Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
From Theory to Action
Welcome to the fourth annual Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: From Theory to Action conference organized by the
Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective
for New Haven Public Schools educators!
Throughout the two days of the conference — Tuesday, August 8th and Wednesday, August 9th — you will engage in four 90-minute sessions, each focused on a different theme within culturally relevant pedagogy. This is a conference organized for educators and by educators, so you can expect sessions that offer a balance of theoretical and practical learning, including opportunities for learning new content, for reflection, interaction, and preparation for application. Sessions are facilitated by a mix of NHPS colleagues and New Haven community members, as well as educators engaging in this work nationally.
In both selecting your sessions and engaging in them, be intentional, open-minded, and try new things. Also, keep in mind that this conference is just one piece of a larger, ongoing practice. We are excited to be doing this necessary work alongside you.
Conference Schedule
An overview of program days and times.
Session Themes
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1. 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.
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2. Identity and Intersectionality
Schools and classrooms are places where people of a range of different identities intersect. Our work is to strengthen our consciousness of our own identities and their impacts, as well as our awareness of students, colleagues and families’ identities, and how these varying identities intersect. While no workshop can cover the multitude of identities represented in our schools, these sessions aim to offer a deeper understanding of identity and intersectionality.
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3. 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.
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4. 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 on the fundamental importance of community connection and youth activism.
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Cierra Kaler-Jones
Sharmont Influence-Little
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Sharmont (Influence) Little is a poet, activist and actor. He utilizes spoken word poetry to deliver Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Influence is an educator and advocate for inner-city youth and has performed at Yale, Virginia State and Boston Universities, as well as a host of other colleges and public schools across the nation.
He is the current Poet Laureate of New Haven Ct. He has performed at historic poetry venues and colleges at home and abroad. He is a six-time member and current coach of the Connecticut poetry slam team, Verbal Slap; The coach of the Connecticut youth slam team The Word; also, The coach of the 2021 Yale university poetry slam team. He has utilized poetry to speak on behalf of workers for Yale New Haven Hospital 1199 union in 2007, and in Washington DC for the free labor choice act in 2007. He is the creator of Influence A Life LLC, a curriculum based program teaching coping skills, social skills, and conflict resolution. He lives by his motto: Influence a Life every day; it’s just a way of living.
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Cierra Kaler-Jones, Ph.D. (she/her) is a teaching artist, cultural organizer, researcher, and the first-ever Executive Director of Rethinking Schools, the nation's leading grassroots publisher for racial and social justice in education. She is also on the leadership team of the Zinn Education Project and a steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School. Over the past decade, Cierra has learned alongside preschoolers, K-12 students, college students, and adults. With her roots in dance and arts education, she has taught classes on U.S. history, public policy, storytelling, digital media, and social change & leadership. Her heart's work includes facilitating a community-based program that collaborates with Black girls to use arts and research to advocate for education justice. She earned her Ph.D. in education from the University of Maryland – College, in which she explored how Black girls use arts-based practices as mechanisms for identity construction and resistance.
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Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review. and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.