2020-2021 Educational Equity Series
Thursday, January 21, 2021 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (CST)
The Essence of a Racial Equity Lens: Examining Race, Racism and Whiteness in Education
As someone in teacher education for many years, here is what I know: the majority of our public school teachers are white (while our students demographics are rapidly changing), they care deeply about all of their students, and most of them had teacher education experiences that did not prepare them to be effective in racially complex settings. I left teacher education to help address this gap in racial equity knowledge and this session is an overview of the advanced introductory content offered in our consulting work across various P-16 contexts. Far from being a "D & I" training, in these two hours we will explore the basics regarding race and the racial narratives, systemic racism and its impacts on BIPOC communities, and systemic whiteness and its various manifestations. Of course a specific focus on education will help participants better understand, develop and utilize a racial equity lens (REL) in all aspects of educational work. If time provides, there will be breakout opportunities and room for questions.
Thursday, January 21, 2021 | 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (CST)
The Roots of Whiteness: Going Back To Go Forward
Jacqueline Battalora's research explores when, where, how, and why the human category "white" was first asserted in law. The intersection of class and gender are revealed as integral to the invention of human separation that by the 20th century is reasoned to be "race." The legal history exposes race as a construct and reveals a mindset that is foundational to the United States shaping every institution, workplace, and community. Understanding it is essential for anyone engaging in antiracism, anti-bias work today whether that effort is on an individual or organizational basis.
Why were white people invented?
What does it mean to be white?
Why does it matter today?
Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM (CST)
Deepening Our Capacity as White Allies and Change Agents (Part 1):
Recognize Racist Microaggressions and Practices
In this engaging, self-reflective session participants can deepen their capacity to recognize the common types of racist microaggressions and practices that negatively impact Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC), identify the probable racist attitudes fueling these racist actions, and understand the devastating impacts these have on their colleagues and those they serve. Participants will receive access to a packet of materials to continue their learning as they share these concepts and tools with colleagues in their organization.
Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (CST)
Deepening Our Capacity as White Allies and Change Agents (Part 2):
Interrupt Racist Dynamics in the Moment
In this interactive session, participants can deepen their capacity to courageously speak up and effectively interrupt racist microaggressions and practices in the moment. Participants will receive access to a packet of materials to continue their learning as they share these concepts and tools with colleagues in their organization.
Tuesday, March 2, 2021 | 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM (CST)
Sticks and Stones: From Hurting to Healing
No place is immune to hate, bias, and everyday bigotry. Is your school/organization ready to respond? What proactive measures can you be taking? How do we foster environments that resist hate and bias, and embrace belonging and mattering? With these questions as the backdrop, this conversation will explore hate/bias prevention and intervention efforts through a race explicit (not exclusive) lens. By leaning on the joys, challenges, successes, and missteps experienced across 15+ years of story-holding through her leadership on a Hate Response Team, Amanda will present a critical social justice framework to move us from hurting to healing, while pushing for an educational revolution that advances racial equity and justice.
Tuesday, March 2, 2021 | 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM (CST)
Clarisa Godinez
Education in the Lens of Two Sisters
Understanding students’ unique experiences is key in working towards education equity. By sharing pieces of their stories, two sisters will highlight vast differences and key similarities on their education journeys. Exploring these students’ perspectives-through a sibling lens-will provide important themes to consider in our collective efforts of building equitable classrooms.
Ana Manríquez
Tuesday, March 2, 2021 | 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (CST)
Richie Morales
Art as a Process to Decolonize Learning
In this series combining one facilitated session and two short recorded videos we will explore how art became a process to decolonize learning in the life of self-taught painter Richie Morales. Participants will be able to make connections to their own life experiences and learn about deliberate practices that as educators they can have to bring or strengthen contextualized depth, integrity and transformation into their learning/teaching processes. During the facilitated session and video recordings, Richie Morales and Gery Paredes Vasquez will speak both English and Spanish as they weave each session together.
Participants joining the facilitated session will need to bring a notepad or drawing notebook, as well as their preference of materials to draw/paint during a guided creative reflection practice.
