ITOC 2012-2023
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ITOC functioned as an in-person convening for its first nine years, and transitioned to virtual programming during the pandemic in 2020. Below is a list of all of our speakers and workshops since we started in 2011.
2023 Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice Keynote Speakers
June 21-23, 2023
In-Person at the University of California, Riverside
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Dr. Joi Spencer
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Dr. Subini Annamma
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Dr. Tiffani Marie
Friday, June 23, 2023 Tiffani Marie is the daughter of Sheryll Marie, granddaughter of Dorothy Wilson and Annette Williams, and the great-grandaughter of Artelia Green and Olivia Williams. She comes from a long line of Arkansas educators. She is passionate about learning with and from youth, building with sacred and beloved community, sewing, music production, and connecting to the natural world. Tiffani Marie is also the co-director of the Institute for Regenerative Futures and Professor of Teacher Education and Ethnic Studies at San Jose State University, where her research focuses on health disparities, the study of anti-blackness as a social determinant of health, and the embodiment of critical pedagogies as an attenuating agent of toxic stress in black children. Her broader research interests integrate theoretical frameworks and methods from public health, critical race studies and education. Her current research findings demonstrate that while schooling is a powerful indicator of health, it does not benefit all groups equally. Hence, Marie’s scope of work extends beyond promoting mastery of academic content toward more robust health-based educational interventions that may lead to increased educational pathways and greater health outcomes for youth.
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2022-2023 ITOC Virtual Programming Keynote Speakers
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Rethinking Race, Class, Language, and Educational Inequity
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Jonathan Rosa is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and, by courtesy, Departments of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is also the Director of Stanford’s Program in Chicanx-Latinx Studies and President of the Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association. Dr. Rosa’s research centers on joint analyses of racial marginalization, linguistic stigmatization, and educational inequity. He is author of the award-winning book, Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019, Oxford University Press), and co-editor of the volume, Language and Social Justice in Practice (2019, Routledge). His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Harvard Educational Review, American Ethnologist, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Language in Society, as well as media outlets such as The New York Times, The Nation, NPR, and Univision.
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From Theory to Praxis: Implementing Linguistic Justice in the Classroom
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April Baker-Bell is an award-winning transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and associate professor of language, literacy, and English education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her award-winning book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy. Baker-Bell is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 2021 Coalition for Community Writing Outstanding Book Award, the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship, the 2021 Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Creative Activity, and the 2020 Theory Into Practice Article of the Year Award.
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Decolonial Praxis: Indigenous Land, People, and Resurgence
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Valerie Shirley (Diné) is Associate Professor of Indigenous Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies and Dean’s Fellow for Indigenous Education in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. She is also a co-founding Director of the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (ITEP) which prepares Indigenous teachers to critically examine western schooling structures and be intentional in infusing Indigenous knowledges, philosophies, and languages into learning spaces. Her current work is centered on mobilizing decolonial praxis through Indigenous social justice education with Indigenous youth, teachers, and teacher candidates. Her recent publications are a co-edited book titled Indigenizing education: Transformative research, theories, and praxis (2022); a journal article titled Grounding Indigenous teacher education in red praxis (2021), and a book chapter titled Enacting Indigenous research methods: Centering Diné epistemology to guide the process (2019).
Jeremy Garcia (Hopi/Tewa) is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. Dr. Garcia is of the Hospoawungwa (Roadrunner) clan. He is co-founding Director of the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (ITEP) at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on decolonization, critical Indigenous curriculum and pedagogy, Indigenous teacher education, and critical and culturally sustaining family and community engagement. Recent publications include a co-edited book, Indigenizing Education: Transformative Research, Theories, and Praxis (2022), and a co-authored article, Grounding Indigenous Teacher Education in Red Praxis (2021).
Jeremy Garcia (Hopi/Tewa) is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. Dr. Garcia is of the Hospoawungwa (Roadrunner) clan. He is co-founding Director of the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (ITEP) at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on decolonization, critical Indigenous curriculum and pedagogy, Indigenous teacher education, and critical and culturally sustaining family and community engagement. Recent publications include a co-edited book, Indigenizing Education: Transformative Research, Theories, and Praxis (2022), and a co-authored article, Grounding Indigenous Teacher Education in Red Praxis (2021).
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The Fugitive Life of Black Teaching: A History of Pedagogy and Power
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Jarvis Givens is an Assistant professor of Education and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Professor Givens is the author of Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, published by Harvard University Press in 2021, which won the 2022 Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Book Prize for “the best new book in African American History and Culture,” the 2022 Outstanding Book Award for the American Education Research Association, and the 2022 Lois P. Rudnick Book Award for the New England American Studies Association. He co-edited We Dare Say Love: Supporting Achievement in the Educational Life of Black Boys, published by Columbia University's Teachers College Press in 2018, and his work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Professor Givens is also building the Black Teacher Archive, an online portal that will house digitized records documenting the more than one-hundred-year history of “Colored Teachers Associations.” He is a native of Compton, California, and he currently resides in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
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Riding the Wave: Unpacking Internalized and Subversive Oppression and Prioritizing Sustainable Self-Care for BIPOC Educators
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Dr. Han Ren (she/they) is a licensed clinical and school psychologist, consultant, speaker and educator. She is deeply rooted in liberation and anti-oppressive work, practicing from a justice-oriented, interpersonal, and systems-informed framework. Through her widely viewed work on social media, she strives to make therapy accessible and applicable to our daily lives. Dr. Ren addresses the pursuit of collective healing through her work and activism centered in historically overlooked communities. When she's not in the therapy chair, you can find her laughing with family and friends, caffeinating with black coffee, dancing offbeat to live music and Peloton-ing.
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Intersectional Justice: Disability, Race, and Policy in Schools
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Adai Tefera is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at the University of Arizona. Her scholarship focuses on how educational policies aimed at improving equity among students at the intersections of race, disability, language, and other sociocultural differences are enacted and experienced by educators, leaders, and students. She has worked in schools, both in after-school and summer programs, and served as a fellow with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Her commitment to educational equity and justice is rooted in her experiences as the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, her upbringing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and her experiences learning from and with students with disabilities, especially her sister, who remains one of her most important teachers.
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Embracing Community: Understanding and Valuing Community-based Educational Spaces to Holistically Support Youth of Color
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Bianca Baldridge is an Associate Professor of education with expertise in community-based education and critical youth work practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Baldridge’s research explores critically examines the confluence of race, class, and gender and their impact on educational reforms that shape community-based spaces engaging Black and Latinx youth in the US.
2022-2023 RACIAL JUSTICE IN EDUCATION MINI-COURSES
Racial Justice Education Mini-Courses are designed to provide a dialogical space for ITOC fellows to engage more in-depth on a specific topic of interest, once a week in four consecutive weeks. Space is limited in each course, so we ask interested educators/teacher educators to complete a short application form that will be sent out approximately two weeks before each course begins. These courses are included in the fellowship.
Racial Justice Education Mini-Courses are designed to provide a dialogical space for ITOC fellows to engage more in-depth on a specific topic of interest, once a week in four consecutive weeks. Space is limited in each course, so we ask interested educators/teacher educators to complete a short application form that will be sent out approximately two weeks before each course begins. These courses are included in the fellowship.
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Teaching to the “Now”: Creating Community-Responsive Racial Justice Curriculum
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Michaela McCoy is a high school English teacher and organizer who teaches in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN. She holds a master’s degree in urban education with a concentration in curriculum, assessment, and instruction from Metropolitan State University and has served as English department chair. In 2020, she co-founded Restoring Our Roots, an affinity space for Minnesota teachers of color to collectively heal and empower themselves to be leaders in racial justice work. Michaela is passionate about engaging students critically in the English classroom and designing curriculum that pushes students to “freedom dream” about a better world. Outside of education, Michaela likes to binge watch reality TV and spend time on and around the lakes.
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Teachers of Color at the Center: Using the Inquiry-to-Action Group Model to Reimagine Educator Learning
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Pamela (Pam) Segura is an educator, facilitator, and organizer from the Bronx. Between 2014 and 2022, Pam taught BIPOC youth in nonprofit settings, two New York City DOE K-12 public schools, and summer youth employment programs. She left the DOE in 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in General Psychology with a Concentration in Mental Health and Substance Abuse Counseling (CMHSAC) at the New School for Social Research in New York. She is interested in researching trauma connected to racial and socioeconomic disparities; substance abuse; and the mental health of teachers and organizers. Pam also organizes with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). When not working, Pam is usually running, hanging out with friends and pets, or listening to music.
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Ethnic Studies in the Elementary Classroom
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Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath is an Assistant Professor at the University of San Francisco and faculty coordinator of the South Bay Masters of Arts and Teaching Credential program, Project H.E.A.L. (Humanizing Educators and Learners). She is deeply committed to centering the work of ethnic studies and humanizing education in teacher preparation. Her research focuses on critical literacy, social studies, ethnic studies, and social justice learning and teaching in the elementary classroom. She is author of the books: Planting the Seeds of Equity: Ethnic Studies and Social Justice in the K-2 Classroom, Social Studies, Literacy, and Social Justice in the Elementary Classroom: A Guide for Teachers and co-author of Preparing to Teach Social Studies for Social Justice: Becoming a Renegade, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is founding member and Executive Director of CARE-ED (California Alliance of Educational Researchers) and founding member of the National Association of Multicultural Education, California Chapter.
2021-2022 ITOC KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Teachers of Color: Resisting Racism and Reclaiming Education
AUGUST 19, 2021 , 4-5:30PM PST
Based on her new book, Teachers of Color: Resisting Racism and Reclaiming Education, Kohli will engage participants in a reflection of how structural racism serves as a continuous barrier against diversifying the teaching force and impacts the wellbeing of teachers of Color. She will also explore tools teachers of Color employ to resist the current structures and reimagine education, offering space for teachers and teacher educators to reflect upon their own contexts, support networks, and visions for education.
Dr. Rita Kohli is a co-founder and co-director of ITOC, and serves as an Associate Professor in the Education, Society and Culture Department at the University of California, Riverside. As a former Oakland Unified School District teacher, teacher educator and education researcher, Kohli has spent almost 20 years in urban public schools across the country. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the international journal Race, Ethnicity and Education and the Journal of Teacher Education, and is co-editor of the book, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice. Her research interests include critical race theory, racial climate and racial hierarchies in K-12 schools, and she has studied the strengths, barriers and resiliency of teachers of color across the pipeline. Kohli was the recipient of the University of California, Riverside's Innovator for Social Change Award (2016), the Scholar Activist and Community Advocacy Award (2017) from the Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group, and the Early Career Scholar of the Social Context of Education Division of the American Educational Research Association (2018).
AUGUST 19, 2021 , 4-5:30PM PST
Based on her new book, Teachers of Color: Resisting Racism and Reclaiming Education, Kohli will engage participants in a reflection of how structural racism serves as a continuous barrier against diversifying the teaching force and impacts the wellbeing of teachers of Color. She will also explore tools teachers of Color employ to resist the current structures and reimagine education, offering space for teachers and teacher educators to reflect upon their own contexts, support networks, and visions for education.
Dr. Rita Kohli is a co-founder and co-director of ITOC, and serves as an Associate Professor in the Education, Society and Culture Department at the University of California, Riverside. As a former Oakland Unified School District teacher, teacher educator and education researcher, Kohli has spent almost 20 years in urban public schools across the country. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the international journal Race, Ethnicity and Education and the Journal of Teacher Education, and is co-editor of the book, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice. Her research interests include critical race theory, racial climate and racial hierarchies in K-12 schools, and she has studied the strengths, barriers and resiliency of teachers of color across the pipeline. Kohli was the recipient of the University of California, Riverside's Innovator for Social Change Award (2016), the Scholar Activist and Community Advocacy Award (2017) from the Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group, and the Early Career Scholar of the Social Context of Education Division of the American Educational Research Association (2018).
Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally & Historically Responsive Education
SEPTEMBER 2, 2021, 4-5:30PM PST
In this foundational session, the facilitator will clearly define culture, equity, anti-racism and culturally & historically responsive education. Together, culture will be explored and revisited in deep, multifaceted ways. We will consider our own cultural identities and approaches to learning the cultures/identities of students. By the end of this session, participants will understand culture and will be charged to engage in self-identity work. The facilitator will also introduce participants to the model of culturally and historically responsive education. Participants will learn a brief history of CHRE and the power of education among communities of color in the United States. In addition, educators will be introduced to a five-layered equity model for teaching and learning (1) identity, (2) skills, (3) intellectualism (4) criticality and (5) joy. Exemplar CHRE lesson and unit plans across the contents and grade levels will be shown and discussed. The session will end with practical considerations for writing equitable lesson and unit plans.
Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University, and serves as the director of the GSU Urban Literacy Collaborative & Clinic. She studies Black historical excellence within educational communities with goals of reframing curriculum and instruction today. Dr. Muhammad’s scholarship has appeared in leading educational journals and books. Some of her recognitions include the 2014 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English, Promising New Researcher Award, the 2016 NCTE Janet Emig Award, the 2017 GSU Urban Education Research Award, the 2018 UIC College of Education Researcher of the Year and the 2020 American Educational Research Association (AERA), Division K Early Career Awardee. She works with teachers, leaders, parents and young people across the United States and South Africa in best practices in culturally and historically responsive instruction. She is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2021, 4-5:30PM PST
In this foundational session, the facilitator will clearly define culture, equity, anti-racism and culturally & historically responsive education. Together, culture will be explored and revisited in deep, multifaceted ways. We will consider our own cultural identities and approaches to learning the cultures/identities of students. By the end of this session, participants will understand culture and will be charged to engage in self-identity work. The facilitator will also introduce participants to the model of culturally and historically responsive education. Participants will learn a brief history of CHRE and the power of education among communities of color in the United States. In addition, educators will be introduced to a five-layered equity model for teaching and learning (1) identity, (2) skills, (3) intellectualism (4) criticality and (5) joy. Exemplar CHRE lesson and unit plans across the contents and grade levels will be shown and discussed. The session will end with practical considerations for writing equitable lesson and unit plans.
Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University, and serves as the director of the GSU Urban Literacy Collaborative & Clinic. She studies Black historical excellence within educational communities with goals of reframing curriculum and instruction today. Dr. Muhammad’s scholarship has appeared in leading educational journals and books. Some of her recognitions include the 2014 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English, Promising New Researcher Award, the 2016 NCTE Janet Emig Award, the 2017 GSU Urban Education Research Award, the 2018 UIC College of Education Researcher of the Year and the 2020 American Educational Research Association (AERA), Division K Early Career Awardee. She works with teachers, leaders, parents and young people across the United States and South Africa in best practices in culturally and historically responsive instruction. She is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.
Centering Survivance in K-12 Curriculum
OCTOBER 7, 2021, 4-5:30PM PST
Indigenous peoples and issues have been receiving greater attention in the media and curricula recently. As such, it is vital that educators think critically and carefully about how they are representing Indigenous peoples and issues in K-12 curriculum. This interactive presentation introduces educators to White Earth scholar Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance as a meaningful practice that can guide curriculum. After highlighting examples of the various ways Indigenous youth and communities enact survivance, educators will collaborate and reflect on how they might center survivance stories in their own teaching.
Dr. Leilani Sabzalian (Alutiiq) is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies in Education and Co-Director of the Sapsik'wałá Education Program at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on creating spaces to support Indigenous self-determination in education. Her publications, including her book Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools, aim to affirm Indigenous peoples and equip educators to challenge colonialism in curriculum, policy, and practice. She also collaborates with the Office of Indian Education in Oregon to develop professional development on Tribal History/Shared History, a law that mandates the inclusion of Native studies curriculum in all K-12 Oregon public schools.
OCTOBER 7, 2021, 4-5:30PM PST
Indigenous peoples and issues have been receiving greater attention in the media and curricula recently. As such, it is vital that educators think critically and carefully about how they are representing Indigenous peoples and issues in K-12 curriculum. This interactive presentation introduces educators to White Earth scholar Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance as a meaningful practice that can guide curriculum. After highlighting examples of the various ways Indigenous youth and communities enact survivance, educators will collaborate and reflect on how they might center survivance stories in their own teaching.
Dr. Leilani Sabzalian (Alutiiq) is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies in Education and Co-Director of the Sapsik'wałá Education Program at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on creating spaces to support Indigenous self-determination in education. Her publications, including her book Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools, aim to affirm Indigenous peoples and equip educators to challenge colonialism in curriculum, policy, and practice. She also collaborates with the Office of Indian Education in Oregon to develop professional development on Tribal History/Shared History, a law that mandates the inclusion of Native studies curriculum in all K-12 Oregon public schools.
Lessons from Teacher and Community Organizing: Expanding Ethnic Studies Across Classrooms, Schools, and A District
NOVEMBER 4, 2021, 4-5:30PM PST
Stockton Unified School District Ethnic Studies Steering Committee
Aldrich Limpin Sabac, JR Arimboanga, Dinah Clark, Dr. Alberto Gutierrez, Christina Mitchell
Kailee Lewis, Marco Rojas, and Gustavo Gonzalez
NOVEMBER 4, 2021, 4-5:30PM PST
Stockton Unified School District Ethnic Studies Steering Committee
Aldrich Limpin Sabac, JR Arimboanga, Dinah Clark, Dr. Alberto Gutierrez, Christina Mitchell
Kailee Lewis, Marco Rojas, and Gustavo Gonzalez
Are you interested in learning more about Ethnic Studies and a collective of educator activists? Learn from the Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) Ethnic Studies Steering Committee, as they share how Ethnic Studies in Stockton, CA, has grown through teacher and community organizing. In this talk, eight members of the SUSD Ethnic Studies Steering will highlight examples of curriculum they use in their own Ethnic Studies classrooms to further empower students and share how they work with their community to expand the power of Ethnic Studies.
The purpose of the Stockton Unified School District Ethnic Studies program is to empower students by exploring the rich, intersectional, and interconnected histories, cultures, and identities of Black, Indigenous, People of Color* and historically marginalized communities. Through culturally relevant, decolonizing, and community responsive practices, students develop the skills to critically analyze racism and other forms of oppression to work in solidarity across and with communities to create a more socially just and equitable world. With love, respect, reflection, hope, solidarity, critical consciousness, community, interconnection, wellness, healing, and transformation; Ethnic Studies students become the necessary scholars, leaders, and agents of change our community and world needs and deserves.
The purpose of the Stockton Unified School District Ethnic Studies program is to empower students by exploring the rich, intersectional, and interconnected histories, cultures, and identities of Black, Indigenous, People of Color* and historically marginalized communities. Through culturally relevant, decolonizing, and community responsive practices, students develop the skills to critically analyze racism and other forms of oppression to work in solidarity across and with communities to create a more socially just and equitable world. With love, respect, reflection, hope, solidarity, critical consciousness, community, interconnection, wellness, healing, and transformation; Ethnic Studies students become the necessary scholars, leaders, and agents of change our community and world needs and deserves.
Aldrich Limpin Sabac was born and raised in South, Stockton, California. As an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, he double majored in Asian American Studies and Sociology, while teaching with Pin@y Educational Partnerships. He later attended the Teacher Education Program at University of California, Los Angeles, and completed his masters inquiry on critical pedagogy and the arts in education. He is currently a fellow with Community Responsive Education and teaches English, ELD, and Ethnic Studies at his alma mater, Edison High School.
Jr Arimboanga, MAT, is currently the new Stockton Unified Ethnic Studies Teacher On Special Assignment in his hometown of Stockton. Jr has been working alongside high school youth for over a decade in San Francisco and Oakland where he fought for and taught the first high school Ethnic Studies courses in their districts. He holds a B.A. in Asian American Studies (Ethnic Studies) and a minor in History from San Francisco State University (the birthplace of Ethnic Studies). He also has a Master of Art in Teaching in Urban Education & Social Justice from the University of San Francisco.
Dinah Clark is an educator, poet, and teacher. Dinah is a native of Stockton, and has been teaching English for 7 years and teaching high school English for the past 5 years. In 2018 Dinah wrote a book of poetry entitled, “Words are Real.” This book includes 21 poems, explores concepts like God, relationships, self-reflection, and much more including writing prompts as well. Dinah enjoys performing spoken word, hikes with her son Alexander, and of course, teaching.
Originally from Stockton, Christina Mitchell is a high school Spanish and Social Science teacher in Stockton Unified School District. She earned a BA in Government and Spanish with a minor in Africana Studies from Claremont McKenna College. She also earned a MA in Secondary Education from San Francisco State University. She has over 10 years of experience working in high schools in various capacities, including her time teaching African American Studies.
