Community Connection and Youth Activism

Our final conference theme is centered on community and youth. These sessions will help you connect with local New Haven organizations engaging in important education-related work, and will center the fundamental importance of community connection and youth activism.

Wednesday, August 6th, 10:55-12:25 PM

Banned Poetry & Hip-Hop

We'll read culturally sustaining poetry and hip-hop that has been banned in the U.S. and other countries, in the past and present. We'll analyze artistic tactics, and the way the written/spoken word is confined by - or breaks through - sociopolitical boundaries. We'll write poems, spoken word or rap cracking through a concrete or imaginary "ban" in some part of our own lives. We'll create mini-lessons adapting these prompts for our students. Extra credit: by August 4th, email your favorite banned poem or rap to aaronjafferis@gmail.com.

Presenter(s): Aaron Jeffaris

The Word

  • Aaron Jafferis is a hip-hop poet, playwright and teacher. A former Open Rap Slam champion at the National Poetry Slam Championships, Aaron’s honors include a Creative Capital Award, Richard Rodgers Award, Sundance Institute / Time Warner Fellowship, NEFA National Theatre Project Grant, and multiple MacDowell Fellowships. He has led workshops and master classes in poetry, playwriting and hip-hop theatre at Hartford Stage, Connecticut College, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Virginia Tech, the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Breadloaf, Vermont’s Governor’s Institute on the Arts, Wesleyan’s Center for Creative Youth, the Dublin (CA) Federal Correctional Institution and dozens of other educational, healthcare, and youth-centered organizations. Aaron is the founder of The Word poetry program in his hometown of New Haven, which is modeled after his mentor June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley.

Empowering The Next Generation of Reporters: The Youth Arts Journalism Initiative

Presenter(s): Lucy Gellman & Abiba Biao

In this session, Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman and Southern Connecticut State University junior Abiba Biao will discuss the creation and growth of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI), a project of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven that aims to give high school students ownership of their city through reporting. Over nine weeks, students independently research, report, draft, and publish articles covering the arts, culture, and community in greater New Haven, telling the stories of their city in the Arts Paper. Afterwards, many YAJI alumni stay on as freelance reporters with the Arts Paper. The goal is both to empower a new, more diverse generation of reporters and let them know that their voices are urgently important—especially at a time when youth may be discounted outright.

The Arts Paper

  • Lucy Gellman is the editor of the Arts Paper and co-founder of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. As a reporter and editor, she covers arts, culture, and community with an eye toward social justice. Prior to her time at the Arts Paper, she worked as a general assignment reporter for the New Haven Independent and a station manager at WNHH Community Radio. She holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and the Courtauld Institute of Art, both in art history, and is a former Fulbright fellow.

  • Abiba Biao is a fourth year Honors College student and public health major at Southern Connecticut State University. She began her journalism career as part of the YAJI class of 2022, and has since worked as a freelance reporter at the Arts Paper and New Haven Independent. Alongside reporting for local news, she also serves as a feature writer for the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), spotlighting the research efforts and contributions of Yale professors across the FAS in both the sciences and the humanities.

Homeplaces & Thirdspaces: the Importance of Community Based Learning

Presenter(s): Lauren Anderson

In this session, we will consider what opportunities for learning reside outside the classroom and how to engage with them pedagogically and encourage students to access them in their own time. Anchoring ourselves with the concepts of "homeplaces" (Love, 2019) and "third spaces" (Gutiérrez, 2008), participants will consider what collective, community-based experiences have to offer as sites for collaboration, collective learning, and generativity; how to co-construct meaningful learning experiences with community-members; and how to support students to tap more deeply into community cultural wealth where they live and learn. This session will invite participants to engage with and generate examples of local community spaces that hold potential for complementing and enriching classroom-and school-based curricular efforts, creating an emergent map of community-based resources for learning in New Haven.

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.

Place-Based Teaching: Creating Community Connections through Local History

Presenter(s): Joanna Steinberg, Rohanna S. Delossantos, Eve Galanis, & Alex Contreras Montesano

Explore the many ways that teaching local history through inquiry-based approaches sparks community connections and empowers student voices. In this session, we will discuss several community partnerships that led to new programs that students can participate in at the New Haven Museum. Each program is interdisciplinary and leads with interpreting artistic representations to generate discussion about local history, advocacy, and memory. In addition to sharing highlights from new K-12 programs on William Lanson and the building of New Haven and on Long Wharf Theatre, the session will discuss the practice of representing stories of resistance using the Amistad: Retold exhibition as a case study. Educators will have the opportunity to share projects that relate to New Haven’s history and youth action, and brainstorm potential ways their students can connect with all aspects of the New Haven Museum (exhibitions, library and archives, and programming).

New Haven Museum

  • Joanna Steinberg is the Director of Learning and Engagement at the New Haven Museum. She develops and teaches K-12 programs that are interdisciplinary, inclusive, and focused on local history, bridging the past and present. She led the reinterpretation efforts working with project advisors and community partners to update the Amistad: Retold exhibition. She previously served as the Curator of Education Programs at the Museum of the City of New York where she directed student programs and wrote curriculum on the Young Lords and health activism and student actions during the Civil Rights Movement in NYC. She worked

    on the Hidden Voices: Americans with Disabilities in US History curriculum with the Department of Social Studies at the NYC Department of Education. She holds an M.A. in Archives and Public History from NYU and curated the exhibition A Sanctuary for the Arts: Judson Memorial Church and the Avant-Garde, 1954-1977 at Fales Library.