Gery Paredes Vasquez
Tuesday, April 27, 2021 | 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM (CDT)
The N!Word: Is There a Message in The Madness?
Who is allowed to say the N!word? What do we do or say when the N!word is said in our classrooms, hallways, practices, cafeterias and resident halls? Ignoring the N!Word is not an option anymore - You can hear N!Word everywhere nowadays. Participants are challenged to examine their personal/professional histories with N!Word when and/or how they first heard N!Word and pictures/feelings associated with the word. The workshop encourages all people, but specifically future leaders, educators and parents, to consider the ramifications of casual or uniformed usage of a powerful and troublesome word.
Participants will leave the session with:
a heightened understanding of the impact of the word, especially on our youth;
strategies for eliminating the word from school/curriculum;
resources for continued growth and development of strategies for addressing difficult conversations.
photo by dimitri moore
Tuesday, April 27, 2021 | 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (CDT)
The World Is Y/ours: Reflections of a Global RAPtivist
AISHA FUKUSHIMA is a Performance Lecturer, Justice Strategist, Singer/Songwriter, and RAPtivist (rap activist). Fukushima founded RAPtivism (Rap Activism), a hip hop project spanning 20 countries and four continents, amplifying universal efforts for freedom and justice. This highly engaging Keynote performance lecture weaves together music and storytelling to explore questions of global citizenship, collective leadership, and cultural activism.
Tuesday April 27, 2021 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (CDT)
Latinx Communities and the COVID-19 Pandemic
In the United States, COVID-19 has upended the lives of millions. This pandemic demonstrates how long-standing structural racism contributes to health and social inequities that BIPOC and Latinx communities suffer. These groups face greater risks of infection and illness and more economic hardship than their white counterparts do, not to mention unequal access to health care, including vaccination. The Wisconsin Latinx population is the second largest ethnic or racial group in the state, comprising nearly 9% of the total population. At 12%, Latinx students are the second largest student population in the public school system. Using primary and secondary data, this presentation will discuss factors that contribute to these inequities and share voices from Latinx communities on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participants will learn about the following topics:
Rates of COVID-19 infection, illness, and secondary impacts
Changing demographics of Latino/a/x communities
Mixed-status families
Access to health care and social services
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | 8:45 AM - 10:45 AM (CDT)
Children Learn More from What You Are Than What You Teach: The Six A's for Liberating Learning for Leaders
In this interactive workshop, we push ourselves to think reflexively about who we are as it relates to being an ally, accomplice, anti-racist and abolitionist with authentic accountability in leadership positions. By centering the Black thinkers across time and space such as W.E.B. DuBois, Fannie Lou Hamer, Asa Hilliard, Ana Julia Cooper, Nannie Helen Burroughs we think about the current political context of equity in education, how we show up in that space, and we must be committed to if we believe change is possible. Participants in this session should walk away with more questions than answers but moved toward a deeper and more intentional praxis in their own spheres of influence.
photo by nick bruno
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM (CDT)
Belonging in a Polarized World
As the pace of change in our world intensifies, humanity is confronting unprecedented global challenges. The pandemic, technology, climate change, demographics are all threatening our sense of well-being. There are many paths we can take to respond to this moment: we can try to turn to a past that never existed or try to create an open future where we all belong.
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (CDT)
Education for All in the Age of Racial Reckoning
Racially predictable disparities persist in our schools across the country in spite of decades of concerted effort to combat them. If greater effort hasn't yielded the result we all want to see, maybe it's time for a different approach. Join celebrated racial equity educator and Indigenous scholar Anton Treuer for a deep dive into new tools for your classroom, school, and system. The tenor of racial reckoning is full of hope, though rarely comfortable. Let's lean in together to examine how we all do better when we all do better and make that mission a reality.