Kailee Lewis is a Black Woman, Educator, Parent, and Dreamer who was born and raised in Battle Creek, a city in southwest Michigan. She attended Central Michigan University and studied; Creative Writing, Black Literature & History, and a little American Sign Language. After graduating from CMU in 2015 Kailee, her partner, Jason, and child, Liyah, moved to the Central Valley, where she obtained a Master’s Degree in Urban Ed.: Admin. & Policy from Loyola Marymount University in 2019. Later that year, she joined Stockton Unified School District as a High School English teacher where she currently teaches.
Marco Rojas was born and raised in Stockton and attended Commodore, Franklin, Delta College, and University of the Pacific. He is the son of hard working parents that immigrated from Mexico, who saw education as a passport to success, even when he didn’t see it. He was a former professional racquetball player before he became an educator, and saw many parts of the world which has shaped him to help the youth achieve their goals and aspirations. He loves his community and, outside of teaching, enjoys spending time with family and is dedicated to his podcast, “Aqui Estamos,” which highlights the voices of our community and how to make social and political change.
Gustavo Gonzalez is an educator and artist. The son of Mexican immigrants, he was born and raised in Stockton, CA. Gustavo studied at Stanford University, majoring in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. He went on to receive a Master of Arts in Education (Social Science) from Stanford. Gustavo stayed in the Bay Area and taught middle school and high school in San Jose for several years. In 2018, Gustavo returned home to Stockton to teach at his alma mater, Edison High School. He founded the Ethnic Studies Department at Edison and continues to help build Ethnic Studies across Stockton. Gustavo is proud of his heritage and is excited to teach a new course next year titled "Mexican American History."
The Intersectional Realities of Students in Mixed-Status Families: Immigration Policy, Schooling Experiences, and Transformative Educational Practices
FEBRUARY 3, 2022, 4-5:30PM PST
In this talk, Professor Mangual Figueroa outlines two main ideas: first, that immigration policy and educational practices overlap and shape the schooling experiences of immigrant-origin students and second, that young children know and care deeply about their and their loved one’s immigration status. By centering the voices of children and adults in mixed-status Latinx families, and sharing her own firsthand experiences as a teacher and ethnographer, Mangual Figueroa will invite participants to rethink key words––related words like citizen and citizenship––that we often hear in public education but rarely critically examine from the perspectives of students and families. During this event participants will have the opportunity to consider the intersections between immigration and education, and how this shapes their role and responsibilities as educators. This talk will include multiple ways of engaging––from listening to snippets of classroom talk to hearing children’s own analysis of their legal and racial identities, from working individually and in small groups to engaging in whole group discussions––in order to foster a humanizing approach to learning from immigrant-origin children and from each other. The goal is for participants to leave this talk with a deeper sense of how schools can reproduce or interrupt the systems of exclusion upheld through immigration policy, new insights into how much children know at a young age about immigration and how this informs their schooling experiences, and a renewed commitment to working towards justice alongside their immigrant-origin students and communities.
Ariana Mangual Figueroa is an Associate Professor in the Ph.D. Programs in Urban Education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Her ethnographic research seeks to understand the ways in which the lives of children and adults in mixed-status families are shaped by citizenship status and schooling practices during everyday, routine interactions. Her work has appeared in journals including the American Educational Research Journal, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, the Bilingual Research Journal, and Anthropology & Education Quarterly; as well as edited books including Humanizing Research and the Encyclopedia of Language Education. She is currently a co-Principal Investigator of two longitudinal research projects: "Putting Immigration and Education into Conversation Everyday" (PIECE) Research Project funded by the W.T. Grant Foundation and the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE). Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she taught English as a Second Language and Spanish in public schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn. She is a co-founding member of the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).
FEBRUARY 3, 2022, 4-5:30PM PST
In this talk, Professor Mangual Figueroa outlines two main ideas: first, that immigration policy and educational practices overlap and shape the schooling experiences of immigrant-origin students and second, that young children know and care deeply about their and their loved one’s immigration status. By centering the voices of children and adults in mixed-status Latinx families, and sharing her own firsthand experiences as a teacher and ethnographer, Mangual Figueroa will invite participants to rethink key words––related words like citizen and citizenship––that we often hear in public education but rarely critically examine from the perspectives of students and families. During this event participants will have the opportunity to consider the intersections between immigration and education, and how this shapes their role and responsibilities as educators. This talk will include multiple ways of engaging––from listening to snippets of classroom talk to hearing children’s own analysis of their legal and racial identities, from working individually and in small groups to engaging in whole group discussions––in order to foster a humanizing approach to learning from immigrant-origin children and from each other. The goal is for participants to leave this talk with a deeper sense of how schools can reproduce or interrupt the systems of exclusion upheld through immigration policy, new insights into how much children know at a young age about immigration and how this informs their schooling experiences, and a renewed commitment to working towards justice alongside their immigrant-origin students and communities.
Ariana Mangual Figueroa is an Associate Professor in the Ph.D. Programs in Urban Education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Her ethnographic research seeks to understand the ways in which the lives of children and adults in mixed-status families are shaped by citizenship status and schooling practices during everyday, routine interactions. Her work has appeared in journals including the American Educational Research Journal, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, the Bilingual Research Journal, and Anthropology & Education Quarterly; as well as edited books including Humanizing Research and the Encyclopedia of Language Education. She is currently a co-Principal Investigator of two longitudinal research projects: "Putting Immigration and Education into Conversation Everyday" (PIECE) Research Project funded by the W.T. Grant Foundation and the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE). Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she taught English as a Second Language and Spanish in public schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn. She is a co-founding member of the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).
2022 TEACHER EDUCATORS OF COLOR CONVENING
January 20-21, 2022 | Hosted by San José State University
WHY DO WE NEED A CONVENING JUST FOR TEACHER EDUCATORS OF COLOR?
Today 70% of teacher candidates, 87% of adjunct instructors, and 91% of tenured/tenure track instructors are white, and research has demonstrated a pervasive race-evasive culture within teacher education. Additionally, with institutional racism shaping curriculum, pedagogy, policies, and practices, teacher education has remained steadfast in reproducing a predominantly white teaching force with limited racial literacy and deficit frames of students and families of Color. A growing body of research has drawn attention to teacher educators of Color and their critical role in disrupting the pervasive racist curriculum, pedagogy, and ideologies of teacher education programs (Picower & Kohli, 2017; Matias, 2013; Navarro, Quince, Hseih, Deckman, 2019), however, additional studies have also described the tremendous emotional cost of this labor (Atwater, et. al, 2013; Shim, 2018). Teacher educators of Color are in need of a space to process their minoritized positionality, build community, and consider how to realize their visions for teacher education.
To support Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) teacher educators who are committed to racial justice and who need a place to strengthen their praxis and realize their potential as racial justice leaders in their programs, the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice (ITOC) will offer its second convening focused specifically on supporting Teacher Educators of Color. Hosted by the Lurie College of Education at San José State University, this two-day event will be held virtually January 20-21, 2022, and take participants through dialogue and working group space focused on 1) the racialized experiences of teacher educators of Color and 2) assessing teacher educator program racial climate to support racial justice.
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2021-2022 MINI COURSES
Racial Justice Education Mini-Courses are designed to provide a dialogical space for ITOC fellows to engage more in-depth on a specific topic of interest, once a week in four consecutive weeks. Space is limited in each course, so we ask interested educators/teacher educators to complete a short application form that will be sent out approximately two weeks before each course begins. These courses are provided at no cost.
Mini-Course #1: Critical Race Theory in Education
Rita Kohli, University of California Riverside
Tuesdays, September 2021
While the attacks on critical race theory in K-12 school contexts continue to grow, there are few opportunities for teachers to explore and engage with the theory. This mini-class will expose educators to core ideas related to CRT. Over four weeks, participants will be guided through the history and foundations, conceptualizations (i.e. interest convergence, whiteness as property) and extensions, and will explore the applications of CRT to their own work and context.
Rita Kohli, University of California Riverside
Tuesdays, September 2021
While the attacks on critical race theory in K-12 school contexts continue to grow, there are few opportunities for teachers to explore and engage with the theory. This mini-class will expose educators to core ideas related to CRT. Over four weeks, participants will be guided through the history and foundations, conceptualizations (i.e. interest convergence, whiteness as property) and extensions, and will explore the applications of CRT to their own work and context.
Mini-course #2: Freedom Readers Book CLub Earthseed: The Pedagogy of Octavia Butler
Altagracia Montilla
Thursdays, October 2021 & Thursdays, November 2021
Freedom Readers is an enchanted space curated by educator, facilitator, and strategist, Altagracia Montilla. Freedom Readers is a virtual book club for readers committed to social justice. Freedom Readers is known to go beyond the book to heal and nourish the minds, hearts, and spirits of readers who dare to dream of a world more beautiful than the one we know (more just, loving, caring, etc.). Freedom Readers leverages the magic of community and connection to inspire the most imaginative parts of readers. Freedom Readers is partnering with ITOC for a special four-part discussion series inspired by Octavia Butler’s fictional book of scripture The Book of the Living - a collection of verses found in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Through this collection of verses we’ll “take root amongst the stars” as we explore a liberating and revolutionary way of seeing the world and our place in it. Together we’ll create a set of principles to help sustain our efforts as organizers, as educators, and as folx consistently healing through struggle.
Altagracia Montilla is a freedom-dreamer, facilitator, and strategist committed to dismantling oppressive systems that disempower communities targeted by physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and economic violence. Altagracia brings over ten years of professional experience designing strategies to actively challenge oppression and a life-time of experience unapologetically resisting white supremacy. Altagracia radically humanizes clients, facilitates experiences that channel the best in people, and incorporates joy into this challenging work. Altagracia believes every moment of every day is an opportunity to create the world that should exist – a world more just, more equitable, and more inclusive. Her work is dedicated to bringing this belief to life. Driven by a vision of transforming organizations into equitable, empowering communities, Altagracia designs and implements antiracism and anti-white-supremacy strategies for schools and organizations. Altagracia is an expert at administering needs assessments, designing improvement strategies, and facilitating transformational experiences that promote belonging and care. Her work is informed by her research, observations as an educator and non-profit leader, and her own experiences challenging oppressive systems and living unapologetically as a queer, woman of color, raised in a single-parent home in the South Bronx. Altagracia founded A.M. Consulting to support schools, organizations, and corporations in confronting and challenging their own oppressive systems. In service of strengthening connections across the country, Altagracia founded Freedom Readers, a virtual book club for readers committed to social justice and freedom dreaming.
Altagracia Montilla
Thursdays, October 2021 & Thursdays, November 2021
Freedom Readers is an enchanted space curated by educator, facilitator, and strategist, Altagracia Montilla. Freedom Readers is a virtual book club for readers committed to social justice. Freedom Readers is known to go beyond the book to heal and nourish the minds, hearts, and spirits of readers who dare to dream of a world more beautiful than the one we know (more just, loving, caring, etc.). Freedom Readers leverages the magic of community and connection to inspire the most imaginative parts of readers. Freedom Readers is partnering with ITOC for a special four-part discussion series inspired by Octavia Butler’s fictional book of scripture The Book of the Living - a collection of verses found in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Through this collection of verses we’ll “take root amongst the stars” as we explore a liberating and revolutionary way of seeing the world and our place in it. Together we’ll create a set of principles to help sustain our efforts as organizers, as educators, and as folx consistently healing through struggle.
Altagracia Montilla is a freedom-dreamer, facilitator, and strategist committed to dismantling oppressive systems that disempower communities targeted by physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and economic violence. Altagracia brings over ten years of professional experience designing strategies to actively challenge oppression and a life-time of experience unapologetically resisting white supremacy. Altagracia radically humanizes clients, facilitates experiences that channel the best in people, and incorporates joy into this challenging work. Altagracia believes every moment of every day is an opportunity to create the world that should exist – a world more just, more equitable, and more inclusive. Her work is dedicated to bringing this belief to life. Driven by a vision of transforming organizations into equitable, empowering communities, Altagracia designs and implements antiracism and anti-white-supremacy strategies for schools and organizations. Altagracia is an expert at administering needs assessments, designing improvement strategies, and facilitating transformational experiences that promote belonging and care. Her work is informed by her research, observations as an educator and non-profit leader, and her own experiences challenging oppressive systems and living unapologetically as a queer, woman of color, raised in a single-parent home in the South Bronx. Altagracia founded A.M. Consulting to support schools, organizations, and corporations in confronting and challenging their own oppressive systems. In service of strengthening connections across the country, Altagracia founded Freedom Readers, a virtual book club for readers committed to social justice and freedom dreaming.
Mini Course #3: Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Politics: A Holistic Approach to Teaching and Learning
Ehecatl Wind Philosophies, Veronica Xochitl Valdez & Gabriel A Orosco
Wednesdays, February 2022
This four part series will introduce participants to the guiding values, principles, pedagogical approaches, and foundational concepts of Ethnic Studies in K-12 classrooms. The importance of humanizing educational experiences for marginalized students will also be discussed with an emphasis on centering the student’s voice and establishing dialogic spaces to confront conversations about systemic oppression. Participants will also be given opportunities to develop skills to effectively respond to pushback against Ethnic Studies by learning to navigate the politics of race, power, and privilege.
Veronica Xochitl Valdez: Born to Mexican, immigrant, field-working parents in Santa Maria, CA, Veronica Xochitl Valadez is a long-time advocate of Ethnic Studies, as well as a K-16 educator, community organizer, Xicana visual artist, and traditional Aztec dancer. Veronica has a strong educational background and much work experience in the field of Ethnic Studies, with a BA in Chicana/o Studies from UC Santa Barbara and an MA in Chicana/o Studies from CSU Northridge. She is currently working towards earning a Doctorate in Education with an emphasis in Social Justice from CSU San Bernardino. Veronica currently teaches Chicana/o Studies at CSU Channel Islands and is an instructor for UC Riverside’s Ethnic Studies Certificate Program for K-12 educators. In addition to specializing in Ethnic Studies, Veronica is also well grounded in best practices for language learners. She was a K-5 Dual-Immersion teacher for 14 years in Ventura where she was part of a team of teachers that piloted and established Ventura County’s first Dual-Immersion program that not only became an effective bilingual program but that also embraces and teaches meaningful multicultural education. In collaboration with other stakeholders, Veronica’s advocacy and efforts helped lead to the implementation of Ethnic Studies in Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Rialto. Along with other social justice educators, Veronica’s advocacy helped in advancing the statewide push to make Ethnic Studies a high school graduation requirement, which eventually led to the passing of AB101 in 2021. As EWP’s President & Co-founder, Veronica’s mission is to assist school districts in establishing transformative, impactful, and sustainable Ethnic Studies programs. Being a traditional Aztec dancer of over 20 years has given Veronica the opportunity to absorb Indigenous “ways of being” from Indigenous elders and cultural workers. Her work is grounded in anti-racist and Indigenous perspectives that support the re-humanization and empowerment of historically marginalized and oppressed communities.In addition to developing rubrics and frameworks that ensure the curricular integrity of Ethnic Studies, Veronica has played a key role in developing culturally relevant curriculum for K-16 classrooms. Along with her partner and EWP Co-founder, Gabriel Orosco, Veronica has created an impactful and transformative professional development series to prepare educators to teach Ethnic Studies effectively, serving school districts across the state of California.
Gabriel A Orosco: Gabriel A. Orosco is a high school dropout who fell prey to the school-to-prison pipeline. He pursued his dream to attend USC via community college and has been an educator for 25 years. At USC, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Finance and minored in Economics. At USC, he began his grassroots organizing with the student organization, La Raza Political Action Committee. As an instrument of change, they created a monument on campus honoring the late civil rights leader Cesar Chavez. He has been in special education for the last 9 years. Since 1997, Gabriel began teaching Xicano studies grounded in Indigenous Pedagogy at the elementary level. He is an education/non-profit cultural consultant focusing on culturally relevant pedagogy, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Indigenous epistemologies. Gabriel has been involved in community activism since the 1990s fighting against such legislation like propositions 187 & 227 in California. He also received the "Social Justice Teacher of the Year" award from a teacher organization in the city of Los Angeles. He is former president of El Rancho Unified School Board, where he served from 2016-2020. El Rancho was among the first school districts to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement. Gabriel is currently pursuing a doctoral degree with an emphasis in social justice and is a traditional Aztec dancer/activist/scholar who is passionate about cultural diversity, respect for all people, culturally responsive curriculum, and Ethnic Studies. Gabriel honors his indigenous identity, culture, and spirituality. He continues to teach, inspire, and motivate students, educators, and the community to become agents of change.
Ehecatl Wind Philosophies, Veronica Xochitl Valdez & Gabriel A Orosco
Wednesdays, February 2022
This four part series will introduce participants to the guiding values, principles, pedagogical approaches, and foundational concepts of Ethnic Studies in K-12 classrooms. The importance of humanizing educational experiences for marginalized students will also be discussed with an emphasis on centering the student’s voice and establishing dialogic spaces to confront conversations about systemic oppression. Participants will also be given opportunities to develop skills to effectively respond to pushback against Ethnic Studies by learning to navigate the politics of race, power, and privilege.
Veronica Xochitl Valdez: Born to Mexican, immigrant, field-working parents in Santa Maria, CA, Veronica Xochitl Valadez is a long-time advocate of Ethnic Studies, as well as a K-16 educator, community organizer, Xicana visual artist, and traditional Aztec dancer. Veronica has a strong educational background and much work experience in the field of Ethnic Studies, with a BA in Chicana/o Studies from UC Santa Barbara and an MA in Chicana/o Studies from CSU Northridge. She is currently working towards earning a Doctorate in Education with an emphasis in Social Justice from CSU San Bernardino. Veronica currently teaches Chicana/o Studies at CSU Channel Islands and is an instructor for UC Riverside’s Ethnic Studies Certificate Program for K-12 educators. In addition to specializing in Ethnic Studies, Veronica is also well grounded in best practices for language learners. She was a K-5 Dual-Immersion teacher for 14 years in Ventura where she was part of a team of teachers that piloted and established Ventura County’s first Dual-Immersion program that not only became an effective bilingual program but that also embraces and teaches meaningful multicultural education. In collaboration with other stakeholders, Veronica’s advocacy and efforts helped lead to the implementation of Ethnic Studies in Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Rialto. Along with other social justice educators, Veronica’s advocacy helped in advancing the statewide push to make Ethnic Studies a high school graduation requirement, which eventually led to the passing of AB101 in 2021. As EWP’s President & Co-founder, Veronica’s mission is to assist school districts in establishing transformative, impactful, and sustainable Ethnic Studies programs. Being a traditional Aztec dancer of over 20 years has given Veronica the opportunity to absorb Indigenous “ways of being” from Indigenous elders and cultural workers. Her work is grounded in anti-racist and Indigenous perspectives that support the re-humanization and empowerment of historically marginalized and oppressed communities.In addition to developing rubrics and frameworks that ensure the curricular integrity of Ethnic Studies, Veronica has played a key role in developing culturally relevant curriculum for K-16 classrooms. Along with her partner and EWP Co-founder, Gabriel Orosco, Veronica has created an impactful and transformative professional development series to prepare educators to teach Ethnic Studies effectively, serving school districts across the state of California.
Gabriel A Orosco: Gabriel A. Orosco is a high school dropout who fell prey to the school-to-prison pipeline. He pursued his dream to attend USC via community college and has been an educator for 25 years. At USC, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Finance and minored in Economics. At USC, he began his grassroots organizing with the student organization, La Raza Political Action Committee. As an instrument of change, they created a monument on campus honoring the late civil rights leader Cesar Chavez. He has been in special education for the last 9 years. Since 1997, Gabriel began teaching Xicano studies grounded in Indigenous Pedagogy at the elementary level. He is an education/non-profit cultural consultant focusing on culturally relevant pedagogy, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Indigenous epistemologies. Gabriel has been involved in community activism since the 1990s fighting against such legislation like propositions 187 & 227 in California. He also received the "Social Justice Teacher of the Year" award from a teacher organization in the city of Los Angeles. He is former president of El Rancho Unified School Board, where he served from 2016-2020. El Rancho was among the first school districts to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement. Gabriel is currently pursuing a doctoral degree with an emphasis in social justice and is a traditional Aztec dancer/activist/scholar who is passionate about cultural diversity, respect for all people, culturally responsive curriculum, and Ethnic Studies. Gabriel honors his indigenous identity, culture, and spirituality. He continues to teach, inspire, and motivate students, educators, and the community to become agents of change.
