What Is an Anti-Racist School?

This conference begins with the necessary question: what is an anti-racist school? The answers are many, spanning restorative justice, the role of unions, mental health, curriculum, language immersion, approaches to planning and facilitating lessons, and so much more. Each session approaches the vital question through a different lens, all contributing to deepening our collective work toward building anti-racist schools.

Tuesday, August 6th, 10:00-11:30 AM

“Anti-Racist Practices in the Classroom and Beyond”

Presenter(s): Dr. Erica E. Watson

Join us for an engaging and collaborative session that will welcome you into conversation, reflection, and action. We will discuss how systemic racism impacts Pre-K-12 learning, and discover and create various practical, relevant tools for how to teach and learn in an anti-racist setting. This session will focus on specific and actionable steps (lessons, communications, classroom environment) to take to transform your teaching, and invite everyone to synthesize an authentic overall anti-racist community.

The Anti Racist Teaching and Learning Collective

  • Dr. Erica E. Watson is a compassionate health provider, a STEM professional, and an empathetic advocate and activist who anchors in anti-racist practices as a standard, through teaching, developing curriculum, and caring. A clinical nutritionist with a strong background in health equity and trauma-informed care, she supports patients by providing highly individualized and collaborative plans. Dr. Watson also facilitates a small bilingual (Spanish/English) blood pressure clinic for predominantly Black and Brown populations.

    Dr. Watson successfully created a wide range of anti-racist and pro-equity curricula for K-12 and undergraduate schools, undergraduate courses, and a medical school. She is also at Yale University as a lecturer of anti-racist STEM pedagogy for future teachers, and is designing statewide anti-racist culinary curriculum for high schoolers. Dr. Watson hopes to encourage future and present educators to delve beyond the standard classroom and begin to explore the educational and social-emotional needs of neglected communities.

“Decolonizing Teaching and Learning”

The workshop on decolonizing teaching and learning aims to help us understand the methods and questions necessary for decolonizing thought, education, policy, and curriculum development across systemic and classroom contexts.

Palm Beach County Schools

Presenter(s): Brian Knowles

  • Brian Knowles is a distinguished speaker, writer, researcher, and educator, recognized twice by Legacy Magazine as one of South Florida's Top Black Educators (2018 and 2021). With over 16 years in education, he has contributed as a content expert for NPR and Everfi. His scholarly work appears in the Journal of Literacy Innovation and XanEdu's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives Blog. Brian is the founder of Power Builders Curriculum and Pedagogies, LLC, aiding schools, community groups, and nonprofits in establishing culturally affirming environments.

    Currently, Brian serves as Manager of the Office of African, African American, Latino, Holocaust, and Social Studies for the School District of Palm Beach County, one of the largest in the US. His achievements include crafting the SDPBC Equity and Access Policy 1.041 and developing statewide secondary-level courses highlighting the historical contributions of African Diasporic peoples.

“Developing Anti-Racist Practices as Educators & Union Members”

In order to strengthen our practice as anti-racist educators and union members, we must commit to ongoing reflection, collaboration, and purposeful action. We don’t ever arrive at an endpoint with our anti-racist teaching, just as we don’t arrive at an endpoint of organizing for the schools our students deserve. In this session, you will hear from current NHFT members who are finding ways to break long standing & harmful practices while they build loving, liberatory classrooms and school spaces in New Haven. Bring your questions about implementation, sustainability, risk-taking, and power sharing with students, and be ready for meaningful conversations with colleagues about the possibilities that emerge when we not only fight to protect public education but take on the responsibility of transforming it as well.

New Haven Federation of Teachers

Presenter(s): Leslie Blatteau & NHPS Teachers

  • Leslie Blatteau has been a proud New Haven Public Schools teacher and union member since 2007. She is in her third year as President of the New Haven Federation of Teachers. Leslie prioritizes engagement and activism among NHFT members, as well as solidarity with other unions, students, and families, as we work together to fight for the schools our communities deserve.

    Before becoming NHFT President, Leslie taught high school social studies and organized to support public schools and fight privatization. In the classroom and the union hall, she is committed to anti-racist and student-centered practices. Her focus on reflection, collaboration, and partnership with community has been key to this commitment.

    Leslie lives in the Hill neighborhood with her husband Jim and their daughter Francine (and their cats and dogs). She is a NHPS parent and member of the Hill Central School PTO where Francine is a rising 4th grader.

