our local communities and the nation.
Emily Kaplan, a writer and elementary school teacher living in Boston
Geralyn McLaughlin, BPS teacher and Co Director of Defending the Early Years.
Learning to Speak: My Fair Lady and the Entitlement of Standard English
This workshop uses the musical My Fair Lady, by Lerner and Loewe, as a starting point for looking critically at the English language and its implications. A series of theater activities explores the range of verbal communication, encourages thinking about how we communicate and what is important in communication, and delves into the hierarchy within the English language. Knowledge of My Fair Lady is not required for participation in this workshop. All activities are interactive and will include group post-activity discussions.
Kathryn Rebholz, Emerson College
Workshop session 3 11:50-12:50
Creating ‘Brave Space’ Communities in the Classroom
What is "Brave Space" and how is it different from "Safe Space"? How do brave spaces encourage risk taking, growth and community in the classroom? How can we work with our students to create intentional brave spaces in our classrooms? This session is an both an introduction to the concept of Brave Space (as first introduced in "From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces" by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens) and a practical workshop to give educators and students tools to create and foster brave spaces within their own classrooms and school communities.
Professor Amissa Miller, Emerson College
Lynda Bachman, Emerson College
Social Justice in the History Classroom: A Cold War Case Study
The history of the Cold War has long been reduced to a history narrowly encompassing the two titans, the USSR and the US. In this workshop, we will discuss the importance of social justice in the classroom as exemplified by a Cold War case study during which we will reorient the traditional focus and highlight the proxy wars, which impacted millions of lives around the globe. In lieu of discussing history within a factual framework, we will focus on the lived experiences of individuals during the proxy wars in Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the Cold War. We will then contextualize the current debates around immigration in the US as they relate to the Cold War in order to bring history to the present. This workshop will prioritize teaching different perspectives and historical bias in order to equip participants with the skills necessary to apply these concepts to different case studies.
Breeanna Elliott, Boston University,
Melissa Mongogna-Tiffney, Another Course to College
Exploring use of audio and video for social justice
According to the 2013 Pew Research Center survey, US citizens are increasingly using YouTube and other social networking sites to share news-related videos. Nearly half of adults ages 18 to 29 watch online news videos. Furthermore, YouTube is most popular among younger adults, blacks, and Hispanics. Therefore, the ability to comfortably use audio and video on several platforms including social media will continue to be crucial for engaging Millenials around social justice movements. Increasing teachers, students, and community activists’ capacity to integrate audio and video in their strategies for liberatory education is needed. This highly interactive workshop will explore how audio and video have been used as part of modern social justice campaigns. Participants will work in small groups to craft a plan around how video can be used to maximize the impact of their current social justice initiatives. Also, participants will learn about resources available to implement plans developed in the workshop. Ultimately, participants will leave with concrete ideas of how the use of audio and video can be integrated into their current work to increase the likelihood of their initiatives success.
Wilber Renderos, Audio Chemists
Starting from Scratch: Devising Scripts with ACCIÓN! Community Theatre (ACT!)
This workshop will introduce participants to the devising process used by ACCIÓN! Community Theatre (ACT!) to develop scripts that address social justice issues in the community. We will employ theatre games, drama activities, and writing prompts in both large groups and individual exercises to generate scenes and monologues. This process has been employed by the Hyde Square Task Force’s youth theatre and community organizing team to address diverse issues including gentrification, bullying, gun control, sexual harassment, school policies and disciplinary actions, discrimination and racial profiling, teen suicide, standardized testing, and adultism. Most recently, ACT! has been developing a series of pieces through this process for a collection we are calling POWER PLAYS. In this scenes and monologues, we explore themes of power dynamics within relationships, through race, class, gender, ability, and faith. This work can be used for developing performances, but it can also be used within a classroom or community setting to reflect on these issues without having to develop a public performance.
Christina Marín, Vanessa Snow -, Mohamed Ahmed, Kemmara Bailey, Giani Bermudez, Tereza Castillo, Shayne Clinton, Christian DeLeon, Mikaela Figueroa, Mabel Gondres -, Lena Gordon, Rosiris Lara, Lordania Lopez, Roberto Martinez, Ritchelle, Lizmery Ovalles, Lorrie Pearson, Johnny Peguero, Ayub Tahlil, Jonathan Vo
All participants are from the Hyde Square Task Force
Concrete Ways to Shift Toward Anti-Bias Practice
Eight years ago, teachers at Peabody Terrace Children’s Center were proud of our cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity. But we had no shared way to talk about our differences or acknowledge our privileges with each other. with children or their families. Today, anti-bias education is part of our center philosophy and we’ve made many changes in order to learn about fairness and affirm the diverse identities of all of our children, their families and teachers. We started by examining Louise Derman-Sparks’ four goals of anti-bias education, adopting them and transforming our practice over time. To paraphrase the goals, we want all children to (1) have a positive self-concept, (2) have “comfortable, empathetic interactions with people from diverse backgrounds”, (3) to recognize injustice and (4) to stand up against injustice. We know that each organization’s path is different and cannot be replicated. We will tell the stories of staff-initiated changes that took place in our center. Participants will explore the elements of our culture that supported these changes together. Finally, we’ll try out two of the concrete steps that teachers took that changed our teaching, our classrooms and helped us change the culture of our workplace.
