Practices for Centering Equity in Science Instruction

Facilitator: Dr. Renata Love Jones, Georgia State University

Room: 342

In this session, we will work towards crafting and/or augmenting curricula to manifest the dynamic dreams, [multi]literacies, and futures of youth by first leveraging youth’s existing repertoires, geniuses, and desires. First, we will analyze the ways that learning spaces with educators and youth function to achieve learning goals. We will especially concentrate on the ways in which youth must draw on their existing resources from home and community to engage in new learning goals ahead of reflecting on what we know about the resources, repertoires, and interests of youth in our classes. As we interrogate ways that youth repertoires may connect with, converge, collide, and/or transcend the goals educators have been sanctioned with carrying out, we also consider why, what, where, and how literacy pedagogies as curriculum and curricular goals must be re-imagined and expanded to make room for our students’ optimal and most liberatory futures. Ultimately, through our frameworks as tools, we work to center students’ genius and intentionally (re)design curriculum that breathes life— and hope—into our youth’s multiliterate futures through the use of endarkened, speculative, fantastic, and afrofuturistic knowledge, texts, and multimodal repertories. This languaging and literacy centric session is meant to encourage concepts and tools that are easily transferable within and across content areas, disciplines, and age groups.

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CREATE Justice and Joy through Community-Driven STEM Education 

Facilitators: Dr. Natalie S. King, Justice Ejike, and Mi’Kayla Newell, Georgia State University

Room: 345

In this workshop, teachers will learn effective strategies to promote equity and infuse criticality in their curriculum. We share best practices to integrate science into disciplinary content areas while embedding social justice and aligning to content standards. Participants will learn how to create inclusive spaces that promote transformative and culturally sustaining STEM classrooms. Be prepared to conduct exciting science investigations, engage in critical conversations, and leave feeling empowered to become a change agent in your classroom, school, and community.

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Leading and Learning: Culturally Relevant Leadership

Facilitator: Ulysses G. Foston, Jr., Educator, Dekalb County School District

Room: 304

Are leaders born or made? How do we connect schools and communities? Culturally relevant leadership is a framework that emphasizes the development of skills, knowledge, and dispositions necessary for equity-focused leadership. This session will explore how school leaders and administrators can provide leadership that advocate for positive and equitable learning environments for all students.

Community Conversation – Leading a Youth Voice Movement

Facilitators: Rachel Alterman Wallack and Youth Co-Facilitators, VOX Teen Communications (VOX ATL)

Room: 342

“Understanding what youth voice is and how to use it to make your program better for the youth you serve is an essential part to quality youth programming.” … We will start by hearing from teens – and then move the conversation forward with educators to discuss best practices, blindspots, and where we want to grow. Workshop attendees will have the opportunity to share experiences working with youth, as well as learn from & be inspired by them.

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On My Mama: Bonds, Roots, and Ties

Facilitator: Anthony Downer II, Founder and Lead Learner of Liberation Learning

Room: 304

All families and communities are essential instructional partners. So why do schools and policymakers value them differently? How can we sustain authentic collaboration and resistance with all rightsholders in education? This session will provide an exploration of asset-based engagement that increases learners’ intellective capacity, defends the freedom to teach and learn, and pays the education debt.

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Moving from Parent Enragement to True Authentic Student, Family, and Community Engagement

 Psychological Safety: A Pathway to Resilience

Facilitator: Darrell Green, Training Specialist for the Professional Excellence Child Welfare Training Collaborative, Georgia State University

 Room: 041

This session explores the concept of psychological safety as a tool to help build resilience in children. Participants will learn the four stages of psychological safety and examine their role in building a culture of psychological safety for the children and families they serve.

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Radical Collective Care for Community Leaders 

Facilitator: Rosalynne Duff, Georgia State University

Room: 000ABC