“Fostering Social and Emotional Well-Being in the Classroom”

Presenter(s): Carolina Parrott

Join us for an interactive and engaging workshop where we will explore the crucial connection between mental health, cultural and structural humility in the educational setting.


The objective of the workshop is 1. To examine strategies and approaches for promoting social and emotional wellness that are sensitive to the diverse backgrounds and needs of students. 2. To empower educators, school social workers, and administrators with the knowledge and tools to effectively address mental health concerns from an anti racist lens and 3. To enhance those interfacing with students with the ability to support their mental health needs in an inclusive and culturally responsive manner.


Together we could foster a school environment where every student feels valued, understood, and supported on their journey to well-being.

Yale Child Study Center

  • Carolina is as a cis-gender, heterosexual, bilingual and bicultural Boricua woman. Born in the Island and raised in New Haven, she is a first-generation college graduate who earned her bachelor's from Southern Connecticut State University and her Master’s degree in Advance Clinical Social Work from New York University.

    Carolina is a licensed clinical social worker who has committed over 10 years to serving and supporting children and families of diverse backgrounds, including monolingual-Spanish speaking families, survivors of complex trauma, systems impacted families and underserved individuals. Carolina is deeply committed to teaching and training. She is a skilled clinician trained in several evidence-based practices that she delivers with a culturally responsive approach. Carolina comes to the field of Social Work with a personal and professional dedication to fostering an equitable society by dismantling systemic inequities that exist specifically for historically marginalized individuals.

“Relying on Pedagogical Commitments & Curriculum Frameworks to Organize for Critical and Transformative Education in Our Schools”

Presenter(s): Joel A. Arce

In this session, we will discuss the principles, tenets, and learning goals that inform intersectional and transformative anti-racist educational practices. In addition to identifying conceptual guiding frameworks and deepening our appreciation for them, we will review potential avenues and methods to enact these pedagogical commitments through curricular choices and relational organizing practices. Drawing on the traditions of Ethnic Studies and critical pedagogy, we will unpack ways educators can work alongside youth to strengthen our collective critical literacy. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to transforming schools to be more responsive to their respective community contexts and redress socio-historical injustices, educators can tap into past and present visionary roadmaps and tools to lay the foundation. This session consists of a mixture of interactive lecture and discussion in order to support participants’ conceptual understanding of critical and transformative education, curriculum planning skills, and capacities for collaboration with colleagues and community partners committed to social justice.

College of Education at UMass Amherst

  • Joel A. Arce is a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Education at UMass Amherst. His research examines the neoliberal and dehumanizing conditions that pervade the educational experiences of (racially) minoritized youth in the U.S. Prior to his doctoral studies, Joel taught middle school social studies in the Bronx and worked alongside youth in New York City through different non-profit organizations that emphasized project-based learning and college access programming. In recent years, he has supported educators and youth in a variety of capacities, including: after-school student programming grounded in the principles of YPAR; teacher professional development; curriculum development; and schools-community-higher education partnership development. Joel is currently in the process of completing his dissertation, which is an ethnographic case-study that provides context-specific insights around the tensions, limitations, and possibilities of implementing Ethnic Studies in secondary public schools.

“Rest Practices For Our Classrooms”

You are warmly invited to a space to practice, study, and plan rest together. We will explore rest for ourselves, our students, and our communities. Our session will be grounded in Tricia Hersey’s work on @thenapministry and her book, Rest Is Resistance, which frames rest as an anti-racist practice. We will ask how we can deepen rest through conversations with our colleagues and experimentation in partnership with our students. Examples of rest practices from the classroom will be shared. We will imagine roles for creativity, comfort, play, and nature in our schools. Time will be reserved to collaboratively plan for experimentation with rest with softness and solidarity. Rest must be experienced, so come ready to be cozy.

Los Angeles Unified School District

Presenter(s): Rabiya Kassam-Clay

  • Rabiya Kassam-Clay (she/her) has taught for 16 years in Philadelphia, Mexico City, and now in Los Angeles at Marshall High School. Her classes have included world history, United States history and government, composition, and literature. Rabiya earned a M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania. She coached Breakthrough Collaborative teaching fellows, and founded the Flux Teacher Institute, a collective of expert teachers who provided workshops on source evaluation, sketchnoting, public spaces to over 300 participants. Rabiya is an educational advisor for Monument Lab and writes curriculum including for 1919 by Eve Ewing and There are Trans People Here by H. Melt. She was an inaugural Zinn Education Project Prentiss Charney Fellow. Rabiya is a lifelong devotee of science fiction and poetry, a native plants educator, and a proud UTLA member. Find out what she is up to in the classroom by visiting @welcomebrilliantminds

“Supporting and Empowering Multilingual Learners”

Presenter(s): Carol Reuman

In this session, Educators will reflect on and develop ways to empower their MLL students' voices. Educators will reflect on their personal beliefs about language education, and learn ways they can become an active voice to better advocate for and support their MLL students.