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 | 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM (CDT)
Race, Restorative Justice and Education: Envisioning New Futures in a Time of Heartache and Hope
This is an extraordinary George Floyd, white nationalism, COVID-19, economic disaster and climate catastrophe historical moment. It is a moment of heartache and hope. It is a time of letting go of social structures that systematically harm and a time of re-imagining new ones where Black and all historically oppressed lives will matter. Against this historical backdrop, Dr. Davis' talk will envision new education futures, drawing on the African American tradition of the liberatory potential of education as well as on restorative justice values rooted in both indigenous teachings and anti-oppression praxis.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM (CDT)
Gender and Racial Justice in the Age of COVID, BLM, and Anti-Asian Hate: A Hmong Feminist Perspective
Kabzuag Vaj will share her journey from refugee to social justice movement leader and the lessons learned along the way. She will discuss current issues in the Southeast Asian American communities, specifically the Hmong community, and how they have positioned themselves in the fight for gender and racial equity while aligning with other liberation movements, especially during this historical Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020 over 3600 Anti-Asian hate incidents were reported, of that which 2/3 were from Asian women. Although anti-Asian hate isn't new in this country, the dehumanization and disregard of Asian Americans and immigrants have only worsened during the pandemic. From the Hmong and White hunting conflicts in Northern Wisconsin to the deportation of Southeast Asian refugees to the mass shooting in Atlanta and femicide of Hmong women, Vaj will share strategies and lessons learned to help conference attendees better understand and support her community. Vaj's transformation from refugee to feminist movement leader in the past 20 years is a journey worth learning.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (CDT)
Sonali Sangeeta Balajee
Recovering our roots of resilience: The value of radical relationship in struggles for racial and social justice
This webinar will highlight a holistic approach to racial and social justice in educational settings that centers the power of radical relationship in order to realize the collective health and liberation of all living systems. How can we strengthen our roots of resilience through relationship-centered alternatives to dominant, more separating ways of organizing for justice in education and health? Through creative engagements, Sonali and Sarah will offer readings of educational inequities that shed light on their roots in systemically harmful ways of knowing and being, while pulsing into our collective yearning for wholeness and our many capacities to live and learn together in life-promoting ways.
Dr. Sarah Amsler
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (CDT)
When Histories and Futures Meet: A Journey Through the 5 Pedagogical Stances
In this session participants will be introduced to a Transformative Justice Teacher Education Framework; that is a framework seeking to leverage restorative justice theory and processes across disciplines in teaching and learning communities. There are three objectives for this session: 1. To contextualize restorative and transformative justice possibilities in the current socio-political climate; 2. To introduce the 5 pedagogical stances—including History Matters, Race Matters, Justice Matters, Language Matters, and Futures Matter—and, finally, 3. To demonstrate how the 5PS can serve as tools for paradigm shifting toward justice in learning communities.
Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM (CDT)
What Does Racial Autobiography Have to Do With Me? Everything.
From the precious moment of the warm tenderly arms that which to receive us as we descend into the universe, to the first unsure wobbly steps we attempt only to be met with praises and excitement, these are the stories that live inside of us. These are the stories that defined our very existence. These are our collective memories, waiting to connect us to the world. In this session, we will explore the power of racial autobiography and how to harness its power to cultivate and strengthen our relationship and trust with those whose culture may be different from ours.
Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM (CDT)
Restoration and Reciprocity
Ecological restoration can be understood as an act of reciprocity, in return for the gifts of the earth. This talk explores the ecological and ethical imperatives of healing the damage we have inflicted on our land and waters. We trace the evolution of restoration philosophy and practice and consider how integration of indigenous knowledge can expand our understanding of restoration from the biophysical to the biocultural. Reciprocal restoration includes not only healing the land, but our relationship to land. In healing the land, we are healing ourselves.
Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM (CDT)
Scared Stiff: Confronting the Impact of Deficit-Oriented Beliefs About Black Kids' Behavior
Many teachers ask, what are effective ways to teach ‘children of color’? Translation: How can I deal with these Black kids’ behaviors, so that they can achieve despite the fact that they have trauma, come from poor communities, have parents who don’t care etc.? I ask participants to bring to this workshop, a readiness for and the courage to surface personal biases about Black kids’ behaviors and worth. You will explore personal deficit-oriented biases, grounded in racism/ableism and compounded by whiteness. You will be asked to turn your gaze inward to unpack how specific beliefs you hold about Black behavior influence your practices, resulting in racially inequitable outcomes for Black students.
