Curriculum and Pedagogy

As we move into the second day of the conference, we want to ensure educators have the opportunity to gain new knowledge and think practically about their classrooms and content areas, all through the lens of anti-racist and culturally relevant pedagogy. Spanning various subjects and grade levels, sessions will offer practical methods useful to educators from elementary to secondary levels, and across content areas.

Wednesday, August 7th, 9:10-10:40 AM

“Arts Incorporation: Using Art's Integration for Deeper Comprehension and Diverse Learning Styles”

Artists & creatives are problem solvers, thinking steps ahead, mapping out intuitively, trusting the process. Color paints our lives with a mood. Music is the soundtrack of our memories. The Arts undoubtedly impact our engagement in the world. Our quality of life is is undoubtably increased when we engage in both creating and viewing Arts and yet it is often the first to be deprioritized and defunded. Communities who experience lack of arts instruction are often the most institutionally marginalized. Art is a dynamic language, a form of expression, a way to communicate all while releasing unique emotions. Art can be a method of teaching, learning, communication, and comprehension. If encouraged, Arts increase self-esteem, determination and problem solving capabilities. Through this session, you will gain practical applications of incorporating Arts into curriculum from any subject. We will learn and share ways to be proactive in engaging students through Art.

Oakland Unified School District

Presenter(s): Kristine Holohan

  • Kristine Holohan is a practicing artist, organizer, and educator. For over a decade she worked in Oakland Public School System as Arts Program Director of Metwest High School. MetWest High School. MWHS operated through restorative practice with all curricula centered around understanding systems of oppression and transforming through cycles of liberation. Because the school runs on an internship model, she was able to practice public Art and incorporate her students as interns in the creation of pieces for galleries, residencies, museums, private, and municipal collections. Holohan worked closely with the Social Science, and STEM programs to ensure students had alternative access points to education including assisting in the creation of a Geometry through quilting credited course, and Murals as a historical study in Civics. She views art as a portal and a language for understanding and navigating the world and believes everyone should have Art practice in their tool kit.

“Beyond Binaries: Moving Beyond the Woke Anti-Woke Discourse”

Presenter(s): Milton Reynolds & Stacey Kertsman

In this workshop, participants will have an opportunity to reflect on the political moment we are navigating, examine some of the reasons the current discourse is so contentious and unproductive, and engage with some reframing ideas/habits of mind that offer more useful and process-based approaches to equitable teaching practices that address the complexity, continuity, and structurally rooted nature of exclusionary ideological commitments.

P-Cubed Consulting Milton Reynolds Consulting

  • Milton Reynolds is a San Francisco Bay Area based career educator, author, equity and inclusion consultant and activist. His activism has been devoted to disrupting systems of racial injustice with a focus on juvenile justice reform, law enforcement accountability, environmental justice, youth development, educational transformation and disability justice. His efforts are devoted to creating a more just world in which all people are valued and treated with dignity.

    Milton’s publications include a chapter in Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, Handbook of Social Justice in Education and one in the recently released Leading in the Belly of the Beast.

  • Stacey Kertsman taught middle and high school before becoming an administrator and founding director of the Center for Awarness, Compassion, and Engagement at Castilleja school in Palo Alto, CA. Her work has taken her around the globe and often centers research on Youth Participatory Action Research. Her commitment to social justice and her investment in co-creating partnership-based, reciprocal learning environments inspires much of her practice. She is currently thinking deeply about moving communities beyond polarized divisions and devouring the book “The Identity Trap” by Yasha Mount, an insightful and provocative read.

“Critical Literacy that Expands Children's Possible Futures”

Presenter(s): Lauren Anderson

In this session, elementary educators will have the opportunity to consider “children’s books” through the lens of critical pedagogy, specifically ways to analyze texts with an eye toward avoiding and disrupting common liberal tropes and maximizing radical possibilities. They will learn about new developments in the production of texts for children, and how they might ‘make the most’ of these texts in their classroom practice. And by ‘making the most’ here, we mean making for the most liberating and love-filled learning experiences; it’s a qualitative not quantitative most! Participants will explore a few key resources/tools to guide the selection of individual texts and the curation of text sets and classroom collections. They will also have the chance to work together to apply tools and concepts introduced in the session in their brainstorming and drafting of story-centered critical units for their respective grade levels.