Mini-course #4: Teachers at the Center: Using the Inquiry to Action Group (ItAG) Model to Shape Teacher Learning in Schools
Pam Segura
Tuesdays, March 2022
In this ItAG, we will discuss how the Inquiry-to-Action Group (ItAG) model empowers adults to shape their own learning in K-12 school contexts. We’ll consider, in particular, how the ItAG model:
(1) Invites truly collaborative dynamics between adults in schools;
(2) Slows down time to engage in focused and thoughtful exploration of specific issues;
(3) Challenges the budding leader in teachers.
This exploration will guide us in beginning to craft ItAGs that speak to the seeds and struggles within our own schools. Infused throughout our sessions is a commitment to personal and collective growth, thoughtful inquiry, transformative justice, and joy.
Pam Segura (she/her) is an Afro-Latinx educator, organizer, and facilitator in the Bronx. She is currently in her sixth year of teaching. She has organized with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) since 2016. In her time with NYCoRE, Pam has co-facilitated three New York-based ItAGs on racial capitalism in freedom schools (with the support of Cedric J. Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of a Black Radical Tradition); trauma among young people and adults in K-12 public schools; and school abolition. This year, she will be co-facilitating another round of the school abolition ItAG with young people as co-facilitators. When she isn’t teaching, Pam enjoys running, playing the guitar, hanging out with friends, and reading (currently working through Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism – ask her about it!)
Pam Segura
Tuesdays, March 2022
In this ItAG, we will discuss how the Inquiry-to-Action Group (ItAG) model empowers adults to shape their own learning in K-12 school contexts. We’ll consider, in particular, how the ItAG model:
(1) Invites truly collaborative dynamics between adults in schools;
(2) Slows down time to engage in focused and thoughtful exploration of specific issues;
(3) Challenges the budding leader in teachers.
This exploration will guide us in beginning to craft ItAGs that speak to the seeds and struggles within our own schools. Infused throughout our sessions is a commitment to personal and collective growth, thoughtful inquiry, transformative justice, and joy.
Pam Segura (she/her) is an Afro-Latinx educator, organizer, and facilitator in the Bronx. She is currently in her sixth year of teaching. She has organized with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) since 2016. In her time with NYCoRE, Pam has co-facilitated three New York-based ItAGs on racial capitalism in freedom schools (with the support of Cedric J. Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of a Black Radical Tradition); trauma among young people and adults in K-12 public schools; and school abolition. This year, she will be co-facilitating another round of the school abolition ItAG with young people as co-facilitators. When she isn’t teaching, Pam enjoys running, playing the guitar, hanging out with friends, and reading (currently working through Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism – ask her about it!)
2020-21 ITOC PROGRAMMING
Sponsored by:
Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside
College of Education at San José State University
The California Endowment
With the current restrictions on traveling and physical interactions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 10th Annual ITOC Conference did not convene in-person last June. Instead of cancelling our event, the ITOC Leadership team worked hard to develop #ITOC20 on a virtual platform throughout the 2020-21 school year in order to support the personal and professional well-being of ITOC fellows.
8 virtual talks for ITOC fellows (3 Summer, 3 Fall, 2 Spring)
1 open public talk
2-day virtual convenings for ITOC Teacher educators of Color Yearlong
coaching for Math and Science through a racial justice lens
Femtorship program to pair novice teachers with veteran teachers for support
ITOC Social Events
ITOC VIRTUAL GET DOWN
Saturday, May 16th, 2020, 3-5pm PST
& Saturday, June 27th, 2020, 3-5pm PST
Saturday, May 16th, 2020, 3-5pm PST
& Saturday, June 27th, 2020, 3-5pm PST
With DJ Novela (Nicole Martinez), DJ Mic B (Mike Brim), DJ LG (Luis Guerrero), and DJ Lady Char (Charlene Ramos)
Hosted by ITOC Alum: Genaro Ulloa, Jonathan Montero, & Lisa Kelly
To kick-off ITOC 2020 as a virtual space, ITOC fellows were invited to attend two family-friendly virtual dance parties via Zoom.
Nicole "Novela" Martinez is a Chicana Indigena community artist, educator and activist representing her homeland of Abiqui Pueblo, Nuevo Mexico to her hometown of Sacramento, California. Growing up hip-hop and ranch, she strives to acknowledge our rich ethnic identities and cultures and works to build partnerships and encourage solidarity with diverse communities through music, poetry, photography and the sharing of our unique stories, traditions and spiritual beliefs. Currently Nicole is a fourth grade bilingual teacher at Cesar Chavez Intermediate School in South Sacramento, Meadowview. She also works with community arts organizations Sol Collective, Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, Mahogany Urban Poetry, and other activist organizations. She provides beats, rhythms and soul to ITOC both on the turntables and off.
Michael Brim aka DJ Mic B is Hip Hop educator and DJ in the Greater Sacramento area. He is the Executive Director/Founder of The Cypher Hip Hop Workshops which is a program that seeks to empower, inspire, and educate youth through Hip Hop culture. The Cypher provides programming in three school districts in Sacramento, as well as well multiple community centers and public libraries. He returned to school in the Fall of 2018 to pursue a degree in Sociology, and is on track to transfer to Sacramento State University in January of 2021, where he will earn his Bachelor's and Master's degrees. His career goal is to teach Sociology at the community college level, where he will look to incorporate elements of Hip Hop culture into his curriculum.
Luis Guerrero, also known as DJ LG or Coach Luis, is a passionate DJ turntablist who also happens to be an electrical engineer and math teacher. Luis is an anti-racist educator actively working towards social and racial justice. Luis spins on the Fuego Nights Mix Show every Saturday night on Fuego 103.5FM in Sacramento CA, and he is also the host of the Mas Maíz Mix Show - Sacramento's only Latin music podcast. Luis recently applied to a master's program in education and has a career goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in education. You can follow Luis Guerrero on Instagram and Twitter at @DJLG916.
Char Ramos aka DJ Lady Char has been DJing for over 20 years. Her love for Hip Hop and R&B stands out in her groove filled sets! Char plays events all over the Norcal and is the resident DJ of the following organizations: SacRepublicFC, UCDavis, Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, PACT, BadlandsSac and more. Char takes pride in contributing to the community and is the founder and instructor of the Love Beat DJ Workshops in Sacramento where she empowers youth through teaching DJ Culture.
Hosted by ITOC Alum: Genaro Ulloa, Jonathan Montero, & Lisa Kelly
To kick-off ITOC 2020 as a virtual space, ITOC fellows were invited to attend two family-friendly virtual dance parties via Zoom.
Nicole "Novela" Martinez is a Chicana Indigena community artist, educator and activist representing her homeland of Abiqui Pueblo, Nuevo Mexico to her hometown of Sacramento, California. Growing up hip-hop and ranch, she strives to acknowledge our rich ethnic identities and cultures and works to build partnerships and encourage solidarity with diverse communities through music, poetry, photography and the sharing of our unique stories, traditions and spiritual beliefs. Currently Nicole is a fourth grade bilingual teacher at Cesar Chavez Intermediate School in South Sacramento, Meadowview. She also works with community arts organizations Sol Collective, Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, Mahogany Urban Poetry, and other activist organizations. She provides beats, rhythms and soul to ITOC both on the turntables and off.
Michael Brim aka DJ Mic B is Hip Hop educator and DJ in the Greater Sacramento area. He is the Executive Director/Founder of The Cypher Hip Hop Workshops which is a program that seeks to empower, inspire, and educate youth through Hip Hop culture. The Cypher provides programming in three school districts in Sacramento, as well as well multiple community centers and public libraries. He returned to school in the Fall of 2018 to pursue a degree in Sociology, and is on track to transfer to Sacramento State University in January of 2021, where he will earn his Bachelor's and Master's degrees. His career goal is to teach Sociology at the community college level, where he will look to incorporate elements of Hip Hop culture into his curriculum.
Luis Guerrero, also known as DJ LG or Coach Luis, is a passionate DJ turntablist who also happens to be an electrical engineer and math teacher. Luis is an anti-racist educator actively working towards social and racial justice. Luis spins on the Fuego Nights Mix Show every Saturday night on Fuego 103.5FM in Sacramento CA, and he is also the host of the Mas Maíz Mix Show - Sacramento's only Latin music podcast. Luis recently applied to a master's program in education and has a career goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in education. You can follow Luis Guerrero on Instagram and Twitter at @DJLG916.
Char Ramos aka DJ Lady Char has been DJing for over 20 years. Her love for Hip Hop and R&B stands out in her groove filled sets! Char plays events all over the Norcal and is the resident DJ of the following organizations: SacRepublicFC, UCDavis, Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, PACT, BadlandsSac and more. Char takes pride in contributing to the community and is the founder and instructor of the Love Beat DJ Workshops in Sacramento where she empowers youth through teaching DJ Culture.
Artists:
(Left to right) DJ Novela; DJ Mic B; DJ LG; DJ Lady Char
(Left to right) DJ Novela; DJ Mic B; DJ LG; DJ Lady Char
STRENGTHENING OUR RACIAL LITERACY
2020 ITOC SPRING VIRTUAL TALKS
2020 ITOC FALL VIRTUAL TALKS
DECOLONIZING MENTAL HEALTH IN A PANDEMIC: STRATEGIES FOR HOPE AND RESISTANCE
Candice Valenzuela
Thursday, May 28th, 2020 at 3pm PST
As the world copes with fear, loss of resources and loss of life due to the global pandemic, we all feel the impact in our hearts, bodies and minds. While coping with survival anxieties, mental health can become the last priority, or even a lost hope. Experiences of overwhelm, panic, grief, denial and numbness are understandable as the situation unfolds.
This session will provide:
• Supportive frameworks and practical strategies for nourishing one’s mental and emotional health
• Mental and emotional health from individual, interpersonal, ecological and communal lenses
• Grounding tips to connect to your sources of power and hope
Candice Valenzuela is a mother, educator, lecturer, writer, coach and community wellness advocate. Candice has worked at the intersection of urban education and holistic health for 12 years, serving in a variety of roles from teen health educator, to Special Education teacher and instructional coach, before finding her calling in teacher support and wellness. She got her Master's degree in East-West Psychology from the California Institute for Integral Studies, and studied cultural healing practices with healers in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Oaxaca. Her passion is to transform school communities into authentic spaces of healing and liberation by strengthening their greatest asset: their community of teachers.
Candice Valenzuela
Thursday, May 28th, 2020 at 3pm PST
As the world copes with fear, loss of resources and loss of life due to the global pandemic, we all feel the impact in our hearts, bodies and minds. While coping with survival anxieties, mental health can become the last priority, or even a lost hope. Experiences of overwhelm, panic, grief, denial and numbness are understandable as the situation unfolds.
This session will provide:
• Supportive frameworks and practical strategies for nourishing one’s mental and emotional health
• Mental and emotional health from individual, interpersonal, ecological and communal lenses
• Grounding tips to connect to your sources of power and hope
Candice Valenzuela is a mother, educator, lecturer, writer, coach and community wellness advocate. Candice has worked at the intersection of urban education and holistic health for 12 years, serving in a variety of roles from teen health educator, to Special Education teacher and instructional coach, before finding her calling in teacher support and wellness. She got her Master's degree in East-West Psychology from the California Institute for Integral Studies, and studied cultural healing practices with healers in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Oaxaca. Her passion is to transform school communities into authentic spaces of healing and liberation by strengthening their greatest asset: their community of teachers.
STEPPING THROUGH THE PORTAL: WE ARE THE ONES WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR
Dr. Leigh Patel, University of Pittsburgh
Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 3pm PST
In this interactive webinar, Leigh Patel shares how teachers of color are essential to the lessons to be learned pre-pandemic and how political education has never been more important. Drawing on contemporary examples of unschooling during the pandemic, as well historic struggle for study, Leigh will provide an overview of why we are the ones we've been waiting for and then interact with webinar participants around key issues and questions.
Leigh Patel is an interdisciplinary researcher, educator, and writer. Her work addresses the narratives that facilitate societal structures. With a background in sociology, she researches and teaches about education as a site of social reproduction and as a potential site for transformation. She works extensively with societally marginalized youth and teacher activists. Prior to working in the academy, Professor Patel was a journalist, a teacher, and a state-level policymaker. Across all of these experiences, her focus has been on the ways that education structures opportunities in society and the stories that are told about those opportunities. She currently is Professor and the Inaugural Associate Dean for Equity and Justice at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education.
Dr. Leigh Patel, University of Pittsburgh
Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 3pm PST
In this interactive webinar, Leigh Patel shares how teachers of color are essential to the lessons to be learned pre-pandemic and how political education has never been more important. Drawing on contemporary examples of unschooling during the pandemic, as well historic struggle for study, Leigh will provide an overview of why we are the ones we've been waiting for and then interact with webinar participants around key issues and questions.
Leigh Patel is an interdisciplinary researcher, educator, and writer. Her work addresses the narratives that facilitate societal structures. With a background in sociology, she researches and teaches about education as a site of social reproduction and as a potential site for transformation. She works extensively with societally marginalized youth and teacher activists. Prior to working in the academy, Professor Patel was a journalist, a teacher, and a state-level policymaker. Across all of these experiences, her focus has been on the ways that education structures opportunities in society and the stories that are told about those opportunities. She currently is Professor and the Inaugural Associate Dean for Equity and Justice at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education.
"HOW RACIST ARE WE?" ASSESSING AND SHIFTING TOWARDS RACIAL JUSTICE IN SCHOOLS
Altagracia Montilla, Center for Supportive Schools
Thursday, June 25th, 2020 at 3pm PST
As teachers of color committed to racial justice our persistent demand for anti-racist and equitable schools is often met with skepticism from colleagues and administrators. Working in environments where even those who express a commitment to racial equity struggle to imagine a world outside the status quo, we often hear questions like, “What does anti-racism look like in a school?” In her talk, Altagracia will share insights from an inquiry to action project where she coached teachers over the course of a semester to identify where their schools stand on a spectrum between “racist school” to “anti-racist school," and to implement their own racial justice action plans. Altagracia designed the project with hopes to help alleviate some of the invisible tax teachers of Color experience by providing them with language and frameworks to concretely map their school’s progress towards racial justice. This workshop provides participants with a framework to reflect upon their own contexts along this same framework in their efforts to create racially just schools.
Altagracia Montilla is driven by a vision of transforming schools into equitable, empowering learning communities. Altagracia marries her perspectives as a queer, Afro-Latina, Bronx-hood native, daughter of an incarcerated parent, and first-generation college student, with her experiences as an educator and non-profit leader to design transformational experiences for youth and adults that promote equity, community, and care. Altagracia is the Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Center for Supportive Schools where she founded the Dismantling Racism Initiative. Altagracia founded A.M. Consulting to support schools, organizations, and corporations in confronting and challenging their own oppressive systems.
Altagracia Montilla, Center for Supportive Schools
Thursday, June 25th, 2020 at 3pm PST
As teachers of color committed to racial justice our persistent demand for anti-racist and equitable schools is often met with skepticism from colleagues and administrators. Working in environments where even those who express a commitment to racial equity struggle to imagine a world outside the status quo, we often hear questions like, “What does anti-racism look like in a school?” In her talk, Altagracia will share insights from an inquiry to action project where she coached teachers over the course of a semester to identify where their schools stand on a spectrum between “racist school” to “anti-racist school," and to implement their own racial justice action plans. Altagracia designed the project with hopes to help alleviate some of the invisible tax teachers of Color experience by providing them with language and frameworks to concretely map their school’s progress towards racial justice. This workshop provides participants with a framework to reflect upon their own contexts along this same framework in their efforts to create racially just schools.
Altagracia Montilla is driven by a vision of transforming schools into equitable, empowering learning communities. Altagracia marries her perspectives as a queer, Afro-Latina, Bronx-hood native, daughter of an incarcerated parent, and first-generation college student, with her experiences as an educator and non-profit leader to design transformational experiences for youth and adults that promote equity, community, and care. Altagracia is the Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Center for Supportive Schools where she founded the Dismantling Racism Initiative. Altagracia founded A.M. Consulting to support schools, organizations, and corporations in confronting and challenging their own oppressive systems.
"WE WANNA BE LINGUISTICALLY FREE TOO": IN PURSUIT OF BLACK LINGUISTIC JUSTICE
Dr. April Baker-Bell, Michigan State University
Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 4pm PST
In this workshop, Baker-Bell will discuss the history of Black Language education, share counterstories from Black students about how they navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and she will introduce a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students.
Dr. April Baker-Bell is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and associate professor of language, literacy, and English education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women. Baker-Bell’s new book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism (a term Baker-Bell coined) and white linguistic supremacy. The book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and it captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in community with Black youth.
Dr. April Baker-Bell, Michigan State University
Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 4pm PST
In this workshop, Baker-Bell will discuss the history of Black Language education, share counterstories from Black students about how they navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and she will introduce a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students.
Dr. April Baker-Bell is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and associate professor of language, literacy, and English education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women. Baker-Bell’s new book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism (a term Baker-Bell coined) and white linguistic supremacy. The book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and it captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in community with Black youth.
CENTERING INDIGENOUS LAND EDUCATION IN TEACHING
Anna Lees, Western Washington University
Renee D. Swan Waite, Lummi Nation
Cynthia M. Wilson, Lummi Nation
Dolores Calderon, Western Washington University
Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 3pm PST
In schools, the dominant system of knowledge is the Euroamerican/Western. Even when we adopt culturally relevant approaches, they do little to disrupt the western framework of schools that is largely incompatible with Indigenous knowledges. Thus, bringing Indigenous perspectives into K-12 curriculum is oftentimes at odds both with existing curriculum and how non-natives interact with land and water around them. Land education is an educational approach that centers Indigenous people relations to land, and building on the work of Indigenous thinkers like Vine Deloria Jr. and Leanne Simpson, this reworking represents a political act.
In prior environmental and place based work, Indigenous communities are an afterthought in terms of the design of teacher PD programs. Programs are made by outsiders and executed by outsiders, thus leaving white perspectives largely unchallenged. In this workshop, we share a Land Education Teacher Professional Development (LETPD) framework that speaks to teachers about our responsibility to include tribal history, government, and culture into K-12 classrooms in collaboration with tribal nation communities. To be clear, LETPD does not represent new understandings for tribal nation communities. The framework is composed of 5 overarching principles: 1) it is built on authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples, 2) it is Indigenous community led, 3) it is localized and seasonal, 4) it connects to school curriculum, and 5) it supports Indigenous resurgence.
In this workshop, we share from the context of Washington State, where Senate Bill 5028 (2018) mandates the teaching of tribal sovereignty curriculum k-12 (STI) and integration of “Native American curriculum developed by the office of the superintendent of public instruction into existing Pacific Northwest history and government requirements.” We will facilitate an interactive conversation with participants to consider ways this framework can be applied in varied contexts
In prior environmental and place based work, Indigenous communities are an afterthought in terms of the design of teacher PD programs. Programs are made by outsiders and executed by outsiders, thus leaving white perspectives largely unchallenged. In this workshop, we share a Land Education Teacher Professional Development (LETPD) framework that speaks to teachers about our responsibility to include tribal history, government, and culture into K-12 classrooms in collaboration with tribal nation communities. To be clear, LETPD does not represent new understandings for tribal nation communities. The framework is composed of 5 overarching principles: 1) it is built on authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples, 2) it is Indigenous community led, 3) it is localized and seasonal, 4) it connects to school curriculum, and 5) it supports Indigenous resurgence.
In this workshop, we share from the context of Washington State, where Senate Bill 5028 (2018) mandates the teaching of tribal sovereignty curriculum k-12 (STI) and integration of “Native American curriculum developed by the office of the superintendent of public instruction into existing Pacific Northwest history and government requirements.” We will facilitate an interactive conversation with participants to consider ways this framework can be applied in varied contexts
Anna Lees Ed.D. (Little traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, descendant) began her career as an early childhood classroom teacher in rural northern Michigan. Now, an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in at Western Washington University, she partners with schools and communities to prepare teachers for the holistic needs of children, families, and communities. Anna is committed to developing and sustaining reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities to engage community partners as co-teacher educators, opening spaces for Indigenous values and ways of knowing and being in early childhood and higher education. She is currently engaged in research around a land education professional development model led my tribal nations and a relationship-based site embedded professional development model with tribal early learning programs.
Renee Swan-Waite M.Ed. is a member of the Lummi Nation and currently manages a higher education grant program. She helps people set goals, identify their strengths and cultivate their interests. She helps students navigate Western education. She promotes positive Native identity, fosters connections between the generations, and most importantly, she demonstrates optimism in encouraging all to dream big. The family and tribal history teachings that Renee received many years ago from her grandmother at the kitchen table continue to guide her work. Renee believes that the land is sacred and provides generous gifts for all. The teaching and the guidance of the old people are embedded in Land Education Professional Development. She is helping children develop a love for the Earth.