Thursday, June 10, 2021 | 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM (CDT)
Meeting the Needs of Males of Color: Higher Education as a Pathway (Not an Impediment) to the U. S. Workforce
Professor Jackson will discuss enrollment trends in higher education for males in general, and males of color in particular, and their direct and indirect impact on employment trends.
Thursday, June 10, 2021 | 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (CDT)
Living A Hip Hop & Abolitionist Life: Resistance, Creativity, Hip Hop Civics Ed, Intersectionality, & Black Joy
Dr. Love will discuss how Hip Hop Civics Ed, when linked to the framework of intersectionality and Abolitionist Teaching, creates a space where Black lives matter and analytic sensibilities are nurtured to engage youth in the work of fighting for visibility, inclusion, and justice. Her talk will end by calling for us all not only to teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through innovative and radical civic curriculum, but also to expose youth to the possibilities that come with envisioning a world built on Black joy, creativity, imagination, boldness, ingenuity, and the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.
Thursday, June 10, 2021 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (CDT)
I’m Latinx/Hispanic and I Can’t be Racist: From the Dys-conscious to the Conscious
How do we wrestle with being Latinx/Hispanic and racist? Ismalis Nuñez as a Black Puerto Rican and Cuban American will connect the role that the social construction of race plays in our history and in our current lived experience. She will outline the healthy racial identity development of Black, Indigenous, Brown, White, and Multiracial people with our community and how they intersect. Ismalis will share the history of anti-Blackness and its correlation to whiteness and how they have manifested to perpetuate racism in the United States.
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 | 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM (CDT)
Megan Her
Gray Areas
In this insightful talk, twenty-one-year old Megan Her shares her story of what it means to grow up as a Hmong American woman in Northern Wisconsin. While being raised by her Grandmother Kha, who spoke the White Hmong dialect, and attending school where English is the dominant language, Megan grew up challenging stereotypes and unleashing cultural expectations. Through her journey of development, Megan learns to find her voice, choice, and power between the Hmong and mainstream cultures.
Kao Moua Her
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (CDT)
Cultural Resilience: Catapulting the Brilliance in Every Student
Can you imagine living with the label, “most likely to fail?” Why would a person carrying the weight of such a label want to engage? Can you imagine being burdened with the expectation “You can never fail?” Why would a person living with this burden wish to take any risks? These questions present all of us with the opportunity to ask how can we redefine educational excellence?
“Cultural Resilience” is what we call the competencies (inner strengths) acquired through diverse life experiences that often come from a difficult environment. Uncover how these competencies – critical analysis, adaptability, cross-cultural communication, and innovation – reflect and honor the wisdom of student’s lived experiences and create new, innovative standards and frameworks for educational equity and excellence. We propose that these lived experiences develop skills/competencies that have enabled people to survive these hardships or struggles.
Dr. Ladson-Billings states there is not an educational achievement gap, but rather- an educational debt- owed to society. The reality we face is that we must redefine educational excellence where every student- regardless of starting point- is engaged and expected to thrive in a culture of academic success. What if we had a strengths-based approach and had the key to translate those strengths into success in the classroom and the workplace? We invite you to discover how many of our most disfavored students have developed these skills through their lived experiences.
Tuesday, June 15, 021 | 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM (CDT)
Black Verve in the Life of School Communities: An interactive online learning lab
Black students, families, and educators bring to school a wellspring of understanding and practices—perspectives, ideas, ways of being and doing, and verve—that should rightfully enrich their schools. Indeed, we know that Black and Brown people profoundly influence and enrich the intellectual, cultural, economic, and social fabric of United States. So why does this not happen in schools? This presentation offers an opportunity for educators to explore the manifestations (and lack thereof) of spirited enthusiasm, or Black verve, that when fostered, enriches the day-to-day life of school communities. I outline the organizational conditions that cultivate Black verve and provide participants with “virtual hands on” opportunities to analyze and practice creating organizational conditions and instructional practices that affirm, cultivate, and sustain Black verve.
