The 2021 Inaugural Summer Collaborative will take place July 1, 2021 – August 12, 2021 (virtual). Each week the Radical Pedagogy Institute will hold a 60-90 minute professional development session where participants are actively engaged in producing new knowledge that they can take back to their classrooms and communities to begin enacting radical and lasting change. In addition to the weekly PD, Summer Collaborative members are invited to come together for a community hike (date TBD based on member availability), a weekly thematic Twitter chat, as well as respond to weekly discussion prompts on the Summer Collaborative’s Discussion Forum.
Weekly professional development sessions are scheduled for Thursdays 1:30-3:00PM EST. Should more than 30 folx sign up, then we will open a second cohort for Weeks 2-6 that will meet on Tuesdays 1:30-3:00PM EST. Weekly Twitter chats will take place Saturdays 11AM-12PM EST.
Registration is now closed. Check out all membership options here.
Details about the lineup of the 2021 Summer Collaborative program are shown below.
Week 1: Resisting A Return to “Normal”: Creating Re/humanized Classrooms
July 1, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: In our opening session, Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Ed.D. , will give a keynote on resisting a return to normal for the 2021-2022 school year and instead focusing on creating re/humanized educational experiences for our PK-12 students. The keynote presentation will be followed by a workshop introducing members to the Radical Pedagogy Institute’s vision of “radical pedagogy.” This workshop will be collaboratively facilitated by Leah Z. Owens, Brandie E. Waid, Darius Phelps, Bree Picower, and Georgina Emerson.
Keynote Speaker Bio:
okaikor@edusagecompanionconsulting.com
Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Ed.D., is a natural-born organizer who discovered early on her gift as an agent for change. A thoughtful facilitator and strategist, she has studied the critical language needed to challenge systems of oppression and is not afraid to lead those conversations. Okaikor has always envisioned a society that is more just, and dedicates her pursuits to bringing others into critical consciousness around racial and social justice issues.
A longtime educator in the New Jersey school system, she has provided countless students a level of care and instruction unlike any other due to her intention to design an anti-racist, equity-driven educational environment. She also served as a national co-organizer of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.
With the New Orleans-based People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, Okaikor facilitates training on undoing racism and community organizing. She created EduSAGE Companion to guide schools, organizations, and companies that want to transform from a place of inequity toward a Design for Critical Rehumanization™ through education, love, and action.
Week 2: Teacher Leadership: Creating Possibilities for Critical Democratic Education
July 8, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: A dominant narrative upholding the U.S. education system is that it is the great equalizer, providing opportunities to all who will work hard. Historically, this narrative has served to marginalize people of color as well as those living in poverty and provide the rationale for why these same groups of people “fail” at education. This session will connect contemporary U.S. education reform with its sociopolitical roots in the ideology of White supremacy while highlighting the role teacher leadership has played in affecting change toward a critical democratic education. As a workshop, we will identify changes we want to affect at the local level, analyze education power structures, and practice organizing strategies.
Facilitator Bio:
l.owens@radicalpedagogyinstitute.com
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.
Week 3: Disrupting Gender and Heteronormativity in PK-12 Schools
July 15, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: PK-12 schools in the United States are rife with gender and heteronormative structures that reinforce societal scripts (a term coined by Harper Kennan) about the kinds of bodies (and the way those bodies inhabit spaces) deemed socially acceptable. Such structures, which are oppressive to LGBTQ+ youth, are so ubiquitous with teaching and learning that they are often hard to identify, much less disrupt. In this session we will explore methods of identifying such structures, as well as ways to disrupt and dismantle them to provide more welcoming, liberating, and joyful schooling experiences for our LGBTQ+ students.
Facilitator Bio:
b.waid@radicalpedagogyinstitute.com
Brandie (she/her/ella) 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
Week 4: Healing, Advocacy, and Liberation through Diverse Children’s Literature
July 22, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: This interactive session will focus on incorporating diverse children’s literature into interactive classroom instruction in a public school setting and also in the community. Through literature from diverse cultures such as the Eyes That Kiss in the Corners, Drawn Together, All Are Welcome, Pink is for Boys, and many more, teachers can address issues of gender equality, freedom, love, bullying, leadership, courage, and confidence. I will showcase how using these resources could broaden teachers’ and students’ horizons of hatred beyond their bestowed burdens. This pedagogical approach allows teachers to better educate their students, empower the communities, dismantle supremacy, recognize their own biases, and create a new chapter – as together, we are invincible.