Now Si’am
U’ ey’ e sxw ol
Suit sen ohileqw kwenes ena tachel Si’am
My name is Cynthia Wilson; I carry the Indian name of Oomagelees from my maternal side of the family. My father’s name is Culaxten, James H. Wilson from Lummi and my mother’s name is Roberta Hunt Wilson, from the most northern Island of Vancouver. I am the 3rd oldest in my immediate family; I have four sisters and three brothers. I have worked in the Education field for 30 years and I truly enjoy working with children from the smallest to the oldest. Many of the years I worked at the Lummi Nation School. I am so fortunate to have learned our Lummi Language from my mentors and I am proud to be able to share it with our children and my family. I love to share stories that have great lessons to live by and also to see the expression on the faces of the children when they are listening and learning. I received my Masters Degree from Grand Canyon University, I love to learn and it is important we continue to stay highly qualified when working with our children. I did my internship with the Lummi Early Learning Center to attain a well needed CDA, to be a better helper and for enhanced learning. Our early learners are so ready to learn and eager, it is my pleasure to serve our people the best we can. I will continue my journey in education and continue to learn, my philosophy is in short to help our children, strengthen the educational experience and to increase understanding of who they are and stand proud. Working with the teachers and staff of this area is one way to keep everyone going in the same direction; no canoes over turning in the waters as we move forward together for our main resource – our children.
U’ ey’ e sxw ol
Suit sen ohileqw kwenes ena tachel Si’am
My name is Cynthia Wilson; I carry the Indian name of Oomagelees from my maternal side of the family. My father’s name is Culaxten, James H. Wilson from Lummi and my mother’s name is Roberta Hunt Wilson, from the most northern Island of Vancouver. I am the 3rd oldest in my immediate family; I have four sisters and three brothers. I have worked in the Education field for 30 years and I truly enjoy working with children from the smallest to the oldest. Many of the years I worked at the Lummi Nation School. I am so fortunate to have learned our Lummi Language from my mentors and I am proud to be able to share it with our children and my family. I love to share stories that have great lessons to live by and also to see the expression on the faces of the children when they are listening and learning. I received my Masters Degree from Grand Canyon University, I love to learn and it is important we continue to stay highly qualified when working with our children. I did my internship with the Lummi Early Learning Center to attain a well needed CDA, to be a better helper and for enhanced learning. Our early learners are so ready to learn and eager, it is my pleasure to serve our people the best we can. I will continue my journey in education and continue to learn, my philosophy is in short to help our children, strengthen the educational experience and to increase understanding of who they are and stand proud. Working with the teachers and staff of this area is one way to keep everyone going in the same direction; no canoes over turning in the waters as we move forward together for our main resource – our children.
Dolores Calderon is an associate professor of Youth, Society & Justice in Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University. As a researcher who embodies the complicated subjectivities of the U.S./Mexico border—Mexican (settler/arrivant), Indigenous (Pueblo), and U.S. citizen—she is interested in researching and participating in work that untangles and unpacks the complicated way multiple colonialisms impact decolonial thinking and practices, specifically in educational curriculum.
TEACHER ORGANIZING FOR RACIAL JUSTICE
Emi Ito, Berkeley Unified School District, California
Roberta Hernandez, Roseville Area Schools, Minnesota
Johnny Gonzalez, Coachella Unified School District, California
Jonathan Montero, Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, New York Collective for Radical Educators
Moderated by Dr. Edwin Mayorga, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 4pm PST
In schools, the dominant system of knowledge is the Euroamerican/Western. Even when we adopt culturally relevant approaches, they do little to disrupt the western framework of schools that is largely incompatible with Indigenous knowledges. Thus, bringing Indigenous perspectives into K-12 curriculum is oftentimes at odds both with existing curriculum and how non-natives interact with land and water around them. Land education is an educational approach that centers Indigenous people relations to land, and building on the work of Indigenous thinkers like Vine Deloria Jr. and Leanne Simpson, this reworking represents a political act.
In prior environmental and place based work, Indigenous communities are an afterthought in terms of the design of teacher PD programs. Programs are made by outsiders and executed by outsiders, thus leaving white perspectives largely unchallenged. In this workshop, we share a Land Education Teacher Professional Development (LETPD) framework that speaks to teachers about our responsibility to include tribal history, government, and culture into K-12 classrooms in collaboration with tribal nation communities. To be clear, LETPD does not represent new understandings for tribal nation communities. The framework is composed of 5 overarching principles: 1) it is built on authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples, 2) it is Indigenous community led, 3) it is localized and seasonal, 4) it connects to school curriculum, and 5) it supports Indigenous resurgence.
In this workshop, we share from the context of Washington State, where Senate Bill 5028 (2018) mandates the teaching of tribal sovereignty curriculum k-12 (STI) and integration of “Native American curriculum developed by the office of the superintendent of public instruction into existing Pacific Northwest history and government requirements.” We will facilitate an interactive conversation with participants to consider ways this framework can be applied in varied contexts
In prior environmental and place based work, Indigenous communities are an afterthought in terms of the design of teacher PD programs. Programs are made by outsiders and executed by outsiders, thus leaving white perspectives largely unchallenged. In this workshop, we share a Land Education Teacher Professional Development (LETPD) framework that speaks to teachers about our responsibility to include tribal history, government, and culture into K-12 classrooms in collaboration with tribal nation communities. To be clear, LETPD does not represent new understandings for tribal nation communities. The framework is composed of 5 overarching principles: 1) it is built on authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples, 2) it is Indigenous community led, 3) it is localized and seasonal, 4) it connects to school curriculum, and 5) it supports Indigenous resurgence.
In this workshop, we share from the context of Washington State, where Senate Bill 5028 (2018) mandates the teaching of tribal sovereignty curriculum k-12 (STI) and integration of “Native American curriculum developed by the office of the superintendent of public instruction into existing Pacific Northwest history and government requirements.” We will facilitate an interactive conversation with participants to consider ways this framework can be applied in varied contexts
This workshop will move the discussion of teacher activism beyond a response to oppression towards a space for imagination and centering of our communities. Facilitated by a teacher activist/scholar, we will hear the experiences of four teacher-activists of Color from different positionalities and geographies. Through their narratives, we will hear a collective story about what activism and transformation looks like when we, as BIPOC teachers, center our epistemologies, needs, joys and power.
Emi Ito is a Japanese American Multiracial mother and elementary school teacher. She has been passionate about teaching Japanese American history to elementary age children for her 16 years of teaching in Bay Area public schools. She currently serves as the Committee Chair for Tsuru for Solidarity’s Families & Kids Committee and is a Steering Committee member of Japanese Americans for Justice. She is a Dharma Teacher at her Buddhist Church, has taught many years in a Japanese American summer program in the Bay Area, and has directed and run after school programs focused on the experiences of Multiracial and Transracially adopted youth. Last year she wrote a document titled, the Bill of Responsibilities for Multiracial People of Color With Light Skin & White Passing Privilege, which was inspired by the work of Dr. Maria PP Root. She is honored to work with a dynamic and dedicated group of individuals via Tsuru for Solidarity and Japanese Americans for Justice, to make our collective work to fight injustice intergenerational and inclusive of our children.
Roberta A. Hernandez is a 3rd generation Chicana, her father from south Texas and mother from Illinois. As the first of her family to graduate from university she also realizes all that was lost along the way. Her passion is to stop that pattern and renew authentic identities and ways of being in her colleagues and students from communities of color. She is an Academic Interventionist at Central Park Elementary School in Roseville Minnesota, a few blocks from Philando Castille’s murder and a few miles from George Floyd's murder. Roberta also serves as lead mentor for the district BIPOC educator mentorship program and district affinity group. She first attended ITOC in 2017 and is part of a growing group of Minneapolis/St. Paul based ITOC alumni working together to support and increase the 4% of BIPOC educators that are in the whole state of Minnesota.
Johnny González is a high school English teacher at Desert Mirage High School in the Coachella Valley Unified School District. He currently teaches Chicana/o Literature, Multicultural Literature, AP Language & Composition, and is the Puente Project coordinator. He is one of three teachers who led the Ethnic Studies movement in Coachella schools. Johnny is currently a doctoral student (ABD) at University of Redlands, in Educational Leadership for Social Justice. His dissertation is focused on the perpetual impact of institutional racism in segregated schools serving Chicana/o students and Chicana/o educators engaged in reimagining educational outcomes for Chicana/o students.
Jonathan Montero is the founding English teacher at the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering. Jonathan became a Hollyhock Teaching Fellow in 2016 and then a Hollyhock Leading Fellow in 2018, both fellowships at Stanford University. He has been attending ITOC since 2018. Now in his eighth year of teaching, he leads the English Department in their efforts to utilize more equity-based practices and to use Mastery based grading as a tool in that endeavor. In his free time, Jonathan enjoys participating in and spectating competitive video game tournaments, hiking, attending live music shows, and hanging out with his cat Sophie.
Edwin Mayorga, Ph.D. (he/him/his) is a parent-educator-activist-scholar, and Associate Professor of Educational Studies and Latin American/Latino Studies at Swarthmore College (PA). Formerly a NYC elementary school teacher and member of the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), Edwin is the director of the #BarrioEdProject, a youth participatory action research (PAR) collaborative; the Community, School, and Colleges Partnership (CSCP) study; and #EthnicStudiesPHL curricular database. Edwin writes about racial neoliberal urbanism, scholar-activism, PAR entremundos, decolonization and teaching for racial and economic justice. He is a lead co-editor of the online journal #CritEdPol, co-editor of the book What’s Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality (2015, 2020), and is working on his first book which examines the intersection of racial capitalist urbanism and sobrevivencia in a NYC Latinx barrio and barrio education between 2002-2013.
2021 ITOC SPRING VIRTUAL TALKS
K-12 ETHNIC STUDIES: CULTIVATING SPACES OF COMMUNITY, HEALING, AND RESILIENCE FOR BIPOC TEACHER AND STUDENTS
Princess Reese, Seattle, Washington
Nivia Alvarado, East Los Angeles, California
Darlene Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
Thursday, February 18th, 2021 at 4pm PST
Princess Reese, Seattle, Washington
Nivia Alvarado, East Los Angeles, California
Darlene Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
Thursday, February 18th, 2021 at 4pm PST
The implementation of Ethnic Studies at the K-12 level brings possibilities and challenges in a context of schooling that so often centers and normalizes whiteness. In recentering our curriculum and praxis on narratives, experiences, and perspectives of often marginalized identities and communities, we can build spaces of solidarity with and among our BIPOC students and colleagues. This workshop will highlight examples of curriculum from Ethnic Studies teachers and reflections on how ethnic studies allows us to center our sustainability and development as we engage in the deeply personal labor of love of teaching.
Seattle, WA native Princess Reese is a social justice educator currently serving the curious minds of Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. A graduate of the UCLA TEP program (2018), Princess spends time organizing with #StudentsDeserve, building curriculum with peers, and working towards making every social science class feel like Ethnic Studies. Princess can be engaged readily on Instagram @mxreesedhs, and less enthusiastically via email ([email protected]).
Nivia Alvarado was born and raised in the Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica, California. Nivia currently works in East Los Angeles, a community that has a long history of youth activism. As an Ethnic Studies educator, Nivia hopes that when her students leave the classroom they are able to develop a critical consciousness that allows them to read the world, feel humanized and become agents of social change. She enjoys collaborating with other educators who are interested in creating curriculum through an Ethnic Studies framework and believes that these are often the best lessons because they are cultivated in community and with confianza.
Darlene Lee is a partner, mother, daughter, friend, teacher, and teacher educator. She currently serves as the faculty advisor for the UCLA Teacher Education Program Ethnic Studies Pathway and appreciates the opportunity to work with so many creative, powerful, loving ethnic studies teachers like Princess and Nivia.
WHEN WE GET BACK: REFLECTING ON AND VISIONING BEYOND COVID-19
Pam Segura, New York City Department of Education
Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 4pm PST
COVID-19 has stretched, pulled, and unrooted us in many ways. This reality calls for individual and community reflection with the ITOC fam. “When We Get Back: Reflecting On & Visioning Beyond COVID-19,” invites us to do just this. This workshop will feature independent reflection as well as time to process the following prompts in small breakout groups: How has COVID-19 shifted trauma in your school community? How has COVID-19 shifted healing in your school community? Robust definitions of trauma and healing will be provided. We’ll be grounded, too, on Arundhati Roy’s call that “the pandemic is a portal.” The intention is that, through introspection and collective contemplation, we’ll better understand what language and action to use when we get back to schools next year.
Pam Segura (she / her) is an Afro-Latinx educator and facilitator who lives and works in the Bronx. She has been teaching in the New York City Department of Education since 2016; before that, she was in the environmental justice field, working with K-12 students on issues like food justice, urban agriculture, environmental racism, and climate justice.
In addition to teaching, Pam is an organizer and facilitator with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). She has co-facilitated three Inquiry-to-Action Groups (ItAGs) with NYCoRE over the past three years that have focused on racial capitalism in public schools; trauma and healing in state-sanctioned schools; and applying an abolitionist framework to public schools. She is passionate about the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of BIPOC teachers and students. In her free time, Pam enjoys listening to music, running, and hanging out with her loved ones.
Pam Segura (she / her) is an Afro-Latinx educator and facilitator who lives and works in the Bronx. She has been teaching in the New York City Department of Education since 2016; before that, she was in the environmental justice field, working with K-12 students on issues like food justice, urban agriculture, environmental racism, and climate justice.
In addition to teaching, Pam is an organizer and facilitator with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). She has co-facilitated three Inquiry-to-Action Groups (ItAGs) with NYCoRE over the past three years that have focused on racial capitalism in public schools; trauma and healing in state-sanctioned schools; and applying an abolitionist framework to public schools. She is passionate about the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of BIPOC teachers and students. In her free time, Pam enjoys listening to music, running, and hanging out with her loved ones.
NEW DISCIPLINARY COACHING COMMUNITIES
RACIAL JUSTICE APPROACHES TO SCIENCE, Led by Dr. Salina Gray, Inglewood Unified School District
Salina Gray, PhD, has spent 23 years teaching in traditional public and charter schools. In 2014, she received her doctorate from Stanford University in Curriculum and Instruction in Science Education. Her research focused on the intersection of racial and science identities with an emphasis on critical race theory. She along with her colleague Dr. Alexis Patterson have developed an educational framework called W(h)olistic Science Pedagogy. She and Dr. Patterson’s article on their framework received the 2019 Best Article Award in Theory into Practice educational journal. Her current work has allowed her to be selected to participate as a Teacher Education Scholar through the Transformative Justice in Education Center (TJE) at UC Davis. Dr. Gray currently teaches 7th and 8th grade science at Frank D. Parent Middle School in the Inglewood Unified School District. Dr. Gray is an adjunct faculty member at Mt. St. Mary’s University, Doheny campus, in Los Angeles.
DeAnna Lee-Rivers has been an educator for over 11 years. DeAnna began teaching because she wanted to encourage more students of color and preferably women into degrees and careers in science and knew that she needed to meet them where they are beginning to shape their identities and beginning to decide how they want to show up in the world. In addition to teaching, DeAnna is the Director of Curriculum and Programming for Change the Tune an educational non-profit organization that has reimagined a multidisciplinary approach to afterschool programming. Change the Tune blends art, cooking, technology, music, entrepreneurship, and social emotional learning to help students leverage their interests and discover how they can use them to change the world. Lastly, she is a Co-Founder of STEMSoul, an organization that uses transformative science education to help students create their scientific identity and be agents of change in their communities and beyond.
POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE OF MATHEMATICS, Led by Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez grew up in a Chicana activist family in the Bay Area, where she learned the value of organizing from her father (an electrician) and her mother who advocates for students in the community college system, farm workers, and undocumented folx. Gutiérrez runs the Political Conocimiento Development Tools Lab at the University of Illinois, where she supports teachers to deconstruct the politics in teaching/mathematics and use creative insubordination to rehumanize mathematics. Throughout her career, she has helped build the Program (now Department) of Latina/Latino Studies and has served on the national writing team for the AMTE Standards for Preparing Teachers of Mathematics. Her work seeks to move beyond issues of access and achievement to more deeply consider identity, power, and our relationships with each other, including lands, animals, plants, and bodies of water.
ITOC SPONSORED EVENTS
Fulfilling the Legacies and Possibilities of Ethnic Studies in K-12 Schools
As Ethnic Studies has a growing presence in K-12 schools, there are dreams of great possibility and worry that it may not live its promise. Serving as an anchor and reminder of the essence of Ethnic Studies, we invite teachers, school administrators, community advocates, and teacher educators to this event that is co-sponsored by UCR's Graduate School of Education, Ethnic Studies Department, Chicano/Latino Student Programs, Asian Pacific Student Programs, and the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice (ITOC). Designed as a roundtable, we will bring together various scholars of Ethnic Studies to operationalize what Ethnic Studies means to them, and to discuss their fears and hopes for K-12 Ethnic Studies.
Arturo Nevárez (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California Riverside and a former middle and high school English teacher. An emerging scholar of race and racism in K-12 educational contexts, his research focuses on the racial literacy development (RLD) of Latinx students and teachers in K-12 Ethnic Studies classrooms.
Tracy Lachica Buenavista (she/her(s)/isuna) is Professor of Asian American Studies, a core faculty member of the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, and co-principal investigator and faculty mentor for the CSUN DREAM Center, among the earliest undocumented student resource projects established in the California State University system. In her research she utilizes critical race theory to examine how race, (im)migration, and carcerality shape the educational access, retention, and experiences of BIPOC students and educators. She has published various articles and book chapters on these issues, and co-edited four books including Education at War!, “White” Washing American Education, and the forthcoming First-Generation Faculty of Color.
Jennifer R. Nájera is Associate Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. Dr. Nájera’s research interests lie at the intersections of race, immigration, and education, and she is committed to producing work that is community-accountable. She is the author of The Borderlands of Race: Mexican Segregation in a South Texas Town (University of Texas Press, 2015) and is currently working on a manuscript entitled, Undocumented Education: Intersections of Activism and Education Among Undocumented Students.
Gerald Clarke is an enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians and lives on the Cahuilla Indian Reservation. When not creating artwork or serving as Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, Gerald oversees the Clarke family cattle ranch and remains heavily involved in Cahuilla culture. He is a frequent lecturer, speaking about Native art, culture and issues. He serves on the Cahuilla Tribal Council and works on issues affecting the tribe. When not working, Clarke participates in Bird Singing, a traditional form of singing that tells the cosmology of the Cahuilla people.
Kenya Davis-Hayes is a professor of US History at California Baptist University teaching a variety of topics from the Colonial Period through the Cold War. Her academic research has taken her around the world and she is lectures frequently across the nation on various subjects including the history of African American civil rights, women’s suffrage and other minority issues particularly on behalf of the Gilder Lehrman Institute on American History and the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. From 2007-2014 she served as an Arnold Schwarzenegger appointee to California Humanities the state branch of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Kenya Davis-Hayes has published in a variety of academic texts and also covers the arts and humanities across Southern California on behalf of her local public television station’s publications, ArtBound and Lost LA. She is currently working on book highlighting the history of black women on television during the Civil Rights era.
Anthony Ratcliffe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. He earned a Ph.D. in African American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2009. His dissertation analyzed the Pan-African politics of cultural struggle, with particular attention paid to the international dimensions of the Black Arts Movement. As a critical Hip Hop educator and radical historian, Anthony's scholar-activist research and teaching interests include revolutionary Black arts and politics; Black anti-authoritarian and autonomous movements; Black feminist theory and praxis; decolonial activism and organizing; the impact of capitalism and mass incarceration on Hip Hop cultural production, and the abolition of policing and prisons.
Jonathan D. Gomez is an Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Studies Advisor in Chicana/o Studies at San José State University and poet. He earned his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of Sociology with an Emphasis in Black Studies. Born and raised in the barrio of City Terrace in East Los Angeles, he credits his first teachers—mother, grandparents, and tías—for nurturing his passion for study and community engagement. At every level of education, he received mentorship, training, and resources that enabled him to become a serious and committed scholar. Gomez's book project, El Barrio Lindo: Chicanx and Latinx Social Space in Forgotten Places of Postindustrial Los Angeles examines the ways in which people who have been dispossessed and displaced envision and enact cultural practices to take possession of concrete spaces across the city as strategies for refusing the unlivable destinies to which they have been relegated.
