The C3 Framework is the guideline for social studies education throughout the United States. Social studies education is responsible for preparing students for civic engagement. In this workshop we will explore and critique, the Informed Action component of the C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards. Informed Action occurs when students use disciplinary knowledge, skills, and perspectives to inquire about problems involved in public issues; deliberate with other people about how to define and address issues; take constructive, independent, and collaborative action; reflect on their actions; to create and sustain groups. The theoretical framework for the critique of the C3 Framework: Informed Action component is critical race theory and is based upon the findings of a 5- week study of a pre-colonial African history curriculum taught to 10 Black and Latino male students. Through the findings of this study, I will share methods to implement Informed Action, through the inclusion of cultural history into the curriculum as a means to conduct social justice. Participants will examine the relationship between cultural history and cultural identity in curriculum development as a necessary conduit for student-school-community-activism.
Presenter: Tandra Birkett is a Social Studies EdM student at Teachers College, Columbia University. Ms. Birkett served as a classroom teacher for the NYC DOE for 23 years and in that capacity she was both a Model and Lead Teacher. She is currently a consultant. She has written curriculum for the NYC DOE Social Studies Department and has provided professional development for the Office of Teacher Education at Teachers College, the annual NYC Social Studies Conference, and the NYC Transfer School Conference. Tandra’s educational philosophy is: “Education in the First Form of Action”.
This workshop provides an overview of the Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH) program at Teachers College, Columbia University, examining how teachers (and other educational stakeholders) can tangibly use students’ local community history to inspire, empower, and teach important academic literacies. What does it look like for students to “do” history? How can students create culturally relevant, equity-based historical narratives of their past that can inform the present? This workshop explores these questions by providing detailed lesson plans, handouts, examples, and specific strategies for “doing” historical community research with young people. Through an in-depth, interactive Prezi presentation, participants will be taken on a pedagogical journey: from how to frame historical research in a classroom setting, to steps on how adults and students can co-create historical knowledge together. How can educators use the “city as an educator” to re-think the teaching of history? New York City is full of rich, powerful narratives (as are all cities) that young people should be learning and re-creating from their perspective and life experiences. This workshop is geared toward teachers, particularly middle and high school social studies and English teachers, who are interested in using history as a way to promote equity in the classroom, empower young people to learn (and write) their own historical narratives, and improve students’ academic literacy skills. By the workshop’s end, participants will have learned about the YHH methodology and specific pedagogical strategies to use in their own classrooms.
Presenter: Barry M. Goldenberg, a Teachers College, Columbia University Ph.D. candidate, is a Research Fellow at Teachers College’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) and Founder and Former Director of Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH). In addition to numerous presentations and various publications about the YHH program, he has guest lectured to pre-service teachers at universities such as Teachers College and Brown University about re-thinking history pedagogy. Barry has also shared his historical work on community schools in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s in both academic and public spaces throughout the New York and New Jersey area. For more information about his work, please visit barrygoldenberg.com.
This workshop offers school leaders, teachers, parent advocates and researchers a space to learn about the work being done by a New York City parent advocacy group in Jackson Heights, Queens. This group's mission is to educate other parents about the benefits of supporting and improving their local public schools (including integrated dual language programs) rather than busing their children out of the neighborhood for disproportionately White and higher income charter schools, private schools, or gifted and talented options. The facilitators of the workshop include a New York City public school teacher and parent advocate, and a researcher who has recently conducted a study on the work that multiracial parent advocates are doing to integrate schools. Participating in the research process has helped the group reflect on their advocacy work as they move forward. The co-facilitators will explore practical actions that participants can take back to their schools and districts. Discussion questions will include: 1. How can parent activists mobilize other parents to choose their local public schools, and counter the school choice/privatization trend? 2. What motivates parents to stay and opt in to their local schools? 3. How are parents’ school choices related to the current political climate, democratic schooling, and systemic and cultural pressures? Overall, participants will learn about the ways in which parent mobilization efforts can influence parental school choice, can serve as a network of information for other parents and community organizations about important educational issues for the good of the community.
