Workshops / Chat Rooms C

Theme Key (Click here to see activities listed by theme)

WORKSHOPS (Saturday, 9:30 am)

Hip Hop as a Social and Institutional Movement (AS)

T.R.U.E. Skool, Inc.

This workshop will demonstrate how to use Hip Hop culture as a tool to reach, teach and build foundations to educate and empower others to make positive social change. NOTES      COMMENTS

PEDACACY  (Algebra Project Pedagogy and Advocacy) (CBO)

Baltimore Algebra Project, Inc.

Pedacacy (Algebra Project pedagogy and advocacy) integrates teaching and action for social justice. The five steps used in Algebra Project pedagogy are: physical experience, pictorial representation, people talk, feature talk, and symbolic representation. Pedacacy is used regularly at our youth conferences. The Baltimore Algebra Project will show participants how that skill can be used to teach and get people involved in social justice issues. PHOTOS

The Truth Will Set Us Free: Steps for Liberatory Education (CD)

View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter School

Far too often so-called urban schools do little more than focus on stringent behavior modification programs while providing students with minimal academic skills in order that they may “perform” on standardized tests. This workshop will walk participants through the 5 Step Lesson Design process, a lesson planning template that emphasizes reflection, questioning and action. NOTES      COMMENTS      PHOTOS

Youth Action Seminars: Creating a Classroom to Social Justice Pipeline 

Community Law in Action, Inc.

This workshop will introduce audience members to the Youth Action Seminar, a curriculum designed to activate youth at the elementary, middle, or high school level by engaging them as leaders and advocates for positive social change in their communities.  YAS participants learn to understand the law and how to use it to their advantage. Then the group works with adult allies to select an issue, investigate it, arrive at a common goal, and then…take action.

PHOTOS      COMMENTS

Bronx Youth Take Over Their Education (SJ)

Sistas and Brothas United

This training will explain the steps taken by Bronx youth to create their own small school. Through role playing and discussion, participants will be able to fully grasp the struggles that youth endured when having to connect a community’s mission and vision to their education.  You will leave this training with new strategies on how community organizing, social justice and leadership can be at the core of your education.

COMMENTS

Examining Leadership (YL)

Sadie Nash Leadership Project

This workshop will explore youth and adult perceptions of traditional forms of leadership and deconstruct why we value certain leadership characteristics over others.  The goal of this workshop is to define and re-define, re-imagine, and question traditional definitions of leadership in addition to identifying and building leadership development skills (such as critical thinking listening, cooperation, etc.).

Parent Leaders: Transforming Families, Schools & Community (PT)

Logan Square Neighborhood Association

For more than 10 years now the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) has been utilizing a community organizing strategy to build parent participation and leadership at local schools. Parent leaders helped establish community learning centers that offer many of the programs at 9 partner schools. But the action doesn’t stop at the school door.  As a community organizing organization, LSNA focuses on leadership development. Parents are being educated on issues like affordable housing, accessible healthcare, immigration reform and through LSNA find many ways to get involved around these issues.

COMMENTS

CHAT ROOMS

Changing Focus: Putting our Culture at the Center of Teaching

Manuela Arciniegas, The Legacy Circle; Sandra Cheatham, Betty Shabazz International Charter School; Kwayera Archer-Cunningham, Ifetayo Cultural Arts; Moderator: Susan Wilcox

The African American community has a long tradition of teaching cultural knowledge as a tool for personal and communal development. Educators discuss the value of teaching from a specific cultural viewpoint. What is the history of Afro-centric education? What impact does this emphasis on cultural knowledge have on students? What are the challenges to this approach to education? How does this teaching blend traditional and contemporary ideas and values?

PHOTOS

Teaching Truth to Power (CC)

The Brotherhood/Sister Sol; GLSEN; Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago; Campus Advocacy Network, University of Illinois at Chicago; Moderator: Gary Younge

How do we teach liberation to the privileged? Most Americans have some identity connected to privilege (race, sexual orientation, gender, class, nationality). What are the challenges of teaching about oppression to that identity (i.e. teaching about sexism to boys or teaching about heterosexism to straight people)? What are the benefits? How are the strategies different from the ones you might use with a disenfranchised group? Frederick Douglass said power concedes nothing without a demand." Without a demand, is it possible to teach people how not to oppress?

COMMENTS

Turning Knowledge into Action (AR)

Orange High School Research Collective; Research for Action; Educational Activism; Moderator: Erica Meiners

A growing number of schools, universities and organizations are taking the techniques of research out of the academy and putting them into the hands of students. What is action research? How can these techniques be employed to educate and liberate young people? How does action change the nature of research? How does research change the nature of action?

HANDOUTS