Kendra PeloJoaquin, Pedagogista Peabody Terrace Children's Center, Irene Ushomirsky, Infant Teacher, Peabody Terrace Children's Center, Organizer Free Minds Free People conference
Micro- aggressions in Youth Work
Learn to identify your cultural identity and the influence it has on our everyday work with young people. In this workshop we seek to understand/appreciate the perspective of a young person’s journey. As youth workers we should challenge our understanding of the population we serve and the biases we carry. Workshop Objectives · Understand the difference between intention versus impact · Be aware of how your cultural identity can impact your work with youth · Unpack your own implicit biases
Tiffany Lillie, Framingham Public Schools
Raquel Castro-Corazzini, City of Worcester
Familes Creating Together: A Sense of Belonging
Families Creating Together is a Program of Community Caring/Tree of Life Coalition and a city wide award winning multigenerational community based program that welcomes and includes children with and without disabilities, participants that are deaf and Grandmothers raising Grandchildren in an inclusive setting. This participatory Workshop will draw from experiences in creating Magical Environments and Creating Original Stories using recycle materials and simple art materials. The workshop will address strategies for adapting these expressive arts activities to support a wide range of learning styles through the creation of individual and collective works. This will be a handout for all participants. We will share a 3 minute DVD called Our Neighborhoods And Stories as a way of seeing our teaching approach.
Ed Pazzanese, Director of Families Creating Together
Maria Cabrera, Community Relations Manager at the Museum Of Science and member of the FCT Advisory Board
Judy Battat, FCT Program Evaluation.
NCLB's Gone. Good Riddance. Now, What Does the New Federal Education Law Mean for Grass Roots Education Activists?
In a rare moment of bipartisan harmony, Congress passed and President Obama signed last December the Every Student Succeeds Act to replace the discredited No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The new law maintains the old law’s testing schedule, but it also makes big changes. What do the new rules mean for the opt-out movement? Can we use them to stop the testing juggernaut? What are the implications for teacher evaluation? Will destructive state takeovers and "turnarounds" continue unabated? How are people already organizing to win needed changes. We will outline the shifts and explore the opportunities for organizing Massachusetts parents, teachers, and students for better schools.
Citizens for Public Schools Executive Director Lisa Guisbond,
Citizens for Public Schools Executive Board member Alain Jehlen.
Teaching Social Studies for Social Justice
In this presentation Social Studies teachers with strong social justice leaning reflect upon the daunting journey that they have faced to uphold their commitment to teach for social justice while meeting administrative and accountability expectations. After this reflection, presenters draw on research that they are conducting with Urban Education faculty at a university and their teaching experiences to share strategies that can provide Social Studies teachers with openings to teach for social justice in their classrooms. We will also share advice and provide specific Social Studies lesson plans that illustrate various ways that social justice teaching can be incorporated into History curriculum at the middle and high school level.
Raphael E. Rogers, Clark University Laura Colket, Clark University Nina Hoey, Worcester Public Schools Alex Hoyt, Hudson Public Schools Greg MacPhee, Worcester Public Schools Katherine Pinard, Worcester Public Schools Cecelia Spencer, Worcester Public Schools Hannah Weinsaft, Worcester Public Schools
Working the System: Advocacy for Systemic Change
Youth are keenly aware of the issues that affect them and their hopes for a better community. Less often do they have the tools needed to carry-out effective action and make long-term, systemic change. This highly interactive workshop will explore how not only youth but educators and civic participants can leverage a detailed advocacy process to make systemic change in their schools and local communities on issues that affect them. Participants will learn this process by doing. They will choose a current issue that matters to them and will practice the advocacy steps necessary to go from caring passionately about an issue to engaging in action. Discussion will focus on how to apply this advocacy framework in different settings: classroom teaching, school leadership advocacy, and larger community efforts.
Gillian Pressman Generation Citizen