Presenter: Donna Chin was raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and is a product of the New York City public school system. She is currently an ENL teacher in midtown Manhattan, and a parent with two young children enrolled in the local public schools in Queens. She has been an active member of Jackson Heights People for Public Schools for four years where she advocates for the expansion of dual language programs in her community, and has done outreach efforts to educate local immigrant organizations about the parent advocacy group’s work. Allison Roda is Assistant Professor of Education at Molloy College in the Educational Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities Ed.D. program. She is a public school parent and advocate. Roda’s research and teaching interests are focused on urban education policy, educational stratification, families and schools, and qualitative research methods. She is the author of Inequality in Gifted and Talented Programs: Parental Choices About Status, School Opportunity, and Second-Generation Segregation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
This workshop seeks to unpack the question, what does it mean to create classrooms that are in solidarity with people of color down your block and beyond colonial borders? It highlights the way in which two femmes of color educators have created solidarity amongst themselves and other women/femmes/gender non-binary people of color throughout the world, by establishing Women of Color in Solidarity. This grassroots movement seeks to unpack the intersections of our histories in order to highlight our global resistance as people of color. This is not separate from our classrooms, for we use critical literacies to share this knowledge with our students and community educators. We view ourselves and our students as citizens of the world who also represent transnational borders coming together. This thinking and practice is our engaged equity pedagogy that we share with those who come in contact with us. We carry resilient pieces of our lands, our ancestors, and our traditions within us. In this session, we will unpack what global solidarity inside the classroom looks like and how it represents a larger community, globally. Through this hands-on workshop, participants will walk away with tangible tools/activities, engaged readings, and newly formed answers on how to engage their students as global actors.
Presenter: Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones is Co-Founder of Women of Color in Solidarity and Founder of Resistance Education, who identifies as an African American/ Afro-Caribbean Black Femme Womanist. Her work focuses on developing radical education as a form of healing in global brown and black communities. Her mission is centered on disrupting colonial legacies of education that mask itself in the name of development, specifically in communities of color. She uses poetry, hip-hop, and other forms of art to create and implement anticolonial black/ muxerista/ transnational/ indigenous feminist curriculum for black and brown youth. Creating spaces for women/femmes/gnc people of color to heal, unlearn to relearn, and create is the continued work her ancestors called her to do. Cheyenne is an educator, writer, sister, healer, and friend.
As schools become increasingly diverse, effectively fostering and nourishing relationships with all students and their families is an ever-growing challenge for many school personnel. With 82% of educators (nationwide) identifying as White, understanding, challenging, and adapting one’s perception of others is an essential step towards becoming a culturally-responsive practitioner; before developing and deepening our awareness and understanding of our students and their families, we must first examine our own social and cultural identities. Guided self-reflection is a technique that allows us to better understand how our life experiences inform who we are and how we perceive and interact with others. Utilizing the research of Daniel Kahneman, Mahzarin Banaji, Beverly Tatum, and Christopher Emdin, Django Paris, and H. Samy Alim, Jessie Lavorgna has designed a self-reflection and awareness-building tool that assists school personnel to discover/uncover their perceptions developed as a result of their experiences. When the tool is used and the learnings applied, schools are able to begin to decenter whiteness and to deepen culturally sustaining practices, making way for a vibrant learning community. In this interactive session, participants will use the tool; they will engage in an individual self-reflection, a pair-share, and in a whole group share-out.
Presenter: Jessie B. Lavorgna engages families and communities in school improvement initiatives that close opportunity gaps for students and promote academic achievement. She has an extensive background in educational program development and implementation of evidence-based practices in cross-cultural relations and multicultural education. Currently, she works for the Education Development Center (EDC) where she designs and delivers training for and provides technical assistance to teachers around fostering and sustaining culturally responsive family-school-community partnerships. She lives and works in Connecticut.
Educators oftentimes feel ill-equipped and paralyzed when encountering racial microaggressions in their classrooms. This workshop sets the stage for effectively engaging difficult dialogues on race by contracting educators to commit to the collective goal of addressing racial microaggressions when they occur in educational spaces. Participants will learn how partaking in productive race-based discourse can be an emancipatory practice for both white individuals and people of color (both students and teachers). An opportunity will be presented for a live discourse to take place, to help illustrate ways in which discussions on race can be approached. By applying these skills in their respective educational settings, educators and administrators can interrupt the recapitulation of racial trauma experienced by students of color that assail their racial identity and hinder their psychological and educational progress.