TEACHER EDUCATORS OF COLOR FOR RACIAL JUSTICE CONVENING
January 21-22, 2021
9am-12:30pm PST
Hosted and sponsored by San José State University
The Teacher Educators of Color for Racial Justice Convening hosted 40 BIPOC teacher educators from seventeen different states to engage in critical reflections about their racialization within the predominantly white structures of teacher education and the racial justice possibilities of their collective engagement.
This event was free for selected participants.
This event was free for selected participants.
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ITOC TEACHER EDUCATORS OF COLOR
To support Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) teacher educators who are committed to racial justice and who need a place to strengthen their praxis and realize their potential as racial justice leaders in their programs, the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice (ITOC) is offering new targeted programming.
For decades, scholars have asserted that racism is normalized within the structures of teacher education (Cross, 2005; Marom, 2019; Sleeter, 2001). Today, 70% of students (AACTE, 2019), 87% of adjunct instructors, and 91% of tenured/tenure track instructors are white (King & Hampel, 2018), and with rampant antiblackness (Haddix, 2016; Faison & McArthur, 2020) and institutional racism shaping curriculum, pedagogy, policies, and practices (Cross, 2005, Sleeter, 2017), teacher education has remained steadfast in reproducing a predominantly white teaching force with limited racial literacy and deficit frames of students and families of Color (Gist, 2017; Amos, 2010). A growing body of research has drawn attention to teacher educators of Color and their critical role in disrupting the pervasive racist curriculum, pedagogy, and ideologies of teacher education programs (Picower & Kohli, 2017; Matias, 2013; Navarro, Quince, Hseih, Deckman, 2019), however, additional studies have also described the tremendous emotional cost of this labor (Atwater, et. al, 2013; Shim, 2018).
We aim to support teacher educators who:
For decades, scholars have asserted that racism is normalized within the structures of teacher education (Cross, 2005; Marom, 2019; Sleeter, 2001). Today, 70% of students (AACTE, 2019), 87% of adjunct instructors, and 91% of tenured/tenure track instructors are white (King & Hampel, 2018), and with rampant antiblackness (Haddix, 2016; Faison & McArthur, 2020) and institutional racism shaping curriculum, pedagogy, policies, and practices (Cross, 2005, Sleeter, 2017), teacher education has remained steadfast in reproducing a predominantly white teaching force with limited racial literacy and deficit frames of students and families of Color (Gist, 2017; Amos, 2010). A growing body of research has drawn attention to teacher educators of Color and their critical role in disrupting the pervasive racist curriculum, pedagogy, and ideologies of teacher education programs (Picower & Kohli, 2017; Matias, 2013; Navarro, Quince, Hseih, Deckman, 2019), however, additional studies have also described the tremendous emotional cost of this labor (Atwater, et. al, 2013; Shim, 2018).
We aim to support teacher educators who:
- Identify as a BIPOC teacher educator in a university context
- Asset framings of communities of Color
- Structural analysis of racism
- Connection of critical theory to practice
- Demonstrated engagement in racial justice leadership/initiatives
2019 ITOC Keynotes
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Generative Themes & Theater of the Oppressed: Tools for Teaching
Miguel Gutiérrez is a Lecturer in the Chicana/o Studies Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He was introduced to Augusto Boal's “Theater of the Oppressed” while he was still in high school in Omaha, Nebraska. Subsequently, he became a founding member of the first Center for the Theater of the Oppressed (CTO) in North America, through which he personally met Paulo Freire and worked numerous times with Augusto Boal for over a decade. Since his initial exposure to Boal's work, he has conducted scores of Theater of the Oppressed workshops and demonstrations for thousands of people throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Elexia Reyes McGovern is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She was born in the Hub City of West Texas to a third-generation Mexican-American mom and an Irish father. Her early experiences with her parents in the Hub City taught her the ways that people are racialized and therefore marginalized or privileged, depending on their proximity to whiteness. She later became a high school teacher in the Boston Public Schools and then a teacher educator.
Meryah A. Fisher has a Masters of Public Administration from Cheyney University and a BA in Africana Studies from Cal State Dominguez Hills. They are currently teaching in the Africana Studies Dept. at Dominguez Hills and a fellowship student at Claremont Graduate University pursuing the school’s first interfiled Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and Policy/Politics. Meryah is a small-town Jersey native who has worked for several years as the Volunteer Coordinator for the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference, founded a small New Jersey-based homeless-to-work initiative, and has a long history of case management for disabled persons, those suffering with mental health, and families impacted by homelessness. Meryah’s passion is challenging human rights and social justice threats through intuitively bridging sociopolitical gaps created by disparities, marginalization, and lost voices.
Roberto C. Gaona was born and raised in the Eastern Coachella Valley. He received his B.A. in Chicano Studies, with a concentration in Education, Social, and Community Development from California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has spent ten years in L.A, working with youth in and out of school settings. For the last five years, he served as the Founding Expanded Learning Director for a middle school in Huntington Park. Roberto has recently returned to the Coachella Valley and is currently working for the City of Indio as a community program assistant, providing youth services for the city’s teens.
Miguel Gutiérrez is a Lecturer in the Chicana/o Studies Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He was introduced to Augusto Boal's “Theater of the Oppressed” while he was still in high school in Omaha, Nebraska. Subsequently, he became a founding member of the first Center for the Theater of the Oppressed (CTO) in North America, through which he personally met Paulo Freire and worked numerous times with Augusto Boal for over a decade. Since his initial exposure to Boal's work, he has conducted scores of Theater of the Oppressed workshops and demonstrations for thousands of people throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Elexia Reyes McGovern is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She was born in the Hub City of West Texas to a third-generation Mexican-American mom and an Irish father. Her early experiences with her parents in the Hub City taught her the ways that people are racialized and therefore marginalized or privileged, depending on their proximity to whiteness. She later became a high school teacher in the Boston Public Schools and then a teacher educator.
Meryah A. Fisher has a Masters of Public Administration from Cheyney University and a BA in Africana Studies from Cal State Dominguez Hills. They are currently teaching in the Africana Studies Dept. at Dominguez Hills and a fellowship student at Claremont Graduate University pursuing the school’s first interfiled Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and Policy/Politics. Meryah is a small-town Jersey native who has worked for several years as the Volunteer Coordinator for the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference, founded a small New Jersey-based homeless-to-work initiative, and has a long history of case management for disabled persons, those suffering with mental health, and families impacted by homelessness. Meryah’s passion is challenging human rights and social justice threats through intuitively bridging sociopolitical gaps created by disparities, marginalization, and lost voices.
Roberto C. Gaona was born and raised in the Eastern Coachella Valley. He received his B.A. in Chicano Studies, with a concentration in Education, Social, and Community Development from California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has spent ten years in L.A, working with youth in and out of school settings. For the last five years, he served as the Founding Expanded Learning Director for a middle school in Huntington Park. Roberto has recently returned to the Coachella Valley and is currently working for the City of Indio as a community program assistant, providing youth services for the city’s teens.
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Living and Learning Through Mitákuye Owás’iŋ (All my Relatives)
Alayna Eagle Shield (Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta), is from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She is a Native American Community Academy (NACA) Fellow and currently works as the Health Education Director and also does consulting work in culture and health. Her previous work includes a Lakota Language instructor at the Lakota Language Immersion Nest and as the Language Specialist for the Language & Culture Institute. Alayna serves on multiple committees as well as a board chair. She earned her B.S from the University of Mary and MPH from North Dakota State University. |
Artists:
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Workshops:
Eliminating the "School to Jail" Track
Emilio Lacques-Zapien (Youth Justice Coalition) & Angela McNair Turner (Public Council)
The Battle of Imaginations: Emergent Organizing in the face of White Nonsense
Stephanie Gallardo, Eileen Yoshina, & Tamasha Emedi (Washington State Educators)
The Racialized Educational Experiences of Foster Youth: Unpacking Racism, Trauma, and Family Privilege
Kenyon Lee Whitman (Office for Foster Youth Support Services at the UCR), Briana Harvey (Guardian Scholars Program, UCLA) & Mayra Mendoza (UCR undergraduate)
La Loteria and Art Education as Creative Resistance: Embracing Working Class Occupations in Our Classrooms
Dr. Luis-Genaro Garcia (Los Angeles Unified School District Teacher)
The P5: A Model for Transformative Science Instruction
Dr. Salina Gray (Inglewood Unified School District Teacher)
Transformative Justice: Transforming Educational Space through Rigorous Love
Sagnicthe Salazar (Oakland Unified School District Dean of Restorative Discipline & Xicana Moratorium Coalition) & Ariel Benavides (Community Educator and Artist)
Community Cultural Wealth Pedagogies: Im/migrant Lived Experiences as Knowledge & Power
Rosa M. Jimenez (University of San Francisco)
Organizing for Power: Building Coalitions to Fight for the Soul of Public Education
William Page (United Teachers Los Angeles)
Racial Justice in the Mathematics Classroom
Neven Holland & Armani Alexander (Elementary Math Educators, Memphis, TN)
Shifting Beliefs about Dis/ability and Race: The Importance of Teachers of Color
Saili S. Kulkarni (San José State University)
Critical Issues for Teacher Educators of Color
Dr. Betina Hsieh (California State University, Long Beach), Lillian (Sharon) Leathers (Ramapao College of New Jersey) & Nallely Arteaga (University of California, Riverside
Circle Work for Collaboration, Community and Conversation: Building Restorative Practices in a Teacher Education Program
Dr. Joaquin Muñoz (Augsburg University)
Huelga! LA Activist: Being a Teacher Activist and Changing the Narrative of Governance in your Districit
Erika Alvarez (Los Angeles Unified School District)
Puertas Abiertas Leadership Academy: Re-Centering Latinx Student Experiences through a De-Colonized Pedagogy
Jim Garcia (Puertas Abiertas Leadership Academy, OR)
Toward a Freedom School: Permission to Be Radical
Pam Segura & Jenn Leyva (New York Collective of Radical Educators; New York City Public Schools)
How Racist Are We? Assessing Racial Justice in Schools to Identify Next Steps for Change
Altagracia Montilla (AM Consulting & Freedom Readers)
A special thanks to all our 2019 ITOC Committee members!
Program Committee
Genaro Ulloa; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Leah Thomas; Sequoia Union High School District, CA
Dara Nix Stevenson; North Carolina
Saili Kulkarni; San Jose State University, CA
Admissions Committee
Stephanie Gallardo; Tukwila School District, WA
Saraswati Noel; Seattle Public Schools, WA
Ramona Meza; University of Illinois at Chicago
Arturo Nevárez; University of California, Riverside
Teacher Educators Committee
Sharon Leathers; William Paterson University , NJ
Nallely Arteaga; California State University, Dominguez Hills
Betina Hsieh; California State University, Long Beach
Working Groups Committee
Lisa Kelly; Oakland Unified School District, CA
Gloria Muñoz-Hughes; Berkeley Unified School District, CA
Ray'Von Jones; Oakland Unified School District, CA
Martha Torres; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Health and Wellness Committee
Candice Valenzuela; Oakland, CA
Pam Segura; New York City Public Schools, NY
Shaina Patel; San Jose Unified School District, CA
Jeremy Greene; Natomas Unified School District, CA
Sameena Eidoo; University of Toronto
Community Building Committee
Tamasha Emedi; Highline Public Schools, WA
Danica Moore; Lawrence Public Schools, KS
Izamar Ortiz-Gonzalez; St. Hope Public Schools, CA
Davenar Johnson; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Social Committee
Nadine Loza; Corona Norco Unified School District, CA
Genaro Ulloa; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Femtor (Mentor) Committee
Nhung Ha; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Malayka Neith Cornejo; University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Shakiyya Bland; Lawrence Public Schools, KS
Genaro Ulloa; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Leah Thomas; Sequoia Union High School District, CA
Dara Nix Stevenson; North Carolina
Saili Kulkarni; San Jose State University, CA
Admissions Committee
Stephanie Gallardo; Tukwila School District, WA
Saraswati Noel; Seattle Public Schools, WA
Ramona Meza; University of Illinois at Chicago
Arturo Nevárez; University of California, Riverside
Teacher Educators Committee
Sharon Leathers; William Paterson University , NJ
Nallely Arteaga; California State University, Dominguez Hills
Betina Hsieh; California State University, Long Beach
Working Groups Committee
Lisa Kelly; Oakland Unified School District, CA
Gloria Muñoz-Hughes; Berkeley Unified School District, CA
Ray'Von Jones; Oakland Unified School District, CA
Martha Torres; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Health and Wellness Committee
Candice Valenzuela; Oakland, CA
Pam Segura; New York City Public Schools, NY
Shaina Patel; San Jose Unified School District, CA
Jeremy Greene; Natomas Unified School District, CA
Sameena Eidoo; University of Toronto
Community Building Committee
Tamasha Emedi; Highline Public Schools, WA
Danica Moore; Lawrence Public Schools, KS
Izamar Ortiz-Gonzalez; St. Hope Public Schools, CA
Davenar Johnson; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Social Committee
Nadine Loza; Corona Norco Unified School District, CA
Genaro Ulloa; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Femtor (Mentor) Committee
Nhung Ha; Los Angeles Unified School District, CA
Malayka Neith Cornejo; University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Shakiyya Bland; Lawrence Public Schools, KS
2018 ITOC Keynotes
Reimagining a Classroom Ecology through Intersectional Justice–Examining Racism, Ableism, and Justice in Classroom Spaces
Dr. Subini Annamma is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on increasing access to equitable education for multiply-marginalized communities. She critically examines the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism, how they interlock with other marginalizing oppressions, and how these intersections impact education in urban schools and youth prisons. Further, she positions students as knowledge generators, exploring how their resistance disrupts systemic inequities and reimagines education as a liberatory space. Dr. Annamma’s book, The Pedagogy of Pathologization, was published in 2018 and focuses on the education trajectories of incarcerated disabled girls of color. She was awarded a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2018-19 school year to serve at UCLA.
Dr. Subini Annamma is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on increasing access to equitable education for multiply-marginalized communities. She critically examines the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism, how they interlock with other marginalizing oppressions, and how these intersections impact education in urban schools and youth prisons. Further, she positions students as knowledge generators, exploring how their resistance disrupts systemic inequities and reimagines education as a liberatory space. Dr. Annamma’s book, The Pedagogy of Pathologization, was published in 2018 and focuses on the education trajectories of incarcerated disabled girls of color. She was awarded a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2018-19 school year to serve at UCLA.
Sustaining Our Communities through Education: Solidarities, Coalitions, and Ongoing Social Movements
Dr. Django Paris is the inaugural holder of the James A. and Cherry A. Banks Professorship in Multicultural Education and incoming director of the Banks Center for Educational Justice in the College of Education at the University of Washington. His teaching and research focus on understanding and sustaining languages, literacies, and lifeways among Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander students in the context of social change and revitalization. Most recently, he has been building with community to understand and contribute to education in movement spaces from Standing Rock to Black Lives Matter. Paris is author of Language Across Difference: Ethnicity, Communication, and Youth Identities in Changing Urban Schools (2011) and co-editor of both Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (2014) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (2017).
Dr. Django Paris is the inaugural holder of the James A. and Cherry A. Banks Professorship in Multicultural Education and incoming director of the Banks Center for Educational Justice in the College of Education at the University of Washington. His teaching and research focus on understanding and sustaining languages, literacies, and lifeways among Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander students in the context of social change and revitalization. Most recently, he has been building with community to understand and contribute to education in movement spaces from Standing Rock to Black Lives Matter. Paris is author of Language Across Difference: Ethnicity, Communication, and Youth Identities in Changing Urban Schools (2011) and co-editor of both Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (2014) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (2017).
Toward the North Star: Building and Journeying the Path of Beloved Community
Mike Tinoco is a high school educator, nonviolence trainer, and teacher organizer from San José whose work focuses on nonviolence education and leadership. He is committed to working alongside his students, educators, and the people in transforming oppressive conditions and creating a culture of positive peace that demands justice, centers love, and holds room for everyone to be part of Beloved Community. He co-organizes Critical Friends, a critical teacher inquiry group in the South Bay, and supports nonviolence work and training with the East Point Peace Academy; MAESTR@S: A Movement for Raza Liberation through Educación; the Nonviolent Leadership for Social Justice Retreat; Teachers 4 Social Justice; and Rock The School Bells, an annual youth empowerment hip-hop conference.
Mike Tinoco is a high school educator, nonviolence trainer, and teacher organizer from San José whose work focuses on nonviolence education and leadership. He is committed to working alongside his students, educators, and the people in transforming oppressive conditions and creating a culture of positive peace that demands justice, centers love, and holds room for everyone to be part of Beloved Community. He co-organizes Critical Friends, a critical teacher inquiry group in the South Bay, and supports nonviolence work and training with the East Point Peace Academy; MAESTR@S: A Movement for Raza Liberation through Educación; the Nonviolent Leadership for Social Justice Retreat; Teachers 4 Social Justice; and Rock The School Bells, an annual youth empowerment hip-hop conference.