  • Rohanna S. Delossantos teaches Social Studies in the High School Credit Diploma program at New Haven Adult Education. Her courses include Project Museum, a class and community museum run by students and focused on career-readiness skills. In 2024-2025, Project Museum students opened two pop-up exhibitions: Beauty and Patterns. Students also organized and staffed a school-wide May Multicultural Festival and began a digital archive. As a New Haven Museum staff educator, she has developed family programs since 2019. She has also written curriculum for The Wood Memorial Library & Museum.

  • Eve Galanis is an artist, teacher, and research historian based in New Haven. She teaches Government, Black and Latino Studies, and Digital Storytelling at Engineering and Science University Magnet School. She is also an educator at the New Haven Museum and a freelance writer of historical nonfiction and teaching curriculum.  She specializes in Connecticut's history of hierarchical power structures and collective resistance movements.

  • Alex Contreras Montesano is a student teacher at FAME school in Fair Haven and a Special Education MAT student at Southern Connecticut State University. Previously she was a Classroom Assistant in a 4-6 grade classroom and taught Guided Reading. While she grew up mostly in Vermont and a little in Tlaxcala and Oregon she now considers New Haven home and loves to walk around her neighborhood, work at Possible Futures, and read and bead in her spare time. She is passionate about teaching towards liberation and learning how to be the best teacher and community member she can be. 

Supporting Student-Led Action on the Climate Crisis

Presenter(s): Adrian Huq and Chris Schweitzer

New Haven Climate Movement (NHCM) is a grassroots, nonprofit organization composed primarily of youth that advocates for bold policy change on climate change at the city level. In this session, you will hear from two NHCM leaders about their organizational focus, campaigns, and successes over the years. You will hear about NHCM's internship programs, which engage New Haven area high school students in climate advocacy within the community and schools. You will also learn about our efforts to push for policy change from the New Haven Board of Education regarding district sustainability measures and climate education.

Join us to learn about the role of schools in responding to the climate crisis, how schools and teachers can incorporate climate education into their programming, and why it is important to include youth in climate change leadership opportunities. Finally, we will discuss the challenges and opportunities that educators face when implementing climate education.

New Haven Climate Movement

  • Chris Schweitzer has worked for over 30 years in the fields of human rights, child welfare, community organizing, international development, climate change, and social justice in the US and Latin America. He is now Director of New Haven Leon Sister City Project (NHLSCP) which supports sustainable development, education and social justice in Connecticut and Nicaragua. With NHLSCP, he has been advocating for climate solutions for 15 years.

  • Adrian Huq is a master's student at the Yale School of the Environment, a 2024 graduate of Tufts University, and a proud alum of New Haven Public Schools. A youth climate organizer, Adrian serves as the co-founder of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team (est. 2019), which pushes for bold policy change at the city level to address climate change. Adrian helps supervise NHCM’s high school interns, including for the Climate Justice Schools Initiative, a joint program between NHCM and New Haven Public Schools. They also served as Youth Coordinator of the Climate Health Education Project from 2018 to 2024, where Adrian co-led an internship program supporting local high school students in advancing energy efficiency and climate education within their schools. Adrian has interned at multiple environmental organizations, serves on the board of the Greater New Haven Green Fund, and is also involved in media and communications work.

The New Haven Immigrants Coalition and Its Youth Leadership: Activating Change

Presenter(s): Kiana Cintron, Melissa Rodriguez, and Jenny (JHD) Heikkila Diaz

The New Haven Immigrants Coalition is a grassroots group of neighbors organizing for collective liberation. During this session, members Kiana, Melissa, and JHD will share about our work, including an interactive piece of our Know Your Rights sessions, and resources and ways to get involved in the coalition. Our student facilitators will share their stories of their activist journeys, as well as suggestions for how teachers can support their students in their classrooms and schools in taking collective action in their communities.

New Haven Immigrants Coalition

  • Kiana Cintron (she/her) is a first-generation college student and Youth Leader at Junta for Progressive Action, New Haven's oldest Latinx community-based organization. She is also an active member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, where she organizes the social media team and supports rapid response efforts. A proud Puerto Rican and product of New Haven Public Schools, Kiana is passionate about immigrant rights, youth empowerment, and equitable access to healthcare and education. She has led Know Your Rights trainings, organized community events like Fair Haven Day, and mentors local youth through leadership programs. As a Biological Sciences major at University of Connecticut, Kiana hopes to become a doctor and improve healthcare access for underserved communities.

  • Ada Akdag is a rising junior at West Haven High School and a part of the Youth Empowerment Program at Junta in New Haven. She has been an active member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition (NHIC)  since January of this year. She has helped facilitate Know Your Rights trainings across the city and worked with other members to provide support for the community. Through Junta’s Youth Empowerment Program, she has connected with organizations such as Save the Sound, where she serves the community via beach clean-ups and environmental justice advocacy. A Turkish-Greek immigrant herself, the work of NHIC holds personal significance to her. She hopes to inspire her community to empower the immigrant community in New Haven through advocacy for immigrant rights. After high school, Ada aspires to attend college to study political science and later attend law school and work in federal prosecution or international law. 

  • Jennifer (JHD) Heikkila Díaz (they/she) was born and raised in Los Ángeles. Witnessing their family’s immigration experiences and the LA Civil Uprising of 1992 seeded JHD’s desire to build coalitions within their own Korean American and Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and across communities of color. For twenty-five years, JHD has worked as a K-12 public school teacher, school administrator, and educator coach across the country. They are an Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective Steering Committee Member, a Fund for Teachers Program Officer, and a UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute Activist in Residence. They are the Co-Chair of the Asian Pacific American Coalition of CT, a co-founder of aapiNHV, a member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, and a parent of two elementary-aged children. Their lifelong commitment is to backing youth, who envision an even more joyful and just world than they do.