Presenter: Mariel Buque is a Ph.D. Candidate in Counseling Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Founder of Cultural Therapy (www.culturaltherapy.health) , an online platform that connects people of color to culturally-affirming mental health care. Her work focuses on the advancement of culturally affirming practices in institutional climates and on increasing access to therapy for People of Color. She is the writer of the Psychology Today blog called Unpacking Race, which focuses on improving access to care and racial health disparities, and she also trains therapists, educators, and companies in the areas of cultural competency, implicit bias, and microaggressions. She has led this workshop for two years at Reimagining Education and has received positive feedback from educators and administrators as to how they can implement workshop materials into their respective schools.
Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world. According to Statistics Canada, by 2031, visible minority groups in Canada will increase to 65%. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is the largest school board in Canada and fourth largest school board in North America currently serving approximately 246,000 students in 583 schools. TDSB is committed to “creating an equitable school system where the achievement and well-being of every student is fostered through rich, culturally authentic learning experiences in diverse, accepting environments where all are included, every voice is heard, and every experience is honoured.” Equitable and inclusive learning environments may be created through self-recognition and reflection of personal biases and privileges. As an administrator, it is part of my responsibility to work collaboratively with my staff to carry out our board’s Vision For Learning and Enhancing Equity Pathway through our School’s Improvement Plan (SIP). It would be my honour to share some of the wonderful work and initiatives my school is currently engaged in. Audience will have an opportunity to firstly, understand our school community such as strengths and needs of our students and staff, various data used to support our SIP goals, etc. And secondly, how our staff ensures our school climate is inclusive and our words/decisions/actions are equitable. Fighting for the equitable right of ALL students is not a community, city, state/province or country wide issue. It is a worldwide global issue and courageous and professional dialogues are necessary in order for educators to learn from each other and to ensure ALL of our students are taken care of through equitable lenses.
Presenter: Donald Feng is currently the Vice-Principal at Ellesmere-Statton P.S. with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in Canada. Throughout his 16 years as an educator, he has worked closely with other teachers, administrators and system leaders to carry out the board vision, specifically the notion of identifying and eliminating barriers in order to improve students’ achievement and mental well-being. Donald believes in order to serve all students; we must first serve our most underserved students as equitable learning opportunity is a right, not a privilege.
Traditionally, discipline is defined as the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience. What are the benefits and challenges for both segregated and integrated schools in reframing student discipline using Restorative Justice (RJ)? How can we achieve lasting support for RJ from our entire school community? Like any initiative, RJ if done well can have transformative results for students and school communities. In this workshop, you will experience RJ work through discussion circles and case studies involving the three tiers of RJ, and you will be given tools that can support implementing RJ practices in your school. However, in order to re-frame our schools to be truly RJ, and ensure that RJ work is sustainable, we also have to redefine the way we see disciplining students. With that in mind, this workshop will stress the importance of bridging this work to parents, teachers and support staff in the school community and will address challenges and successes that arise from making RJ visible in your approach to supporting student struggle.
Presenters: Melissa Moskowitz is a parent, educator, and activist with an impassioned desire to refocus the goal and purpose of a public education to promote school integration. She has spent 18 years working in New York City public schools and is currently Assistant Principal at University Middle School. Drawing upon her experience as a parent and educator, Melissa helped to integrate the student body at Park Slope Collegiate. Melissa is a founding member of Parents for Middle School Equity Group in New York City District 15 and a parent partner with IntegrateNYC4Me. She received an MA from New York University and an M.Ed from Bank Street College, and holds National Board Certification for Students with Exceptional Needs. Nichole Rowe Small is a school counselor for the New York City Department of Education. She has over twenty years of being an educator in different capacities. She uses restorative practices throughout her career and believes in the power of circles. She is an anti-racist educator and believes in the need for equity for all students. She is very much into Mindfulness practices and encourages students to practice this as well.
Whose knowledge counts in the curricula we teach? Whose voices are included/excluded in our classrooms? In what ways can/should educators and students engage in social action? This interactive workshop will engage participants in exploring pedagogies that center youth voice as culturally sustaining and humanizing pedagogy in schools, with particular emphasis on youth participatory action research (YPAR). During the workshop, participants will see youth projects, use/create tools for classroom use, and discuss some of the possibilities, challenges, and potential misunderstandings of youth participatory action research in curriculum and pedagogy. All are encouraged to bring ideas, questions and materials to "workshop" during part of the session, and/or engage with samples provided.