Artists:
(Clockwise) D’Lo; Reina Prado; Denisha "Coco" Blossom Bland; Patrice Hill; Brandon Davis
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Workshops:
Fostering Language So They Can Call It What It Is: Racial Literacy in the Elementary Classroom
Gloria Muñoz Hughes (Berkeley Unified School District)
Know Your Rights: Legal Tips for Activist Teachers of Color
Nitasha Sawhney (Garcia Hernandez Sawhney LLP; South Asian Americans Leading Together Board Member)
Transformative Justice: Tools to Restructure within a Racist Educational System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Oakland Unified School District Dean of Restorative Discipline & Xicana Moratorium Coalition) & Ariel Benavides (Community Educator and Artist)
Writing to Heal
Patrice Hill & Denisha “CocoBlossom” Bland (Sacramento Area Youth Speaks)
We are our Ancestor's Dreams: Finding Resilience, Purpose and Joy as a Radical Teacher of Color
Candice Valenzuela (Education Consultant & Community Wellness Advocate)
Spatial Analytics, Mapping, and Visualization: Using Geospatial Technology for Social Justice
Edgar Orejel (Downey Unified School District)
Teaching While Black When Misogynoir and Whiteness Enter the Classroom: Strategies for Sustainability
Dara Nix Stevenson (Science Teacher, North Carolina)
“They Say Pushout, We Say Pushback!": A Transformational Resistance Framework for Student Empowerment and Activism
Dr. Johnny Ramirez, Ivette Ocampo & Tim Tobin (UCLA & Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Theater of the Oppressed as Tools for Student Engagement and Empowerment
Dr. Miguel Gutierrez & Dr. Elexia Reyes-McGovern (California State University, Dominguez Hills)
Critical Issues for Teacher Educators of Color
Dr. Oscar Navarro (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) & Dr. Tanya Maloney (Montclair State University)
(W)holistic Science Pedagogy as a Framework for Critical Science instruction
Dr. Salina Gray (Inglewood Unified School District)
Calling Our Spirits Back: Standing Rock and Beyond
Alayna Eagle Shield (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Health Education Director)
Testimonio as a Tool for Healing: Reclaiming Schools as Spaces of Orgullo [Pride]
Ramona Meza & Joanna V. Maravilla-Cano (University of Illinois, Chicago)
La Loteria and Art Education as Creative Resistance: Embracing Working Class Occupations in Our Classrooms
Dr. Luis-Genaro Garcia (Los Angeles Unified School District)
Cultivating Power: Utilizing Ethnic Studies to Reconstruct the Educational Outcomes of High School Students of Color
Johnny Gonzáles, Alfonso Taboada & Luis Pinedo (Coachella Unified School District)
Beyond the Narrative/Counternarrative Binary: Teaching Ethnic Studies as Imagining and Writing our Liberation
Darlene Lee & Ayuri Terada (University of California, Los Angeles)
Whatever It Takes: Creating Authentically, Socially Conscious Classrooms and Schools through Transformative Justice
Kruti Parekh (Coach for Healing & Justice, YouthBuild Charter School, CA)
Transforming Communities through Critical Parent/Family Engagement
Guadalupe Cardona, Carolyn Torres, Ndindi Kitonga, Santos Zuñiga, Daisy Lomeli, Raul Cardona, Nadia Garcia (Association of Raza Educators, Los Angeles)
Strategies to Forge Balance, Harmony, Clarity, and Creativity in the Face of Teacher of Color Struggles
Malayka Cornejo (Touro University, Healer)
Fostering Language So They Can Call It What It Is: Racial Literacy in the Elementary Classroom
Gloria Muñoz Hughes (Berkeley Unified School District)
Know Your Rights: Legal Tips for Activist Teachers of Color
Nitasha Sawhney (Garcia Hernandez Sawhney LLP; South Asian Americans Leading Together Board Member)
Transformative Justice: Tools to Restructure within a Racist Educational System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Oakland Unified School District Dean of Restorative Discipline & Xicana Moratorium Coalition) & Ariel Benavides (Community Educator and Artist)
Writing to Heal
Patrice Hill & Denisha “CocoBlossom” Bland (Sacramento Area Youth Speaks)
We are our Ancestor's Dreams: Finding Resilience, Purpose and Joy as a Radical Teacher of Color
Candice Valenzuela (Education Consultant & Community Wellness Advocate)
Spatial Analytics, Mapping, and Visualization: Using Geospatial Technology for Social Justice
Edgar Orejel (Downey Unified School District)
Teaching While Black When Misogynoir and Whiteness Enter the Classroom: Strategies for Sustainability
Dara Nix Stevenson (Science Teacher, North Carolina)
“They Say Pushout, We Say Pushback!": A Transformational Resistance Framework for Student Empowerment and Activism
Dr. Johnny Ramirez, Ivette Ocampo & Tim Tobin (UCLA & Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Theater of the Oppressed as Tools for Student Engagement and Empowerment
Dr. Miguel Gutierrez & Dr. Elexia Reyes-McGovern (California State University, Dominguez Hills)
Critical Issues for Teacher Educators of Color
Dr. Oscar Navarro (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) & Dr. Tanya Maloney (Montclair State University)
(W)holistic Science Pedagogy as a Framework for Critical Science instruction
Dr. Salina Gray (Inglewood Unified School District)
Calling Our Spirits Back: Standing Rock and Beyond
Alayna Eagle Shield (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Health Education Director)
Testimonio as a Tool for Healing: Reclaiming Schools as Spaces of Orgullo [Pride]
Ramona Meza & Joanna V. Maravilla-Cano (University of Illinois, Chicago)
La Loteria and Art Education as Creative Resistance: Embracing Working Class Occupations in Our Classrooms
Dr. Luis-Genaro Garcia (Los Angeles Unified School District)
Cultivating Power: Utilizing Ethnic Studies to Reconstruct the Educational Outcomes of High School Students of Color
Johnny Gonzáles, Alfonso Taboada & Luis Pinedo (Coachella Unified School District)
Beyond the Narrative/Counternarrative Binary: Teaching Ethnic Studies as Imagining and Writing our Liberation
Darlene Lee & Ayuri Terada (University of California, Los Angeles)
Whatever It Takes: Creating Authentically, Socially Conscious Classrooms and Schools through Transformative Justice
Kruti Parekh (Coach for Healing & Justice, YouthBuild Charter School, CA)
Transforming Communities through Critical Parent/Family Engagement
Guadalupe Cardona, Carolyn Torres, Ndindi Kitonga, Santos Zuñiga, Daisy Lomeli, Raul Cardona, Nadia Garcia (Association of Raza Educators, Los Angeles)
Strategies to Forge Balance, Harmony, Clarity, and Creativity in the Face of Teacher of Color Struggles
Malayka Cornejo (Touro University, Healer)
2017 ITOC
Pedagogy on Fire! Teaching for Social Justice
Dr. Jamila Lyiscott is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University within the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) where her research and praxis focus on the intersections of race, education, and social justice. The recently awarded Cultivating New Voices among scholars of color fellow also serves a teacher educator, spoken word artist, community organizer, consultant and motivational speaker locally and internationally. Her scholarship and activism work together to prepare educators to sustain diversity in the classroom, empower youth, and explore, assert, and defend the value of Black life. As a testament to her commitment to educational justice for students of color, Jamila is the founder and co-director of the Cyphers For Justice (CFJ) youth, research, and advocacy program, apprenticing inner-city youth, incarcerated youth, and pre-service educators as critical social researchers through hip-hop, spoken word, and digital literacy.
Dr. Jamila Lyiscott is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University within the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) where her research and praxis focus on the intersections of race, education, and social justice. The recently awarded Cultivating New Voices among scholars of color fellow also serves a teacher educator, spoken word artist, community organizer, consultant and motivational speaker locally and internationally. Her scholarship and activism work together to prepare educators to sustain diversity in the classroom, empower youth, and explore, assert, and defend the value of Black life. As a testament to her commitment to educational justice for students of color, Jamila is the founder and co-director of the Cyphers For Justice (CFJ) youth, research, and advocacy program, apprenticing inner-city youth, incarcerated youth, and pre-service educators as critical social researchers through hip-hop, spoken word, and digital literacy.
The Compounding Effect of Community Cultural Wealth: (Re)Claiming Histories of Resistance for Educational Empowerment
Dr. Enrique Alemán, Jr., is Professor and Chair in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. A native of Kingsville in South Texas and a first-generation college student, Dr. Alemán melds his personal and professional interests with research that has the potential to address the racialized and institutionalized inequities that have historically underserved students and communities of color. His research agenda includes studying the impact of educational policies on Latina/o and Chicana/o students and communities, the utilization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latina/ Critical Theory (LatCrit) frameworks in educational research, and the application of community-based research methods as a way of informing the creation of pathways to higher education. Dr. Alemán is the co-author of “Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o Students,” published by Teachers College Press, that describes the ten-year journey he and Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal took in creating and maintaining the Adelante Partnership, a university-school-community partnership in Salt Lake City, Utah. In late 2014, he executive produced and co-wrote Stolen Education, a documentary about the forgotten history of a little-known federal desegregation court case from the 1950s, Hernandez et al. v. Driscoll Consolidated School District (1957).
Dr. Enrique Alemán, Jr., is Professor and Chair in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. A native of Kingsville in South Texas and a first-generation college student, Dr. Alemán melds his personal and professional interests with research that has the potential to address the racialized and institutionalized inequities that have historically underserved students and communities of color. His research agenda includes studying the impact of educational policies on Latina/o and Chicana/o students and communities, the utilization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latina/ Critical Theory (LatCrit) frameworks in educational research, and the application of community-based research methods as a way of informing the creation of pathways to higher education. Dr. Alemán is the co-author of “Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o Students,” published by Teachers College Press, that describes the ten-year journey he and Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal took in creating and maintaining the Adelante Partnership, a university-school-community partnership in Salt Lake City, Utah. In late 2014, he executive produced and co-wrote Stolen Education, a documentary about the forgotten history of a little-known federal desegregation court case from the 1950s, Hernandez et al. v. Driscoll Consolidated School District (1957).
You Are Your Best Thing: Embracing the Body as a Resource for Protection, Healing, and Knowledge for Critical Teachers of Color
Stephanie Cariaga has served the Los Angeles community for 10 years as a high school English teacher, a founder of Young Empowered Women, a Teacher Education Adjunct Professor at Cal State Dominguez, and a founding member of the People's Education Movement-Los Angeles. Stephanie is now a graduate student in the Social Science and Comparative Education division at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research explores ways to integrate body, mind, and spirit into the classroom, develop critical literacies of healing for/with students of color, and nurture a sustainable teaching practice through self/collective care. All of her work is inspired by her best teachers, daughter Laila and son Catalino.
Stephanie Cariaga has served the Los Angeles community for 10 years as a high school English teacher, a founder of Young Empowered Women, a Teacher Education Adjunct Professor at Cal State Dominguez, and a founding member of the People's Education Movement-Los Angeles. Stephanie is now a graduate student in the Social Science and Comparative Education division at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research explores ways to integrate body, mind, and spirit into the classroom, develop critical literacies of healing for/with students of color, and nurture a sustainable teaching practice through self/collective care. All of her work is inspired by her best teachers, daughter Laila and son Catalino.
Artists:
(Clockwise) Nisha Sembi, Seti X, Luis Genaro Garcia, Micia Mosley, Gingee (Marjorie Light)
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Workshops:
Students, Parents, and Teachers Organizing Together Against Racism and for What Students Deserve
Erica Huerta, Maricela Lopez, Ashunda Norris, Kahllid, Al-Alim, & Daniela Suarez, Christabel Ukomadu
There Can Be No Racial Justice Without Gender Justice: Confronting Heteropatriarchy in People of Color Movement Spaces
Cecily Relucio Hensler & Asif Wilson
Using Critical Literacy and K-5 Children's Books to Teach About and Against Islamophobia in the Elementary Classroom
Farima Pour-Khorshid
CrippinJustice: Understanding the Links Between Racial and Disability Justice
Dr. Subini Annamma
A Force More Powerful: Cultivating Critical, Loving, and Transformative Spaces Within and Beyond the Classroom through Teaching and Living Nonviolence
Mike Tinoco (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Teaching Intersectionality: Representing Queer People of Color in Classroom Curriculum
Maurice Sievers
The Politics of Space: Centering Student Voice through YPAR
Mariana Ramirez & Alice Im
Rejuvenation Space: Supporting Black Educators in Anti-Black Institutions
Micia Mosely & Itoro Udofia
Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Resilience and Resistance
Dr. Nini Hayes (Assistant Professor at Saint Martin’s University)
Tanisha Johnson(Assistant Professor at Saint Martin’s University)
Dr. Oscar Navarro (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo)
Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Four Tenets for Bringing an Ethnic Studies Lens to Any Content
Dr. Elexia Reyes McGovern
Darlene Lee (UCLA TEP)
Serving Undocumented Students in a Politically Volatile Atmosphere
Dr. Jennifer Nájera (Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside)
Practice Courage: Restorative Justice as Humanizing Pedagogy
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
We Can't Do This Alone: Supporting Decolonizing Pedagogy through a Teacher-Led Inquiry Group
Dr. Oscar Navarro, Sara Diaz, Emily Bautista, & Ron Espiritu
Give Them the Language So They Can Call It What It Is: Racial Discourse in the Elementary Classroom
Gloria Muñoz-Hughes (Berkeley Unified School District, CA)
Integrating Knowledges & Telling Our Stories Through Mapping
LaToya Strong (Doctoral Student at Urban Education at The CUNY Graduate Center)
Teambuilding Activities to Create Cross-Cultural Communities & Safe Spaces for Students of Color
Kristina Williams
Health Is Wealth: Promoting Students’ Healthy Romantic Relationships, Discussing a Taboo Topic within Communities of Color
Amreen Karmali & Dr. Kari Kokka
The Challenge of Our Times: Awakening to Creative Struggle and Healing in the Face of Fear and Threat
Edmundo Norte (Dean of Intercultural and International Studies at De Anza College)
Students, Parents, and Teachers Organizing Together Against Racism and for What Students Deserve
Erica Huerta, Maricela Lopez, Ashunda Norris, Kahllid, Al-Alim, & Daniela Suarez, Christabel Ukomadu
There Can Be No Racial Justice Without Gender Justice: Confronting Heteropatriarchy in People of Color Movement Spaces
Cecily Relucio Hensler & Asif Wilson
Using Critical Literacy and K-5 Children's Books to Teach About and Against Islamophobia in the Elementary Classroom
Farima Pour-Khorshid
CrippinJustice: Understanding the Links Between Racial and Disability Justice
Dr. Subini Annamma
A Force More Powerful: Cultivating Critical, Loving, and Transformative Spaces Within and Beyond the Classroom through Teaching and Living Nonviolence
Mike Tinoco (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Teaching Intersectionality: Representing Queer People of Color in Classroom Curriculum
Maurice Sievers
The Politics of Space: Centering Student Voice through YPAR
Mariana Ramirez & Alice Im
Rejuvenation Space: Supporting Black Educators in Anti-Black Institutions
Micia Mosely & Itoro Udofia
Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Resilience and Resistance
Dr. Nini Hayes (Assistant Professor at Saint Martin’s University)
Tanisha Johnson(Assistant Professor at Saint Martin’s University)
Dr. Oscar Navarro (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo)
Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Four Tenets for Bringing an Ethnic Studies Lens to Any Content
Dr. Elexia Reyes McGovern
Darlene Lee (UCLA TEP)
Serving Undocumented Students in a Politically Volatile Atmosphere
Dr. Jennifer Nájera (Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside)
Practice Courage: Restorative Justice as Humanizing Pedagogy
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
We Can't Do This Alone: Supporting Decolonizing Pedagogy through a Teacher-Led Inquiry Group
Dr. Oscar Navarro, Sara Diaz, Emily Bautista, & Ron Espiritu
Give Them the Language So They Can Call It What It Is: Racial Discourse in the Elementary Classroom
Gloria Muñoz-Hughes (Berkeley Unified School District, CA)
Integrating Knowledges & Telling Our Stories Through Mapping
LaToya Strong (Doctoral Student at Urban Education at The CUNY Graduate Center)
Teambuilding Activities to Create Cross-Cultural Communities & Safe Spaces for Students of Color
Kristina Williams
Health Is Wealth: Promoting Students’ Healthy Romantic Relationships, Discussing a Taboo Topic within Communities of Color
Amreen Karmali & Dr. Kari Kokka
The Challenge of Our Times: Awakening to Creative Struggle and Healing in the Face of Fear and Threat
Edmundo Norte (Dean of Intercultural and International Studies at De Anza College)
2016 ITOC
Keynote Addresses:
Dr. Cynthia B. Dillard is the Mary Frances Early Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Georgia in Atlanta. Dr. Dillard’s major research interests include critical multicultural education, spirituality in teaching and learning, epistemological concerns in research and African/African-American feminist studies. Most recently, her research has focused in Ghana, West Africa, where she established a preschool and an elementary school. She is the author of many academic articles as well as the books On Spiritual Strivings: Transforming an African American Woman's Academic Life, and Learning to (Re)member the Things We've Learned to Forget: Endarkened Feminisms, Spirituality, and the Sacred Nature of Research and Teaching
Dr. Wayne Au is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Bothell, and editor of Rethinking Schools, a critical resource for social justice oriented teachers. Dr. Au’s academic interests broadly encompass critical education theory and teaching for social justice. More specifically his research focuses on educational equity, high-stakes testing, curriculum theory, educational policy studies and social studies education. He is the author of numerous articles and the author/editor of books including Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality, Critical Curriculum Studies: Education, Consciousness, and the Politics of Knowing, and is Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice.
Roxana Dueñas is an 8th year Ethnic Studies and History teacher at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights — the same community in which she grew up. Through an inquiry-based and student-centered approach, she brings history to life by making it relevant and hands-on. She both designed and teaches the curriculum for an ethnic studies course titled “Boyle Heights and Me” with an emphasis on community history, student activism and civic and artistic engagement that is seen as a model for Ethnic Studies teaching in LAUSD. The United Way of Los Angeles named Ms. Dueñas the 2015 most inspirational teacher.
Artists:
Mayda Del Valle got her start at New York City's Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, where she was the 2001 Grand Slam Champion and went on to win the 2001 National Poetry Slam Individual title, the youngest and first Latina poet to do so. She went on to appear on 6 episodes of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Since 2011 Mayda has been a teaching artist with the poetry-based non-profit youth organization Street Poets, facilitating workshops around the LA area in high schools and probation camps.
Gingee (Marjorie Light) is a DJ producer and vocalist from Los Angeles, known for her unique take on electronic music, which blends elements of global bass, world music, and hip hop. Her work is a reflection of the sounds and cultures she has been exposed to growing up as well as the musical world of her ancestors and beyond. From the percussive rhythms of instruments such as the Filipino Kulintana, kettle drum and cowbells, to synths, turntables and rapping, she seeks to speak the language of music and poetry and us it to communicate a message of empowerment and celebration.
Micia Mosely is a comedian, actress and educator performs her brand of social justice stand up comedy across the country. She has been praised by newyorktheatre.com as, “smart, timely and also downright hilarious.” This bi-coastal black lesbian and socio-political performer earned her Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley and has kept audiences laughing in a variety of contexts and venues. Micia wrote and starred her one-woman show, “Where My Girls At?,” an off-Broadway comedy about Black lesbians.
Andreas “Dre-T” Tillman Jr. is an international Hip-Hop Performing Artist, one of Sacramento’s lead Poet-Mentor Educators, and founder of creative expression-based organization, Foreign Native. While investing over 5 years of his time reaching out to the youth, the 23 year old MC simultaneously continues to expand his audience through college appearances; sharing stages with the likes of Talib Kweli, KRS-ONE & Ab-Soul, to name a few.
Workshops:
Telling Our Own Narratives: Using Story Circles to Heal, Affirm and Educate
LaToya Strong (Doctoral Student at Urban Education at The CUNY Graduate Center)
Re-imagining Discipline: The Importance of Removing Shame From Our Learning Spaces
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
Nurturing Critically Compassionate Classrooms: Integrating Trauma and Healing-Informed Strategies with Students of Color
Stephanie Cariaga (Graduate Student in the Education division at UCLA)
The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Using Data to Inform Teacher Activism
Dr. R. Nicole Johnson-Ahorlu (Director of Education and Juvenile Justice Research at the UCLA Center for Policing Equity)
Taking a Deeper Look: Critical Teacher Research for School Transformation
Dr. Eduardo F. Lopez (Teacher Education Program at UCLA)
Decolonizing the Elementary Classroom: Possibilities in Practice
Dr. Carolina Valdez (Assistant Professor; Teacher Education at CSUMB)
Practice Courage: Restorative Justice As Humanizing Pedagogy
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
Centering Women’s Liberation and Organizing in the Struggle for Educational Justice
Jollene Levid (National Chairperson of AF3IRM)
Grassroots PD: Creating Our Own Critical Professional Development Spaces
Farima Pour-Khorshid, (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Mike Tinoco (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Colin Ehara (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Storytelling as a Tool for Transformation
Street Poets, Inc. (non-profit poetry-based, peace-making organization)
Teacher Educators of Color: Mapping the Landscape We Labor in to Support Teachers and Students of Color
Dr. Nini Hayes (Assistant Professor at Saint Martin’s University)
Cecily Relucio Hensler (Teacher Educator in the Urban Education Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Undocumented and Educated: Supporting and Building on the Knowledge of Undocumented Students
Dr. Jennifer R. Nájera (Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside)
Vicente Rodriguez
Critical Teaching: Making the Case for Youth Participatory Action Research in Our Schools
Eddie Lopez (Roosevelt High School)
Engaging Youth in Classrooms through Digital Narrative
Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal (Professor of Education and Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah)
Dr. Socorro Morales (Ph.D. from the department of Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah)
Black Teacher Affinity & Sustainability
Dr. Micia Mosel (Ph.D, comedian and educator)
We Don't Care What You Know, 'Til We Know That You Care
Andreas "Dre-T" Tillman Jr. (Hip-Hop Performing Artist, Poet-Mentor Educators & founder Foreign Native)
Telling Our Own Narratives: Using Story Circles to Heal, Affirm and Educate
LaToya Strong (Doctoral Student at Urban Education at The CUNY Graduate Center)
Re-imagining Discipline: The Importance of Removing Shame From Our Learning Spaces
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
Nurturing Critically Compassionate Classrooms: Integrating Trauma and Healing-Informed Strategies with Students of Color
Stephanie Cariaga (Graduate Student in the Education division at UCLA)
The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Using Data to Inform Teacher Activism
Dr. R. Nicole Johnson-Ahorlu (Director of Education and Juvenile Justice Research at the UCLA Center for Policing Equity)
Taking a Deeper Look: Critical Teacher Research for School Transformation
Dr. Eduardo F. Lopez (Teacher Education Program at UCLA)
Decolonizing the Elementary Classroom: Possibilities in Practice
Dr. Carolina Valdez (Assistant Professor; Teacher Education at CSUMB)
Practice Courage: Restorative Justice As Humanizing Pedagogy
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
Centering Women’s Liberation and Organizing in the Struggle for Educational Justice
Jollene Levid (National Chairperson of AF3IRM)
Grassroots PD: Creating Our Own Critical Professional Development Spaces
Farima Pour-Khorshid, (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Mike Tinoco (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Colin Ehara (Teachers 4 Social Justice and People’s Education Movement)
Storytelling as a Tool for Transformation
Street Poets, Inc. (non-profit poetry-based, peace-making organization)
Teacher Educators of Color: Mapping the Landscape We Labor in to Support Teachers and Students of Color
Dr. Nini Hayes (Assistant Professor at Saint Martin’s University)
Cecily Relucio Hensler (Teacher Educator in the Urban Education Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Undocumented and Educated: Supporting and Building on the Knowledge of Undocumented Students
Dr. Jennifer R. Nájera (Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside)
Vicente Rodriguez
Critical Teaching: Making the Case for Youth Participatory Action Research in Our Schools
Eddie Lopez (Roosevelt High School)
Engaging Youth in Classrooms through Digital Narrative
Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal (Professor of Education and Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah)
Dr. Socorro Morales (Ph.D. from the department of Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah)
Black Teacher Affinity & Sustainability
Dr. Micia Mosel (Ph.D, comedian and educator)
We Don't Care What You Know, 'Til We Know That You Care
Andreas "Dre-T" Tillman Jr. (Hip-Hop Performing Artist, Poet-Mentor Educators & founder Foreign Native)
2015 ITOC
Keynote Addresses:
Radical Love: Teacher Activists Supporting Themselves as They Support Their Communities
Dr. Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University
In this interactive keynote address, teacher activist reflected on the year that was -- Ferguson, Baltimore, Detroit, North Carolina, and other places where communities of color rose against oppression. They examined and shared not only how they addressed these historical moments in their teaching, but how they took care of themselves as they worked on front lines in classrooms, community centers, and at protests. Drawing on the knowledge in the room, teachers engaged in a multimodal exploration of what it means to do the work we do and care for self along the way.