Kansas City Kansas Public Schools

  • Carol Reuman is an Chinese American born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a B.S. in Secondary English Education from New York University, and a M.A. in the Teaching of English from Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught secondary ELA in New York City, and both ELA and ESL abroad in London, England. Currently she is a Multilingual Education Lead with Kansas City Kansas Public Schools.

“Teach Truth Movement - Today and Tomorrow?”

Since 2021, there has been an influx of bills across the country limiting the teaching of authentic history, the rights of trans students, and teachers being able to teach the truth in their classrooms. Some of these bills have resulted in the firing of teachers, banning of books, and proliferation of fear among parents and school board members. Zinn Education Project in partnership with Black Lives Matter at School, and the African American Policy Forum have been pushing back with actions and more importantly developing a community among educators across the country to end isolation and to provide a space for strategies and solutions to be created. We know that the answer to these attacks is to develop abolitionist educators within an anti-racist framework. But what does that even look like? What lessons from the past can be applied to today?

Black Lives Matter at School National

Presenter(s): Tamara Anderson

  • Tamara Anderson is one of the founding steering committee members of the National Black Lives Matter Week of Action at Schools, a Teach Truth organizer with Zinn Education Project, and is a member of the National Advisory Council for Teaching Artists Guild (TAG). She is a 2023 art resident/fellow at Hermitage Artist Retreat. Her publications includes Erasure of Black Women (#CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College. Jan 2021), Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Philadelphia Schools (Lapiz No 6 Hacer Escuela - Inventing School - 2021), Chapter 3: From Philly with Love: Black Lives Matter at School goes National (Black Lives Matter st School: An Uprising for Educational Justice - Dec 2020), Foreword: The Systemic Cycle of Brokenness (Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor No 26 - Jan 2016), and #TeachTruth: Pushing Back Attacks on CRT (Convergence Magazine - Aug 2021).

“Youth Justice in Practice:
Moving from Restorative Circles to Restorative Systems”

Presenter(s): Julia Miller & Steve Staysniak

In this session, participants will gain an understanding of how sustained restorative practices can support the development of restorative systems within a school. The first half of the session will include a virtual community-building circle and an examination of how the ‘social discipline window’ can inform restorative work within school communities. In the second half of the session, the presenters will share their unique experience developing and teaching a new course entitled Youth Justice in Practice, and facilitating the Metro Youth Justice Panel, a youth-led restorative justice panel at MBA.

Metropolitan Business Academy

  • Julia Miller is an NHPS teacher, parent and alum. Committed to the practices of antiracist education and project-based learning, Julia has taught Social Studies for the last 17 years, first in Brooklyn, and now NHPS. In addition to teaching Civics at Metro, Julia launched two new programs in recent years. She co-designed Youth Justice in Practice, a capstone law pathway course in which seniors run the Metro Youth Justice Panel, a student-facilitated restorative justice initiative. Julia also worked on implementing the new Education and Leadership pathway, a “Grow Your Own” model aimed to inspire and ready the next generation of NHPS teachers. Partnering with Quinnipiac University, Julia piloted an Educators Rising program last year, and will be teaching an education seminar in conjunction with Southern Connecticut State University next. Beyond teaching, Julia plays a variety of leadership roles in her building, and has her Sixth Year Certificate in Educational Leadership.

  • Steve is an English and Social Studies teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy (Metro). Steve teaches Journalism, a course on the history of New Haven, and with his colleague Julia Miller, co-teaches a senior capstone class called Youth Justice in Practice, a first-of-its kind course that teaches students how to facilitate restorative hearings and mediations in the school. In addition to his teaching duties, Steve is the Senior Class Advisor at Metro, chairs the school’s School Planning and Management Team, is a Teacher Consultant for the Connecticut Writing Project, and a member of the executive board for the New Haven Federation of Teachers. Steve is a New Haven resident and is a New Haven Public Schools parent.