Presenters: Dr. Limarys Caraballo is associate professor in the Secondary Education department at Queens College, and in the Urban Education program at The Graduate Center of CUNY; she is also a Research Fellow in the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include the impact of youth research on teachers’ curriculum and pedagogy. Dr. Caraballo directs the Complicated Conversations Series to encourage dialogue about complex topics among students, faculty, and staff in a diverse campus context. Jazmine Estremera has been teaching high school English for four years. She currently works at John Bowne High School in Flushing, Queens, where she teaches sophomore and senior English. Jazmine is interested in teaching about social justice and topics/literature relevant to her students and their needs. She is a Masters student in English Literature at Queens College.
New York City schools are of the most racially and economically segregated in the United States. This has been a persistent problem that for decades has gone unaddressed by City leadership. In recent years, the City has taken significant but long overdue steps to address the persistent educational segregation. In the last two years, the City released a diversity framework, is piloting diversity in admissions enrollment plans at over 40 schools, formed a School Diversity Advisory Group, is creating a staff position to lead implementation of diversity initiatives, and has announced its first district-wide integration plan. This new investment by City leadership is a direct result of persistent advocacy and organizing by students, educators, parents, and advocates across the City. The NYC Alliance for School Integration and Desegregation (ASID), in partnership with IntegrateNYC, is an organization that has played a critical role in pushing New York City to move towards integration and building partnerships between other education equity movements. We are collectively reckoning with the reality that true school integration never happened and grappling with what a real movement for integration must include - race, resources, representation, restorative discipline practices, and relationships. In order to achieve this, we must reimagine an educational system that has never existed in this country. This workshop will give attendees strategies for community organizing, coalition building, and infrastructure development for building a community-based movement for real integration.
Presenters: Matt Gonzales is Co-Chair of ASID Steering Committee, and Director, School Diversity Project, New York Appleseed. Toni Smith-Thompson is a member of ASID Steering Committee, and Education Campaigns Organizer, New York Civil Liberties Union. Sam Rosaldo is Co-Chair of ASID Steering Committee and works in District 79, NYC Department of Education.
This is America. Segregated, unequal schools that do not honor students’ identities, histories or futures. Schools where the teaching staff doesn’t reflect the community and police are more common than counselors. But what if? What if we could reimagine every part of the system? Imagine students not just at the impact of a segregated and unequal system, but as the designers of and advocates for just schools. Imagine attempting not just to stop harm, but to heal generations of injustice through envisioning justice and taking action to make it real. The students of IntegrateNYC have come together from segregated schools to create a framework for the transformation of education: the 5Rs of Real Integration. Taken collectively, these individual commitments comprise a holistic transformation of our racist system. Join a student leader and adult coach from IntegrateNYC to learn about the 5Rs and be exposed to tools and practices for engaging the leadership of young people. From problem definition to solution design, learn how we have gotten to where we are and how you can participate in the growing movement for Real Integration. Adult allies interested in starting a student led chapter of Integrate in their local communities will also have a chance to connect with IntegrateUS, our National Network, and plan for a year of student-driven policy and action.
Presenters: Leanne Nunes, Director of Equity, IntegrateNYC, and a high school sophomore, has facilitated social justice workshops and GSA meetings at her school in the South Bronx. Zaps (Sarah Zapiler), Executive Youth Coach, IntegrateNYC, led a learning & development department at an education non-profit prior to developing IntegrateNYC’s professional development model.
Raising race questions offers strategies for teachers that will help muster courage, confront internal resistance and take action in the pursuit of equity. Learning about race and Whiteness can be confusing, contentious, and frightening, particularly for White people. Even just asking questions about race can be scary because we are afraid of what our questions might reveal about our ignorance or bias. Raising Race Questions invites teachers to use inquiry as a way to develop sustained engagement with challenging racial questions and to do so in community so that they learn how common their questions actually are. It lays out both a process for getting to questions that lead to growth and change, as well as a vision for where engagement with race questions might lead. Race questions and questions of privilege are not meant to lead us into a quagmire of guilt, discomfort, or isolation. Sustained race inquiry is meant to lead to anti-racist classrooms, positive racial identities, and a restoration of the wholeness of spirit and community that racism undermines.