Dr. Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University
In this interactive keynote address, teacher activist reflected on the year that was -- Ferguson, Baltimore, Detroit, North Carolina, and other places where communities of color rose against oppression. They examined and shared not only how they addressed these historical moments in their teaching, but how they took care of themselves as they worked on front lines in classrooms, community centers, and at protests. Drawing on the knowledge in the room, teachers engaged in a multimodal exploration of what it means to do the work we do and care for self along the way.
Using the Tools of Critical Race Theory and Racial Microaggressions to Examine Everyday Racism
Dr. Daniel Solórzano, University of California, Los Angeles
is the director of UC/ACCORD and Associate Dean for Equity and Diversity in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of Califorina, Los Angeles. He is a professor in the Social Science and Comparative Education department, with affiliations in Chicana/o Studies and Women’s Studies. A former teacher in juvenile hall, his teaching and research interests include critical race and gender studies on the educational access, persistence and graduation of underrepresented minority undergraduate and graduate students in the United States. Solórzano has authored more than 60 articles, book chapters and reports on issues of educational access and equity for underrepresented minority populations in the United States.
Dr. Daniel Solórzano, University of California, Los Angeles
is the director of UC/ACCORD and Associate Dean for Equity and Diversity in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of Califorina, Los Angeles. He is a professor in the Social Science and Comparative Education department, with affiliations in Chicana/o Studies and Women’s Studies. A former teacher in juvenile hall, his teaching and research interests include critical race and gender studies on the educational access, persistence and graduation of underrepresented minority undergraduate and graduate students in the United States. Solórzano has authored more than 60 articles, book chapters and reports on issues of educational access and equity for underrepresented minority populations in the United States.
Student Literacies and Labor: Ethnic Studies Pedagogies and (Re)Making of Curriculum
Roger Viet Chung, Laney College & San Quentin Prison Facility
This talk explored the collision between the standardization of knowledge in educational institutions and the racial and gendered literacies of students of color. Chung critically examined both visible and invisible forms of labor students employ to co-construct/reconstruct curriculum, and how teachers, using Ethnic Studies methods, can find ways to value these forms of student agency pedagogically. He looked to multiple student subjects: incarcerated, mixed race, mothers and grandmothers, to name a few, and explored the ways they have forced teachers, like Chung, to rethink classroom approaches and practices, demonstrating how ALL students, including "traditional students," have benefited from their "non-traditional" literacies.
Artists:
Roger Viet Chung, Laney College & San Quentin Prison Facility
This talk explored the collision between the standardization of knowledge in educational institutions and the racial and gendered literacies of students of color. Chung critically examined both visible and invisible forms of labor students employ to co-construct/reconstruct curriculum, and how teachers, using Ethnic Studies methods, can find ways to value these forms of student agency pedagogically. He looked to multiple student subjects: incarcerated, mixed race, mothers and grandmothers, to name a few, and explored the ways they have forced teachers, like Chung, to rethink classroom approaches and practices, demonstrating how ALL students, including "traditional students," have benefited from their "non-traditional" literacies.
Artists:
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Jenny Yang is a Los Angeles-based writer and stand up comedian who produces the first-ever (mostly) female, Asian American standup comedy tour, Dis/orient/ed Comedy and has been a writer and performer on the viral Buzzfeed videos "If Asians Said the Stuff White People Say," "What if Adults had Tantrums Like Toddlers?" and the "Ask An Asian" video series. Jenny was dubbed one of Los Angeles' "most fascinating people" of 2015 in LA Weekly's annual "People" issue. She was also a featured standup comic on Joan Rivers' 2013 Showtime documentary Why We Laugh: Funny Women. She is the regular co-host of AngryAsianMan.com Phil Yu's "Angry Asian America" talk show on ISAtv.
Candice “Antique” Wicks, M.A.Ed., is a singer, songwriter, educator, personal and professional coach and professional development specialist with an emphasis on education. She is the founder of Antique Edutainment, a company that uses the science of music as a tool for healing and educating, the lead singer of a beatbox-sing soul band called Antique Naked Soul, and has a solo project coming in Fall 2014. This past summer she toured Ghana and performed at Emancipation Day to support the healing of the relationship between Ghanaians and Black Americans.
Poet and performer Mayda Del Valle has been described by the Chicago Sun Times as having “a way with words. Sometimes they seem to flutter and roll off her lips. Other times they burst forth like a comet streaking across a nighttime sky.” A proud native of Chicago’s South Side, Mayda got her start at New York City's legendary Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, where she was the 2001 Grand Slam Champion and went on to win the 2001 National Poetry Slam Individual title, becoming the youngest and first Latina poet to do so. She went on to appear on 6 episodes of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on HBO, and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Since 2011 Mayda has been a teaching artist with the poetry-based non-profit youth organization Street Poets, faciliatating workshops around the LA area in high schools and probation camps.
Candice “Antique” Wicks, M.A.Ed., is a singer, songwriter, educator, personal and professional coach and professional development specialist with an emphasis on education. She is the founder of Antique Edutainment, a company that uses the science of music as a tool for healing and educating, the lead singer of a beatbox-sing soul band called Antique Naked Soul, and has a solo project coming in Fall 2014. This past summer she toured Ghana and performed at Emancipation Day to support the healing of the relationship between Ghanaians and Black Americans.
Poet and performer Mayda Del Valle has been described by the Chicago Sun Times as having “a way with words. Sometimes they seem to flutter and roll off her lips. Other times they burst forth like a comet streaking across a nighttime sky.” A proud native of Chicago’s South Side, Mayda got her start at New York City's legendary Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, where she was the 2001 Grand Slam Champion and went on to win the 2001 National Poetry Slam Individual title, becoming the youngest and first Latina poet to do so. She went on to appear on 6 episodes of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on HBO, and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Since 2011 Mayda has been a teaching artist with the poetry-based non-profit youth organization Street Poets, faciliatating workshops around the LA area in high schools and probation camps.
Workshops:
Anti-Black Racism | Bringing Students Into the Conversation
Jamie Jenkins, Indepedent Consultant
From Burnout to Reclaiming Bodymindspirit: Personal and Classroom Strategies to Better Care for Yourself and your Students
Stephanie Cariaga; People's Education Movement, Young Empowered Women
The Arch of Empowerment Education: Classrooms for Social Transformation
Candice Wicks, Antique Edutainment
“Ew, Why are you wearing a pink shirt, Mr.?”: How an Intersectional Approach Frames my Critical Pedagogy as a Queer Latino Educator
Dr. Eduardo Lara
Movement of the People: Teacher Organizing for Critical Curriculum Development
Dr. Carolina Valdez (Movement of the People)
Emily Bautista
Community Responsive Pedagogy and Teacher Activism: A Campaign to Stop the Co-Location of Charter Schools
Mariana Ramirez (History Teacher at Roosevelt High School)
“All We Wanna Do is Be Free”: The Role of Critical Hip Hop Educators in the Movement for Transformative Justice
Dr. Anthony Ratcliff (Associate Professor; Africana Studies at CSU Northridge)
A Critical Race Analysis of the Community College Pathway
Dr. Dimpal Jain
Decolonizing the Classroom: A Reflection and Share-Out of "Boyle Heights and Me" Ethnic Studies course
Roxana Dueña (Social Studies Teacher at Roosevelt High School)
Jorge Lopez (Social Studies Teacher & Activist at Roosevelt High School)
Fixing School Discipline: Racial Justice in the Classroom
Sarah Omojola (Statewide Education Rights Advocate for Public Counsel & co-founder of Stand Up For Each Other)
Apoyo as Parent Engagement: From Acknowledging to Co-Building the Leadership Capacity of Parents in Educational and Community Spaces
Dr. Pedro E. Nava (Assistant Professor of Education; Mills College)
Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Developing Applications to Confront Power in K-12 Schools
Ed Curammeng
Fugitive Memories: Using the Archive to Rupture Dominant Historical Narratives and Transform Communities
Yusef Omowale (Southern California Library)
Michele Welsing (Southern California Library)
Roberto Rodriguez (Social Studies Teacher for Youthbuild Charter School of California at Compton Youthbuild)
Facilitating Freirean Culture Circles Across Contexts
Cati de los Rios (PhD Candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University & Research Fellow at Institute for Urban and Minority)
Education in Harlem
Fostering a Culture of Restorative Justice
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
Building and Thriving: Engaging Students for Personal, Political, and Intellectual Excellence in our Schools and Classrooms
Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez (Associate Professor & Co-Director of the Doctorate in Educational Leadership at CSU, San Bernardino)
Anti-Black Racism | Bringing Students Into the Conversation
Jamie Jenkins, Indepedent Consultant
From Burnout to Reclaiming Bodymindspirit: Personal and Classroom Strategies to Better Care for Yourself and your Students
Stephanie Cariaga; People's Education Movement, Young Empowered Women
The Arch of Empowerment Education: Classrooms for Social Transformation
Candice Wicks, Antique Edutainment
“Ew, Why are you wearing a pink shirt, Mr.?”: How an Intersectional Approach Frames my Critical Pedagogy as a Queer Latino Educator
Dr. Eduardo Lara
Movement of the People: Teacher Organizing for Critical Curriculum Development
Dr. Carolina Valdez (Movement of the People)
Emily Bautista
Community Responsive Pedagogy and Teacher Activism: A Campaign to Stop the Co-Location of Charter Schools
Mariana Ramirez (History Teacher at Roosevelt High School)
“All We Wanna Do is Be Free”: The Role of Critical Hip Hop Educators in the Movement for Transformative Justice
Dr. Anthony Ratcliff (Associate Professor; Africana Studies at CSU Northridge)
A Critical Race Analysis of the Community College Pathway
Dr. Dimpal Jain
Decolonizing the Classroom: A Reflection and Share-Out of "Boyle Heights and Me" Ethnic Studies course
Roxana Dueña (Social Studies Teacher at Roosevelt High School)
Jorge Lopez (Social Studies Teacher & Activist at Roosevelt High School)
Fixing School Discipline: Racial Justice in the Classroom
Sarah Omojola (Statewide Education Rights Advocate for Public Counsel & co-founder of Stand Up For Each Other)
Apoyo as Parent Engagement: From Acknowledging to Co-Building the Leadership Capacity of Parents in Educational and Community Spaces
Dr. Pedro E. Nava (Assistant Professor of Education; Mills College)
Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Developing Applications to Confront Power in K-12 Schools
Ed Curammeng
Fugitive Memories: Using the Archive to Rupture Dominant Historical Narratives and Transform Communities
Yusef Omowale (Southern California Library)
Michele Welsing (Southern California Library)
Roberto Rodriguez (Social Studies Teacher for Youthbuild Charter School of California at Compton Youthbuild)
Facilitating Freirean Culture Circles Across Contexts
Cati de los Rios (PhD Candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University & Research Fellow at Institute for Urban and Minority)
Education in Harlem
Fostering a Culture of Restorative Justice
Michelle Ferrer (Social Justice Educator)
Building and Thriving: Engaging Students for Personal, Political, and Intellectual Excellence in our Schools and Classrooms
Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez (Associate Professor & Co-Director of the Doctorate in Educational Leadership at CSU, San Bernardino)
2014 ITOC
Keynote Addresses:
Our Students as Holders and Creators of Knowledge: Disrupting Curricular & Pedagogical Boundaries
Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal, University of Utah
To demonstrate why it is important to disrupt normative curricular and pedagogical boundaries within our public schools, Delgado Bernal begins with a discussion of the educational pipeline for students of color. She then draws upon the notion of storytelling to address concrete practices for how to engage in this type of disruption. These practices, far from revolutionary, range from school-wide partnership work to classroom-based curricular interventions and offer pockets of hope and small spaces of transformation. Foundational to all the practices are the ideas that: 1) students of color are holders and creators of knowledge, and, 2) recognizing students' ways of knowing is crucial to their academic success.
Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal, University of Utah
To demonstrate why it is important to disrupt normative curricular and pedagogical boundaries within our public schools, Delgado Bernal begins with a discussion of the educational pipeline for students of color. She then draws upon the notion of storytelling to address concrete practices for how to engage in this type of disruption. These practices, far from revolutionary, range from school-wide partnership work to classroom-based curricular interventions and offer pockets of hope and small spaces of transformation. Foundational to all the practices are the ideas that: 1) students of color are holders and creators of knowledge, and, 2) recognizing students' ways of knowing is crucial to their academic success.
Looking for Rainbows in the Midst of the Storm: The State of US Teacher Education
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Madison, Wisconsin
The inverse relationship between who our K-12 students are and who their teachers are has been problematic for many years. However, most teacher education programs have not been courageous enough to use the tools they do have to develop more diverse teaching cohorts. While these minor changes could lead to some important advances, this talk discusses more radical impacts from a revamped culturally relevant pedagogy that employs hip hop culture to help the next generation of teachers work more effectively with "new century" students.
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Madison, Wisconsin
The inverse relationship between who our K-12 students are and who their teachers are has been problematic for many years. However, most teacher education programs have not been courageous enough to use the tools they do have to develop more diverse teaching cohorts. While these minor changes could lead to some important advances, this talk discusses more radical impacts from a revamped culturally relevant pedagogy that employs hip hop culture to help the next generation of teachers work more effectively with "new century" students.
Trauma & Healing in Urban Schools: Eco-psychological & Indigenous Perspectives
Candice Valenzuela, Castlemont High School Teacher
This talk uses eco-psychological and indigenous perspectives to shed light on challenges teachers of color face working in high violence areas, marginalized communities and/or under-resourced schools. An emphasis will be placed on expanding the current dialogue on trauma in youth of color, and empowering teachers of color to appreciate their own role in the collective healing process.
Artists:
Candice Valenzuela, Castlemont High School Teacher
This talk uses eco-psychological and indigenous perspectives to shed light on challenges teachers of color face working in high violence areas, marginalized communities and/or under-resourced schools. An emphasis will be placed on expanding the current dialogue on trauma in youth of color, and empowering teachers of color to appreciate their own role in the collective healing process.
Artists:
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Lighthouse Charter School Leadership class was created by Dr. Tony Cuevas as part of a project to demonstrate the power of counterstorytelling for at promise students in Oakland. Directed and produced by Veronica Haro, the students uncovered, wrote, and now perform their families’ migration stories in this play, America Untold: The Empty Pages of the History Books.
Candice “Antique” Wicks, M.A.Ed., is a singer, songwriter, educator, personal and professional coach and professional development specialist with an emphasis on education. She is the founder of Antique Edutainment, a company that uses the science of music as a tool for healing and educating, the lead singer of a beatbox-sing soul band called Antique Naked Soul, and has a solo project coming in Fall 2014.
M’Kala Payton just graduated Fremont High School in East Oakland in 2012, where she started her own spoken word poetry club, and was a lead student organizer for Youth Together. She is now a student at Merritt College in Oakland, where she is majoring in Creative Writing.
Talia Taylor is an Oakland based spoken word artist and Emcee. She worked as an artist in residence with Youth Speaks, teaching and mentoring young people to develop their talent in spoken word poetry. She also works at Youth Together, an organization that empowers youth to act on the pressing social justice issues at their schools.
Workshops:
Nonviolent Communication as the Heart of Decolonizing Our Mind, Body, and Spirit
Edmundo Norte (Bay Area Nonviolent Communication)
Dismantling the Pipeline to Prison
Dr. Macheo Payne (Cal State University East Bay)
Critical Rage: Working with Girls of Color in Schools
Dr. Connie Wun (University of California, Berkeley)
Restoring the Justice in Our Education System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Director of Restorative Justice at Elmhurst Community Prep)
Applied Critical Race Theory in the Classroom
Dr. Tony Cuevas & Veronica Haro (Downtown College Prep)
The Kinesiology of Race: Implications for Teachers
Dr. Myosha McAfee (Racial Equitecture)
Growing a Community Responsive Teaching Pipeline
Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP)
Developing Respectful Relationships with Boys and Men of Color
Mario Ozuna-Sanchez (National Compadres Network)
Remembering the Role of Self Love in Our Liberation Struggle
Ebony Sinnamon-Johnson (Castlemont High School)
Robin Morales (Reach Ashland Youth Center)
Interdisciplinary Racial Justice Curriculum for the K-8 Classroom
Dr. Sumer Seiki (San José State University)
Creating a Professional Environment of Healing and Liberation for Educators of Color
Patricia Reguerin & Merle Boxill (Escuela Popular)
The Arc of Empowerment Education: Leveraging Our Classrooms as Training for Social Justice Activists
Candice "Antique" Wicks, M.A.Ed. (Antique Edutainment)
"From Coping to Hoping”: Teaching Youth to Thrive through Trauma
Dr. Patrick Camangian (University of San Francisco)
Teaching Race thru Pop Culture: Ethnic Studies Methodology
Roger Chung (Laney College, City College of San Francisco, UC Berkeley)
“I’m Straight. I don’t need to take Gender Studies Class”: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality, and Why We All Need This Class
Liza Gesuden (Oakland School for the Arts, Peoples Education Movement Bay Area)
Keeping it Real as a Professional: Performance and Authenticity as a Teacher of Color
Kafi Payne (Oakland Unified School District)
Teacher Trauma & Healing Circle
Candice Valenzuela (Castlemont High School)
Candice “Antique” Wicks, M.A.Ed., is a singer, songwriter, educator, personal and professional coach and professional development specialist with an emphasis on education. She is the founder of Antique Edutainment, a company that uses the science of music as a tool for healing and educating, the lead singer of a beatbox-sing soul band called Antique Naked Soul, and has a solo project coming in Fall 2014.
M’Kala Payton just graduated Fremont High School in East Oakland in 2012, where she started her own spoken word poetry club, and was a lead student organizer for Youth Together. She is now a student at Merritt College in Oakland, where she is majoring in Creative Writing.
Talia Taylor is an Oakland based spoken word artist and Emcee. She worked as an artist in residence with Youth Speaks, teaching and mentoring young people to develop their talent in spoken word poetry. She also works at Youth Together, an organization that empowers youth to act on the pressing social justice issues at their schools.
Workshops:
Nonviolent Communication as the Heart of Decolonizing Our Mind, Body, and Spirit
Edmundo Norte (Bay Area Nonviolent Communication)
Dismantling the Pipeline to Prison
Dr. Macheo Payne (Cal State University East Bay)
Critical Rage: Working with Girls of Color in Schools
Dr. Connie Wun (University of California, Berkeley)
Restoring the Justice in Our Education System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Director of Restorative Justice at Elmhurst Community Prep)
Applied Critical Race Theory in the Classroom
Dr. Tony Cuevas & Veronica Haro (Downtown College Prep)
The Kinesiology of Race: Implications for Teachers
Dr. Myosha McAfee (Racial Equitecture)
Growing a Community Responsive Teaching Pipeline
Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP)
Developing Respectful Relationships with Boys and Men of Color
Mario Ozuna-Sanchez (National Compadres Network)
Remembering the Role of Self Love in Our Liberation Struggle
Ebony Sinnamon-Johnson (Castlemont High School)
Robin Morales (Reach Ashland Youth Center)
Interdisciplinary Racial Justice Curriculum for the K-8 Classroom
Dr. Sumer Seiki (San José State University)
Creating a Professional Environment of Healing and Liberation for Educators of Color
Patricia Reguerin & Merle Boxill (Escuela Popular)
The Arc of Empowerment Education: Leveraging Our Classrooms as Training for Social Justice Activists
Candice "Antique" Wicks, M.A.Ed. (Antique Edutainment)
"From Coping to Hoping”: Teaching Youth to Thrive through Trauma
Dr. Patrick Camangian (University of San Francisco)
Teaching Race thru Pop Culture: Ethnic Studies Methodology
Roger Chung (Laney College, City College of San Francisco, UC Berkeley)
“I’m Straight. I don’t need to take Gender Studies Class”: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality, and Why We All Need This Class
Liza Gesuden (Oakland School for the Arts, Peoples Education Movement Bay Area)
Keeping it Real as a Professional: Performance and Authenticity as a Teacher of Color
Kafi Payne (Oakland Unified School District)
Teacher Trauma & Healing Circle
Candice Valenzuela (Castlemont High School)
2013 ITOC
Keynote Addresses:
Teaching for Transformation: Critical Race Theory into Praxis
Dr. Tara Yosso, University of California, Santa Barbara
Yosso provided overview pedagogical tools for social justice educators, including counterstories, community cultural wealth, and critical race media literacy. Each of these tools builds on critical race theory to challenge the unequal structures, practices, and discourses along the educational pipeline.
