The Radical Pedagogy Institute holds monthly virtual professional development opportunities. Session facilitators include Institute members, activist-scholars, and other professionals. Our annual series features a monthly Cross-Cutting PD offering, which is applicable across grade levels and content areas. In addition, we also have several Spotlight PD offerings throughout the year. The Spotlight PDs focus on the use of radical pedagogies in a specific grade band and/or content area.
Institute members have full access to all PD offerings. Not sure if you want to commit to an entire year? Register for individual offerings through the 14 Day Access Pass membership level. All virtual sessions will be recorded and available to members on the Member Resources page, no later than one week after the scheduled session.
Want to attend? Check out details about our membership options here.
SESSIONS AT-A-GLANCE
June 2022
Propose a Professional Development Session
If you are interested in proposing your own professional development session (led by you or someone you know), please complete our Professional Development Proposal form. Session facilitation can be exchanged for membership cost.
May 2022 Cross-Cutting Offering -Pathways for Actionable Change for Students
7:00PM – 8:00PM ET on Monday, May 16th
Session Description: In schools, students are often given strategies and suggestions for how to enact positive social change. However, that is often where the conversation starts and stops–there can be little to no follow up on implementing these processes in our communities. In this one hour workshop, I will facilitate a framework for turning student dreams into actionable change. Participants will be guided through a scaffolded conversation that nurtures a commitment to racial justice that will enable them to develop a vision for what that looks like in their local communities. They will be given the tools to imagine Black and Brown communities in the future thriving and living their truths. Then, the participants and the facilitator will be discussing potential frameworks that integrate liberation and project management tools for carrying out their visions and what that looks like in local communities concluding with a thirty-minute working session embedded to create these frameworks and reflect on opportunities for growth.
Facilitator Bio:
Maribel Valdez Gonzalez, M.Ed. is an Indigenous Xicana educator and mother of two. She resides in occupied Duwamish territory, also known as Seattle, WA. She is from occupied Somi Se’k land, also known as San Antonio, TX.
In her 10 years as an antiracist educator, Maribel Valdez Gonzalez has been honored to work with youth and adults to decolonize and humanize pedagogical practices, social structures, and belief systems in classrooms and beyond. She is a founding leader of the Education Amplifier program which began in the fall of 2017. She has since served as Amplifier’s educational consultant for multiple national public art campaigns to bridge the gap between social change movements and education by providing educators with teaching tools created by Amplifier partners to guide students toward action. Maribel has collaborated with and offered curricular guidance to non-profit organizations such as the Women’s March, March for our Lives, Earth Guardians, Families Belong Together, IllumiNatives, She Can STEM, and many more.
Maribel is a former 6-8 English Language Arts and World Cultures teacher and is a STEM Integration Transformation Coach for Technology Access Foundation. She works to create transformative systems of learning for students and teachers of color to eliminate race-based disparities by partnering with teachers to cultivate a project-based learning environment at TAF@Washington Middle School in Seattle Public Schools. Maribel’s goal is to create academically engaging learning experiences through a culturally sustaining environment that fosters empowerment, healing, and radical kindness. Committed to creating systems centered on equity and justice, she also serves on the advisory board for Learning for Justice and is a member of the Antiracist Arts Education Task Force for Visual & Performing Arts for Seattle Public Schools.
June 2022 Cross-Cutting Offering – Teaching is Political: A Convening to Enact Education Policy Change (IN PERSON SESSION)
9:00AM – 1:00PM ET on Saturday, June 11th
Session Description: In this in-person, half-day session, members of Radical Pedagogy Institute will gather with other interested educators in the greater New Jersey area to organize initiatives to enact education policy change. The first half of the session will be dedicated to a group exploration of the political landscape of the New Jersey education system. In this exploration, participants will identify pressing district-level and legislative action that is needed to create a re/humanized and just education system for New Jersey PK-12 students and educators, especially those that are Black, Indigenous, students of color, English language learners and/or queer. Actions identified will be the basis of the working groups that participants will engage in during he second half of the session. Each working group will develop an action plan for its designated issue.
Facilitator Bio:
Leah is a writer, teacher educator, and teacher-scholar-activist who works through her consulting firm, Just Writing LLC. She credits the many leadership and teaching positions she has held for the development of her anti-racist worldview as well as her commitment to equity and humanization. Her journey includes serving as a high school English teacher for Newark Public Schools; co-founding the Newark Education Workers Caucus (NEW Caucus), a social justice caucus within the Newark Teachers Union; organizing childcare center workers into a union; and serving as a member of the Newark Board of Education (2016-2019). Leah holds a BA in English from Duke University. From Rutgers-Newark, she earned a Master of Public Administration degree as well as her PhD in Urban Systems. As an activist-scholar, her research interests include critical democratic education, teacher leadership, and ontological inquiry. Leah is an active citizen in several community and political organizations, including the Newark Branch of the NAACP where she serves as chair of the education committee. To learn more about Leah and her work, visit her site at www.blackwomanteacher.net or follow her on social media @blackwomanteacher.
Brandie holds a BS in Mathematics and Mathematics Education and an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction from The University of Tampa, as well as a MPhil and PhD in Mathematics Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She currently works as an independent math coach and scholar through her own educational consulting company The Queer Mathematics Teacher (QMT). Prior to launching QMT, Brandie worked as an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Drew University in New Jersey, specializing in K-12 mathematics and science. She also has taught middle and high school mathematics in both New York City and Florida. As a queer Latinx scholar, activist, and educator, Brandie’s research and work at QMT is focused on the ways in which students’ intersectional identities manifest in mathematical spaces and how to re/humanize mathematics for all students through the use of critical and queer pedagogy. To learn more about Brandie and her work, visit the QMT website: www.TheQueerMathematicsTeacher.com