Presenter: Ali Michael is the co-founder and director of the Race Institute for K-12 Educators, and the author of Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Inquiry and Education(Teachers College Press, 2015), winner of the 2017 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award. She is co-editor of the bestselling Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories (2015, Stylus Press) and The Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys (2018, Corwin Press). She also sits on the editorial board of the journal Whiteness and Education. Ali teaches in the mid-career doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, as well as the Graduate Counseling Program at Arcadia University. In the 2017-18 school year, she will hold the Davis Visiting Professorship at Ursinus College. Ali’s article, What do White Children Need to Know About Race?, co-authored with Dr. Eleonora Bartoli in Independent Schools Magazine, won the Association and Media Publishing Gold Award for Best Feature Article in 2014. She may be best known for her November 9, 2016 piece What Do We Tell the Children? on the Huffington Post, where she is a regular contributor.
Considerations of Whiteness and post-whiteness represent integral components of a movement toward racial equity in educational systems and settings. How are educators and counselors addressing Whiteness as part of their work? And how do you have conversations about that at school? In this facilitated discussion session, participants will 1) address questions like these, 2) strategize around common sticking points and pitfalls in dialogues with students, colleagues, and parents, and 3) take away helpful tips and techniques.
Presenter: Laura Smith is an professor and the Director of Clinical Training in the Counseling Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Laura was formerly the Training Director of Pace University's APA-accredited predoctoral internship program and later the founding Director of the Rosemary Furman Counseling Center at Barnard College. She was subsequently the Director of Psychological Services at the West Farms Center in the Bronx, where she provided services, training, and programming within a multifaceted community-based organization. At Teachers College, Laura is the co-founder of The Civic Participation Project, and her research team studies social inclusion/exclusion and emotional well-being, the influence of classism and racism on psychological theory and practice, and participatory action research (PAR) in schools and communities.
This workshop is geared towards elementary school teachers who want to implement more culturally relevant science and engineering learning in their classroom. We will begin with a quick overview of why this is important and cover some of the research supporting this approach. Then we will focus on simple strategies that can transform your students’ perceptions of science and engineering, and their understanding of who can be a scientist or engineer. Participants will also come away with easy to implement ideas on how to help students connect to famous scientists, leading to higher engagement with the content area. This approach also helps students understand that high-level scientific and engineering work does not require exceptional inborn ability, but instead is the result of hard work. This helps students believe that they are capable of doing this kind of work themselves. And lastly, the workshop will include ways to engage students in challenging tasks and support them through moments of frustration so they build resiliency, and see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. This workshop will help counter gender, racial and ethnic disparities in science and engineering education, helping all students reach their full potential.
Presenter: Jacquelyn Duran, PhD, serves as Director of Enrichment Services at The Hollingworth Center. Under her supervision, Hollingworth Science Camp provides innovative inquiry-based science education to hundreds of elementary school children every year. This includes providing teacher education and training for the science camp teachers. Under her direction, the Center has completed several projects in Chile in collaboration with the Huilo Huilo Foundation and the Chilean government. Prior to coming to Teachers College, Jacquelyn taught in a Title I elementary school in Los Angeles, California, working with English language learners in both Spanish and English. As the science curriculum coordinator for grades K through 5, she implemented the inquiry-based science curriculum and provided professional development for teachers. Concurrently, Jacquelyn completed a Master’s Degree in Education Foundations and Theory from California State University, Los Angeles. Jacquelyn just completed her PhD in Sociology and Education program at Teachers College.
In a society built on institutional racism, collaborating productively with parents of diverse backgrounds requires building awareness of race, power and privilege and challenging white supremacy on individual, interpersonal and institutional levels. In this session for parents and educators, community organizers and parent leaders will examine the race and class dynamics among parents in gentrifying neighborhoods, and explore the mindset and practices that are necessary for white parents to contribute to building equitable multi-racial and multi-class community.
Presenters: Moderator: Richard Gray, Deputy Director of the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. Presenters: Megan Hester, Director of the Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative at the NYU Metro Center and District 22 parent; Felicia Alexander, parent leader with the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ), Community School District 16 parent, and lifelong Bedford-Stuyvesant resident; and Tameka Carter, former CEJ parent leader, District 17 parent, and lifelong Crown Heights resident.