Dr. Tara Yosso, University of California, Santa Barbara
Yosso provided overview pedagogical tools for social justice educators, including counterstories, community cultural wealth, and critical race media literacy. Each of these tools builds on critical race theory to challenge the unequal structures, practices, and discourses along the educational pipeline.
Growing Our Own Teachers: Creating Counter-Pipelines in Communities of Color
Dr. Allison Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University
Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales shared her experiences in the development of Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP). She provided a brief history about PEP’s strategic positionality in the intersections between public schools, the community, and institutions of higher education. Then, she exposed the challenges PEP has faced in a climate that has been hostile to ethnic studies. Beyond the challenges, she gave examples of the pedagogy that has grown from PEP’s responsiveness to community needs. And, finally she shared lessons learned in creating a “grow your own” teacher pipeline.
Dr. Allison Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University
Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales shared her experiences in the development of Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP). She provided a brief history about PEP’s strategic positionality in the intersections between public schools, the community, and institutions of higher education. Then, she exposed the challenges PEP has faced in a climate that has been hostile to ethnic studies. Beyond the challenges, she gave examples of the pedagogy that has grown from PEP’s responsiveness to community needs. And, finally she shared lessons learned in creating a “grow your own” teacher pipeline.
Nonviolent Communication: Walking the Talk of Transformative Social Change
Edmundo Norte
Even those of us who are deeply committed to actively creating a more just and life-affirming world are not free from the legacy of oppression and historical trauma as it manifests itself in our own contradictory attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. This interactive session explored what the presenter asserts is the most powerful and pervasive form of internalized oppression we all carry, and also, a radically different and life-affirming set of principles and practices paradigm for understanding human motivation, behavior, and transformation. Both conceptual and behavioral tools for taking action consistent with our highest values for personal and social transformation was shared, and participants have an opportunity to experience the basic principles and practices of Nonviolent Communication as a way of applying emotional intelligence to transformative social-justice work. The Native American Medicine Wheel was be used as our guide, our “compass”, for pursuing personal, social, and political transformation.
Workshops:
Reinvisioning Classroom as Village
Candice Valenzuela (Castlemont High School)
Movement of the Teachers: Teacher-led Inquiry as a Practice of Self-determination
Antonio Nieves Martinez (Fourth Year Doctoral Student)
Jerica Coffey (The People's Education Movement)
Emily Bautista (Social Studies Instructor at YouthBuild Charter School of California (YCSC)
ARISE UP as a School Community of Critical, Caring, & Culturally Responsive Educators Because our Lives Depend On It
G Reyes (Co-Principals at ARISE High School)
Making our Visions a Reality: Social Studies, Literacy, Social Justice and the Common Core
Dr. Ruchi Agarwal (Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University)
Healing in Education: Building Resiliency Through Cultura in Action
The Andariega Collective: Rosanna Alvarez, Marlene Chavez, Ana Lilia Soto (Master's Degrees in Mexican American Studies from San José State University)
Educators for Immigrant Rights: Critical Strategies and Global Struggles
Luis Genaro Garcia (Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in the School of Educational Studies)
Enrique C. Ochoa (Latin American Studies and History at California State University, Los Angeles)
Gilda L. Ochoa (Professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies and Sociology at Pomona College)
Combating Stereotype Threat While Preparing Secondary Students for High Stakes Testing
Katrina Traylor (Humanities Teacher at June Jordan School for Equity)
Overcoming Vulnerability in the Face of Whiteness: Conversations for Strengthening the Resolve of Educators of Color
Virginia Necochea (Doctoral student at the University of New Mexico's Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies (ETSS) Program)
Sarah Santillanes (Teacher Education Department at Central New Mexico Community College)
Culture Clash’s Teatro as Pedagogy: Engaging Students in Writing and Performing Community Oral Histories
Dr. David G. García (Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles)
Our Classrooms: A Place for Resisting Systems of Oppression
Artnelson Concordia (Ethnic Studies and US History Teacher at Balboa High School, SFUSD)
Restoring Justice in Our School System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Dean of Discipline at Castlemont)
Edmundo Norte
Even those of us who are deeply committed to actively creating a more just and life-affirming world are not free from the legacy of oppression and historical trauma as it manifests itself in our own contradictory attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. This interactive session explored what the presenter asserts is the most powerful and pervasive form of internalized oppression we all carry, and also, a radically different and life-affirming set of principles and practices paradigm for understanding human motivation, behavior, and transformation. Both conceptual and behavioral tools for taking action consistent with our highest values for personal and social transformation was shared, and participants have an opportunity to experience the basic principles and practices of Nonviolent Communication as a way of applying emotional intelligence to transformative social-justice work. The Native American Medicine Wheel was be used as our guide, our “compass”, for pursuing personal, social, and political transformation.
Workshops:
Reinvisioning Classroom as Village
Candice Valenzuela (Castlemont High School)
Movement of the Teachers: Teacher-led Inquiry as a Practice of Self-determination
Antonio Nieves Martinez (Fourth Year Doctoral Student)
Jerica Coffey (The People's Education Movement)
Emily Bautista (Social Studies Instructor at YouthBuild Charter School of California (YCSC)
ARISE UP as a School Community of Critical, Caring, & Culturally Responsive Educators Because our Lives Depend On It
G Reyes (Co-Principals at ARISE High School)
Making our Visions a Reality: Social Studies, Literacy, Social Justice and the Common Core
Dr. Ruchi Agarwal (Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University)
Healing in Education: Building Resiliency Through Cultura in Action
The Andariega Collective: Rosanna Alvarez, Marlene Chavez, Ana Lilia Soto (Master's Degrees in Mexican American Studies from San José State University)
Educators for Immigrant Rights: Critical Strategies and Global Struggles
Luis Genaro Garcia (Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in the School of Educational Studies)
Enrique C. Ochoa (Latin American Studies and History at California State University, Los Angeles)
Gilda L. Ochoa (Professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies and Sociology at Pomona College)
Combating Stereotype Threat While Preparing Secondary Students for High Stakes Testing
Katrina Traylor (Humanities Teacher at June Jordan School for Equity)
Overcoming Vulnerability in the Face of Whiteness: Conversations for Strengthening the Resolve of Educators of Color
Virginia Necochea (Doctoral student at the University of New Mexico's Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies (ETSS) Program)
Sarah Santillanes (Teacher Education Department at Central New Mexico Community College)
Culture Clash’s Teatro as Pedagogy: Engaging Students in Writing and Performing Community Oral Histories
Dr. David G. García (Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles)
Our Classrooms: A Place for Resisting Systems of Oppression
Artnelson Concordia (Ethnic Studies and US History Teacher at Balboa High School, SFUSD)
Restoring Justice in Our School System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Dean of Discipline at Castlemont)
2012 ITOC
Keynote Addresses:
Liberatory Pedagogy in the Age of Value-Added Education (The Metrics of Teacher Evaluation)
Dr. Dolores Calderón, University of Utah
In today’s high stakes testing driven educational context, there is little thought given to implementing relational pedagogies (how we facilitate learning by building relationships with students and community) let alone liberatory pedagogies (a practice that enables students to become critical citizens). Moreover, the current political climate has shifted what is perceived as the failure of students to “achieve” directly onto teachers’ backs under the guise of value-added ratings—how effective are teachers in raising student performance. We explored how we “teach to transgress” (hooks 1994)—“to educate as the practice of freedom…in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students” (hooks 1994; 13)—in the age of value-added education.
Dr. Dolores Calderón, University of Utah
In today’s high stakes testing driven educational context, there is little thought given to implementing relational pedagogies (how we facilitate learning by building relationships with students and community) let alone liberatory pedagogies (a practice that enables students to become critical citizens). Moreover, the current political climate has shifted what is perceived as the failure of students to “achieve” directly onto teachers’ backs under the guise of value-added ratings—how effective are teachers in raising student performance. We explored how we “teach to transgress” (hooks 1994)—“to educate as the practice of freedom…in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students” (hooks 1994; 13)—in the age of value-added education.
Break Free: Applying an Education for Liberation
Dr. Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco
In the Fanonian (1963) spirit of understanding the psychological effect of colonization on the consciousness of dispossessed people and its broader implications for a liberatory education in urban schools, this presentation discussed pedagogical tenets to understand the educational experiences of colonized people in the United States. More importantly, this talk considered ways in which the problems facing them can be more effectively remedied in our classrooms. The colonial condition on students of color is clear: a substantial amount of youth in urban communities: 1) internalize varying levels of cultural self-hate, 2) participate in divide and conquer, and 3) are immobilized in collective false consciousness. This presentation analyzed these contradictions and discuss ways to effectively confront them by teaching students: 1) self-love, 2) solidarity, and 3) self-determination in and beyond designated grade levels and subject areas. Together, these tenets fulfill decolonizing theory (Cesaire, 1972; Smith, 1999) and critical pedagogy’s (Darder, Baltadano, & Torres, 2008; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) call to better provide holistic learning opportunities for dispossessed youth of color to respond to the dehumanizing conditions imposed on their communities.
Teatro: La Guerra Cultural: A Culture Clash!
Middle School Students from Lighthouse Charter School, Oakland Unified School District
Teatro Libertad, led by Tony Cuevas and Veronica Haro, is proud to a present La Guerra Cultural: A Culture Clash! Teatro Libertad is the resident theatre company of Lighthouse Community Charter in Oakland and is made up of 21 middle school students. The students perform original plays based on the true history of their ancestors. All material is written and performed by the students and is based on interviews of family members. We believe that our stories liberate us and have the power to overcome negative stereotypes. The curriculum is based on counterstorytelling and challenges the hegemonic narrative that oppresses people of color. "Our parents have had these stories in their hearts for many years, and when they tell us, we set them free, and they set us free!"
Workshops:
Making **it Matter: A Curricular Model of Bridging the Gap Between Academic Content and Youth Popular Culture in a High School Social Studies Classroom
Nikhil Laud (Social Studies teacher in Los Angeles Unitied School District)
How We Be . . . Como soy: How Women of Color lead authentically in high level education positions
Kafi Payne (Coordinator at Oakland Unitied School District)
Using Mindfulness to Create Compassionate Classrooms
Candice Valenzuela
Ebony Sinnamon-Johnson (Teacher at WCCUSD & Marriage and Family Therapist Intern at Youth Justice Institute)
Exploring the Intersectionality of Race and Gender in Urban Classrooms: A Black Feminist Perspective
Monique Lane (Doctoral Candidate; UCLA’s Graduate School of Education, Division of Urban Schooling)
Expecting Success: Creating a Culture of High Expectations through Rigorous, Relevant Curriculum
John Lynch, Director of the Freshmen Prep Academy
Christina "Ms. V" Villarreal (Lecturer; San Francisco State University, & leadership team of the Freshmen Prep Academy at Castlemont High School)
Combating Stereotype Threat While Preparing Secondary Students for High Stakes Testing
Katrina Traylor (Humanities Teacher at June Jordan School for Equity)
Restorative Justice: Restoring Justice in our School System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Dean of Discipline at Castlemont)
Connecting Across Differences: Nonviolent Communication and Walking the Talk of Personal, Social, and Political Transformation
Edmundo Norte (Dean of Intercultural and International Studies at De Anza College)
Lessons from Organizing Filipino Youth Toward Building Broad Anti-Imperialist Solidarity
Artnelson Concordia (Teacher at Balboa High School)
Dr. Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco
In the Fanonian (1963) spirit of understanding the psychological effect of colonization on the consciousness of dispossessed people and its broader implications for a liberatory education in urban schools, this presentation discussed pedagogical tenets to understand the educational experiences of colonized people in the United States. More importantly, this talk considered ways in which the problems facing them can be more effectively remedied in our classrooms. The colonial condition on students of color is clear: a substantial amount of youth in urban communities: 1) internalize varying levels of cultural self-hate, 2) participate in divide and conquer, and 3) are immobilized in collective false consciousness. This presentation analyzed these contradictions and discuss ways to effectively confront them by teaching students: 1) self-love, 2) solidarity, and 3) self-determination in and beyond designated grade levels and subject areas. Together, these tenets fulfill decolonizing theory (Cesaire, 1972; Smith, 1999) and critical pedagogy’s (Darder, Baltadano, & Torres, 2008; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) call to better provide holistic learning opportunities for dispossessed youth of color to respond to the dehumanizing conditions imposed on their communities.
Teatro: La Guerra Cultural: A Culture Clash!
Middle School Students from Lighthouse Charter School, Oakland Unified School District
Teatro Libertad, led by Tony Cuevas and Veronica Haro, is proud to a present La Guerra Cultural: A Culture Clash! Teatro Libertad is the resident theatre company of Lighthouse Community Charter in Oakland and is made up of 21 middle school students. The students perform original plays based on the true history of their ancestors. All material is written and performed by the students and is based on interviews of family members. We believe that our stories liberate us and have the power to overcome negative stereotypes. The curriculum is based on counterstorytelling and challenges the hegemonic narrative that oppresses people of color. "Our parents have had these stories in their hearts for many years, and when they tell us, we set them free, and they set us free!"
Workshops:
Making **it Matter: A Curricular Model of Bridging the Gap Between Academic Content and Youth Popular Culture in a High School Social Studies Classroom
Nikhil Laud (Social Studies teacher in Los Angeles Unitied School District)
How We Be . . . Como soy: How Women of Color lead authentically in high level education positions
Kafi Payne (Coordinator at Oakland Unitied School District)
Using Mindfulness to Create Compassionate Classrooms
Candice Valenzuela
Ebony Sinnamon-Johnson (Teacher at WCCUSD & Marriage and Family Therapist Intern at Youth Justice Institute)
Exploring the Intersectionality of Race and Gender in Urban Classrooms: A Black Feminist Perspective
Monique Lane (Doctoral Candidate; UCLA’s Graduate School of Education, Division of Urban Schooling)
Expecting Success: Creating a Culture of High Expectations through Rigorous, Relevant Curriculum
John Lynch, Director of the Freshmen Prep Academy
Christina "Ms. V" Villarreal (Lecturer; San Francisco State University, & leadership team of the Freshmen Prep Academy at Castlemont High School)
Combating Stereotype Threat While Preparing Secondary Students for High Stakes Testing
Katrina Traylor (Humanities Teacher at June Jordan School for Equity)
Restorative Justice: Restoring Justice in our School System
Sagnicthe Salazar (Dean of Discipline at Castlemont)
Connecting Across Differences: Nonviolent Communication and Walking the Talk of Personal, Social, and Political Transformation
Edmundo Norte (Dean of Intercultural and International Studies at De Anza College)
Lessons from Organizing Filipino Youth Toward Building Broad Anti-Imperialist Solidarity
Artnelson Concordia (Teacher at Balboa High School)
2011 ITOC
Keynote Addresses:
Race in Our Space: How Racism Impacts Learning Environments and Steps Toward Change
Dr. Robin Nicole Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles
This talk identified how racism in schools impacts the well-being of students of color and teachers of color. Participants were provided with tools to reflect on racism in their school environment, and identify ways in which it negatively impacts the education of their students, as well their lives as teachers. Johnson-Ahorlu also offered a strategies to navigate and challenge the racism in schools.
Race in Our Space: How Racism Impacts Learning Environments and Steps Toward Change
Dr. Robin Nicole Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles
This talk identified how racism in schools impacts the well-being of students of color and teachers of color. Participants were provided with tools to reflect on racism in their school environment, and identify ways in which it negatively impacts the education of their students, as well their lives as teachers. Johnson-Ahorlu also offered a strategies to navigate and challenge the racism in schools.
Humanizing Education: Utilizing a Harmonizing Pedagogy Centered on Love and Resistance
Norma Gonzalez & José Gonzalez, Tucson Unified School District
Through our keynote, we shared our experiences and lessons as teachers in the Raza Studies Department of Tucson Unified School District, which has been at the center of an epic political battle in Arizona, as the legislature has sought to eliminate our program. Our work has led to dramatic increases in test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance for our students.
We operate from a humanizing paradigm embedded in an indigenous epistemology to counter the lethal and negative manifestations of colonization and counteract our historical trauma. In the spirit of holistic teaching, our relationship with our students is rooted in the recognition of our interconnection as evident through an indigenous epistemology that we seek to reconnect with. As such, our curricula are centered on self-reflection in the context of fostering the evolution of every aspect of our humanity: emotional, intellectual, physical and interconnectedness. The concepts embedded within our curriculum are concepts that are re-introduced in order to activate our student’s genetic memory. As such it is hoped that the energy, through the content of our work, will have a transforming effect on all who participate, with the understanding that decolonization happens one mind at a time.
Workshops:
Using the Dramatic Arts to Facilitate Problem-Posing Education
Dr. Jolynn Asato, (Assistant Professor; San José State University)
Teaching Through Lies: Ideological Literacy and Critical Consciousness
Dr. Patrick Camangian (Assistant Professor;Department of Teacher Education at the University of San Francisco)
Teachers Working Collectively to Identify and Address Race and Class Inequalities in Schools
Alicia Casas (Bilingual Elementary Public School Teacher)
Expecting Success: The Importance of Creating a Culture of High Expectations in Urban Schools
John A. Lynch (Director at Freshmen Prep Academy at Castlemont High School)
Christina "Ms.V" (Lecturer; San Francisco State University, & leadership team of the Freshmen Prep Academy at Castlemont High School)
Teaching As a Noble Profession: A Pedagogy of Hope
Dr. Arlando Smith (Assistant Professor; Educational Leadership at San Jose State University)
Connecting Across Differences: Nonviolent Communication and Walking the Talk of Personal, Social, and Political Transformation
Edmundo Norte (Dean of Intercultural and International Studies at De Anza College)
Norma Gonzalez & José Gonzalez, Tucson Unified School District
Through our keynote, we shared our experiences and lessons as teachers in the Raza Studies Department of Tucson Unified School District, which has been at the center of an epic political battle in Arizona, as the legislature has sought to eliminate our program. Our work has led to dramatic increases in test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance for our students.
We operate from a humanizing paradigm embedded in an indigenous epistemology to counter the lethal and negative manifestations of colonization and counteract our historical trauma. In the spirit of holistic teaching, our relationship with our students is rooted in the recognition of our interconnection as evident through an indigenous epistemology that we seek to reconnect with. As such, our curricula are centered on self-reflection in the context of fostering the evolution of every aspect of our humanity: emotional, intellectual, physical and interconnectedness. The concepts embedded within our curriculum are concepts that are re-introduced in order to activate our student’s genetic memory. As such it is hoped that the energy, through the content of our work, will have a transforming effect on all who participate, with the understanding that decolonization happens one mind at a time.
Workshops:
Using the Dramatic Arts to Facilitate Problem-Posing Education
Dr. Jolynn Asato, (Assistant Professor; San José State University)
Teaching Through Lies: Ideological Literacy and Critical Consciousness
Dr. Patrick Camangian (Assistant Professor;Department of Teacher Education at the University of San Francisco)
Teachers Working Collectively to Identify and Address Race and Class Inequalities in Schools
Alicia Casas (Bilingual Elementary Public School Teacher)
Expecting Success: The Importance of Creating a Culture of High Expectations in Urban Schools
John A. Lynch (Director at Freshmen Prep Academy at Castlemont High School)
Christina "Ms.V" (Lecturer; San Francisco State University, & leadership team of the Freshmen Prep Academy at Castlemont High School)
Teaching As a Noble Profession: A Pedagogy of Hope
Dr. Arlando Smith (Assistant Professor; Educational Leadership at San Jose State University)
Connecting Across Differences: Nonviolent Communication and Walking the Talk of Personal, Social, and Political Transformation
Edmundo Norte (Dean of Intercultural and International Studies at De Anza College)