Possible Futures Bookstore

  • Lauren believes in bookjoy and bringing people together. Before becoming a community bookspace shepherd, she worked as a teacher, literacy specialist, teacher educator, and professor. For many years, she taught classes about the history of US schooling precolonial to present, and about critical pedagogy, critical literacy, and the literary landscape for children and young adults. Possible Futures, where she now works, is a 20+ years dream come to fruition, and Lauren is grateful to every angel that has helped it along. Lauren loves reading, libraries, beaches and trees, fireplaces, eating spicy vegatarian food, walking with her dog Sugar, and spending time with friends. She starts and finishes every day with a book, and she sprinkles as many as possible in stolen moments in between. She keeps a balanced reading diet - fiction, poetry, YA, picture books, memoir, and nonfiction about issues on her heart and mind.

“Culturally Relevant Math Pedagogy”

Presenter(s): Hillary Clayton

In this session, we will address math instruction through an inclusive and culturally relevant lens. We will begin to answer questions such as: How can we create a community of math learners that feel comfortable taking risks in the classroom? How can we create an environment that celebrates, values, and affirms existing student knowledge and creative problem solving? How does a culturally relevant class make learning math relevant to students? We will share best practices and frameworks, and participants will have space to reflect and assess their current practices to identify opportunities to shift and develop their own classroom culture.

Crestone Charter School

  • Hillary Clayton (she/her) has been working in education for over a decade teaching middle and high school math and science. She has worked in Baltimore, MD and in the Seattle-Tacoma, WA metro area, and her primary passion as an educator is to help students find relevance in the things that they learn. Hillary is passionate about rooting her instruction and learning opportunities in the communities that she teaches in, and has done extensive community and family partnership work to integrate her curriculum into her students' lived experience. Hillary is thrilled to share her experience and ideas with this year’s participants, and is looking forward to the collaboration with participants during her session. She currently works as an instructional coach and curriculum specialist in rural Colorado.

“Finding the Through Line: Where Curriculum and Culture Meet”

Presenter(s): Dr.Veronica Wylie

Where do we start? The desire to lead classrooms and use curriculum that honors cultural relevancy is a goal held by many educators. Without a through line however, it is an impossible goal to attain. We are defining the through line as a train of thought that reaches from theory to action; bridging the practical gaps that exist between what we know we ought to do and what we actually can do. This workshop will seek to help educators establish a pedagogical through line and use it to develop curriculum planning maps and lesson plans. Educators should walk away with a roadmap for culturally relevant pedagogy, a plan for implementation, and an idea of the activities and interactions that can help them and their students to be successful. A through line is deeper than theory. It is the pathway transforms theory into action.

Lifelong Learners Unlimited

  • Dr. Veronica Wylie, is a passionate lifelong learner. She has worked in education since the fall of 2008 in every position from classroom assistant to classroom teacher. Her professional and educational endeavors have always been rooted in the belief that all young people are innately gifted and need guidance in honing in on those gifts. Currently Dr. Wylie is a high school science teacher and basketball coach in Hazlehurst, MS. There, she has helped to initiate an AP program, robotics team, carries out the curriculum and professional development duties for the science department, and is currently working in tandem with her principal and superintendent to develop leadership opportunities for educators district wide.

“On Belonging: Leverage Language and Culture in the Classroom”

Presenter(s): Rebecca Flores Harper

Throughout the history of schools and education, linguistic and cultural differences have been viewed and treated with a deficit approach impacting students, their experience, and ability to learn, grow, and develop along with their peers. How can we create an environment that celebrates, affirms, and values language as a culture add and vehicle for belonging? In this multi-modal session, we will examine language through a lens of belonging using culturally responsive and relevant frameworks to reflect, assess, and inform our practices.