Facilitator Bio:
dphelps1113@gmail.com
Darius Phelps is a Pre-K Specialist with the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning. In 2015, he received a Bachelor of Science and Master of Education from UGA in 2019 and a Specialist degree in Educational Psychology in 2021.This Fall, he will start working on his PhD in English Education at Teachers College Columbia University.He has been teaching for eight years ranging from birth through five, Pre-Kindergarten and recently Middle Grades. Darius has given a TEDx talk titled, “Fingerprints Upon My Heart” and received “Georgia Child Caregiver of the Year” for 2016. His dream is to become a children’s book writer and illustrator, focusing on subjects such as anxiety, depression, and grief.
Week 5: Reading, Writing, and Racism: Identifying and Disrupting Whiteness in Our Curriculum
July 29, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: When racist curriculum “goes viral” on social media, it is typically dismissed as an isolated incident from a “bad” teacher. In this workshop, Dr. Bree Picower will share a framework identifying how racist curriculum is a systemic problem that reflects how Whiteness is embedded and reproduced in education. Participants will become familiar with viral examples of such “curricular tools of Whiteness” and will have the opportunity to examine their own curricular materials for Whiteness and to work collectively to disrupt and reframe such examples. Participants should bring some of their own lessons, textbooks, curriculum, etc. to the workshop and be ready to roll up their sleeves!
Facilitator Bio:
picowerb@montclair.edu
Dr. Bree Picower is an Associate Professor at Montclair State University in the College of Education and Human Development. She is the Co-Director of two innovative teacher education programs, the Urban Teacher Residency, Newark Teacher Project as well as the Critical Urban Education Speaker Series with Dr. Tanya Maloney at MSU. She is the author of Reading, Writing and Racism, Practice What You Teach: Social Justice Education in the Classroom and the Streets and the co-editor of What’s Race Got To Do With It? How current school reform maintains racial and economic inequality and Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice. Across her writing and teaching, Picower examines the role of racism in education and how to prepare teachers to disrupt Whiteness in order to advance social and racial justice.
Week 6: Four Pernicious Untruths We Teach K-12 Students About the Past–And How to Set the Record Straight
August 5, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: In this session, we will confront the male hegemony over our symbolic systems as it manifests in the stories we tell about the past. Stories about the past, told daily in history classes and frequently in other subjects such as science and math, hold the weight of truth for young people. In this session, we will focus on four untruths that we, as teachers, tell about the past. Each example aligns with current popular discussions about gender gaps in the arts, business, political representation, and science.
1) The European Renaissance revitalized the arts.
2) Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press.
3) The French Revolution of 1789 was an important step towards representative government.
4) The medical profession developed to provide quality healthcare.
Each has the appearance of truth, but in reality, is part of larger historical narratives that promote patriarchal values, particularly the myth that history is a tale of gradual, increasingly inclusive liberation for all people. By not sharing the ways these emergent institutions actively excluded and even punished women, teachers inadvertently perpetuate the most pernicious of patriarchal myths: that women just aren’t as capable as men. As we address these particular historical phenomena, we will also touch upon larger methods for teaching a truly gender-inclusive history including how to rethink periodization, redefine power, address complexity, and acknowledge the ways oppressive gender dynamics of the past continue to unfold in the very spaces where we teach.
Facilitator Bio:
georgina@teachaboutwomen.org
Georgina is the founder and director of Teach About Women, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating K-12 students to be champions for gender equity. She holds a BA in History and MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College as well as a degree in History from L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. The focus of Georgina’s work is curriculum design and providing collaborative professional development for K-12 teachers who want to make equity work part of every aspect of school life. She’s interested in the liberatory power of intersectional, anti-bias pedagogy across departments. In the words of bell hooks, “I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions–a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education a practice of freedom.” In addition to giving workshops, Georgina is currently at work on a book and high school curriculum on the history of women, gender, and power. Learn more about Teach About Women and Georgina’s work at www.teachaboutwomen.org or follow her on social media @TeachAboutWomen
Week 7: Creating Re/humanized Classrooms: Next Steps
August 12, 2021
1:30-3:00PM EST
Session Description: In this session, we will bring together the facilitators from Weeks 2-6 to conduct a 1-hour panel discussion focused on questions such as “What’s next?” and “How do we bring this back to our classrooms and grow it?”, as well as other questions submitted by Summer Collaborative members. The final 30 minutes of the session will be dedicated to connecting members with “accountability buddies” and reflecting on one thing each member commits to start doing in their teaching/classroom, one thing they commit to stop doing, and one thing they intend to continue thinking about. SC members who are also registered with the Radical Pedagogy Institute for the school year will be provided opportunities to meet with their accountability buddy each month to check in, support, and provide feedback to one another.
Want to attend? Check out our membership options here.