AuthenTEACHCity

  • Rebecca Flores Harper (she/her/ella) is a bicultural multilingual Mexican-American adoptee, educator, and coach. With over a decade of experience in education, Rebecca has worked in Pre-S to graduate-level classrooms, on the soccer field, and collaborates with parents/caregivers, families, educators, alums, and community members alike always with the goal of uplifting children and the collective. For the past ten years, Rebecca has worked specifically as a DEIJBA leader and is currently the Director of Equity and Community at Hopkins School in New Haven, CT. In 2021, she founded AuthenTEACHCity in order to better support educators, organizations, and community members with their DEIJBA efforts. Raised in New Haven and a product of NHPS, it is an honor to join this beloved community once again.

“Tapping In, Holding On & Lifting Up Hip Hop Literacies: Literacy Curriculum for Black & Brown Youth”

Curriculum that is healing reflects the lives, legacies, and literacies of the students which use it. Thus, as a means of curricular healing, this session will demonstrate how hip-hop pedagogy can be used to connect Black and Brown students' lives to the literacy classroom. Tapping into fluency, writing and critical analysis, this session will provide participants with an understanding of how to embed Hip Hop into their own ELA classroom. Potential audiences for this session will be k-8 educators looking to activate literacy as a conduit for creative expression to promote healing, freedom and justice for the future of Black and Brown youth.

Lewis Walker Institute for Race & Ethnic Studies at Western Michigan University

Presenter(s): Dr.Bianca Nightengale-Lee

  • Dr. Bianca Nightengale-Lee is the incoming Director of the Lewis Walker Institute for Race & Ethnic Studies at Western Michigan University. As an award-winning educator and researcher, Dr. Nightengale-Lee’s 15 years of classroom experience places her expertise on the cusp of research, theory, and practice focused on culturally relevant and sustaining instruction. Grounded by critical literacy frameworks, Dr. Nightengale-Lee interrogates, resists, and re-frames traditionalized notions of curriculum design to produce more equitable learning conditions for our most vulnerable student populations.

“Teaching to the Moment: Using a Multiple Narratives Approach to Humanize Gaza and Palestine”

Actively engage in using a multiple narratives framework and pedagogy to understand how to apply it when teaching difficult subjects, particularly Palestine and Gaza. Participants will learn the four key concepts that anchor the framework and practice applying them to general examples and to the current situation in Gaza. This framework is grounded in humanizing and uncovering stories that are often untold in the context of historical and current events.

Teach Palestine Project - Middle East Children’s Alliance

Presenter(s): Samia Shoman

  • Samia Shoman, a Palestinian-American, California native has worked in public school education as a teacher and now administrator for 25 years. Her background is in Social Sciences and Ethnic Studies, with a passion for working with Multilingual students. She is also the co-coordinator of the Middle East Children’s Alliance Teach Palestine Project, working to help educators and leaders understand that Palestine can be part of our classrooms in safe and inclusive ways.

“Teaching True History as an Interdisciplinary Effort”

Presenter(s): The 1619 Project Education Netork

What can we gain by connecting classrooms of all kinds to historical literacy and racial justice? In this workshop, educators from the Pulitzer Center's 1619 Project Education Network will share how they worked across the curriculum to foreground the legacy of enslavement and the contributions of Black Americans. We will share models and reflect on how participants teaching different grade levels and learning standards can collaborate to teach true history.

Pulitzer Center

  • The Pulitzer Centers 1619 Project Education Network is an innovative, national, multidisciplinary community of practice consisting of more than 400 educators in 30 states who have worked to engage students from Pre-K to college and graduate levels with The 1619 Project. The cohorts of educators that make up the Network collaborate together with award-winning journalists, historians, and the Pulitzer Center Education team to create, teach, and share curricular resources that allow students to engage authentically and critically with The 1619 Project and racial justice history.