• The Canon: The Need to Create a Redistribution of Power

Nora Alvarado, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
This session looks at the ways in which the literary texts used in the classroom maintain the status quo through upholding Western cultural values. Teachers will have the opportunity to examine current reading lists that high school students need to read as mandated by the nation while being introduced to an expanding reading list that includes women and multicultural authors. The session addresses not only the theoretical aspects and complexities of race, but also how teachers, in particular white teachers, fail to recognize their white privilege and the institutional racism that exists to marginalize students of color in public schools through the lack of culturally relevant literature.

• Learning from Literature: Jane Addams Award-winning Books for Younger and Older Readers

Sandy Brehl, UWM Education Outreach
The Jane Addams Book Awards are given to children’s books of excellent literary quality that effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of the sexes and all races. Learn about the sponsoring organization, recent titles, sample lessons, and a wealth of resources.

• Finding the Language of Our Students Through Culturally Responsive Teaching

Francisco Aponte, Erica Bonde, Milwaukee Public Schools
Participants will engage in a dialogue on the cultural disconnect felt by 8th – 12th grade urban teenagers through the concepts taught, lack of culturally responsive teaching and their relationships and interactions with school staff. Data was collected through surveying these teens with the intent to uncover the origin of these disconnects, how they affect teens’ academic and social experience and most importantly how culturally responsive teaching can enhance experiences for the teens, families and staff.

• A Social Justice Approach to the Writing Process

Thandeka Chapman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
How to use social justice issues and a social justice peer review process to facilitate the teaching of expository writing is the focus of this session. The presentation folds social justice criteria into multiple writing activities which culminate in an expository essay. It can be used with various grade and student achievement levels; however, this particular explanation is geared toward ninth and tenth grade students who struggle with academic writing.

• Incorporating Adoption in the Classroom in an Anti-biased Manner

Geri Chesner, National Louis University
How do you incorporate and talk about adoption in your own classroom (whether or not you have students who are adopted or not)? Adoption is often portrayed in a negative manner by the media and general public, often without intention, through the language that is used to talk about it. Do you know which projects and assignments may be a challenge to adopted children’s perceptions of themselves and others’ perceptions of adoption in general? In this session you will learn positive adoption language, participate in determining how challenges can be lessened for adopted children in common assignments and you will come away with an understanding that how a teacher portrays adoption can speak volumes about how they view adoption and adoptive families and children.

• Harnessing the Power of Performance in Education: Arts Integration in Curriculum

Leonard A. Cruz, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
This is a participatory workshop in which participants will prepare texts and then tell their stories through movement, voice, and or visual art. Based on Moll’s Funds of Knowledge, participants will be guided in exploring problems and /or issues that they face in their day-to-day environments and then allow them to express themselves through performance.

• Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers: Bringing Ethnic Communities Together through the Visual and Performing Arts

Elena De Costa, Carroll University
Interdisciplinary collaborations between classroom and community create learning strategies in meaningful contexts. They provide learners with engaging experiences which place them in participatory roles leading to consciousness-raising, dialogue, and activism. The visual and performing arts in bilingual contexts bring communities together to recognize real-life stereotypes and prejudices in a framework that is developmental, individual, transitional, and transformative.

• Student Voice in the Classroom

Amy Gutowksi, Amy Mizialko, Milwaukee Public Schools
Participants will consider the issues of power and student voice in the classroom. Participants will be actively engaged via self-reflection on their own teaching practices and dialogue with peers. Participants will determine their own next steps related to transforming their teaching practices related to student voice.

• Culturally Relevant Science for Early Childhood Educators: Building upon Scientific Indigenous Knowledge

Maria Hamlin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Drawing on an Early Childhood base, this session will introduce teachers to both culturally based science and western science in the areas of biology, earth and space science, and physics. Participants will complete “hands on” inquiry based science activities that are rooted in indigenous ways of knowing. The purpose of this session is to introduce educators to culturally relevant pedagogy in science and allow practitioners to engage in “hands on minds on” inquiry-based science activities that are rooted within specific cultural contexts. Practitioners will learn about both culturally based science and western science and how western science can be taught without devaluing indigenous students’ culturally based scientific knowledge and ideas.

• Real World Bias in a Virtual World: Examination of Racism and Bias in Online Learning and Social Networks

Mary Ann Kahl, Valerie Schmitz, Teach Me Peace, Inc.
The amount of social interaction that takes place online whether through participation in virtual worlds, learning environments, or in other social networks is ever increasing. Research suggests an existence of racism and bias in these environments mirroring that in the “real world.”
This presentation will review emerging research with regards to the presence of bias and racism in on-line and other virtual environments, provide time for participants to share their own experiences with this growing phenomenon and end with participants role playing in virtual worlds.

• College Knowledge: Issues of Support for First Generation College Students

Robert Longwell-Grice, University of Wisonsin Milwaukee
This presentation is a video-documentary based on interviews conducted with one, first generation, working class family. The interviews were focused on the issues of preparation and support for college. This session will focus on issues of support and will help educators understand the complex issues confronting first generation college students.

• Organizing for Antiracist Systemic Transformation in Schools

Jo Ann Mundy, Joy Bailey, Chuck Ruehle, Kalamazoo Public Schools Antiracism Team, ERAC/Ce and Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training
This session will examine the case of the Kalamazoo (MI) Public Schools Anti-Racism team and how it is partnering with regional partner Eliminating Racism and Celebrating/Claiming Equality and national partner Crossroads Anti-Racism Organizing and Training to dismantle institutional racism from the inside of the institution.

• Examining Social Justice in High School Literature: Putting Huck Finn on Trial

Kathy Nelson and Corey Schneidewent, Arrowhead Union High School
Come see how project-based learning can be used to examine social justice in a high school English class. Presentation to include video of students’ trial of Mark Twain accused of promoting racism in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, detailed lesson plans, and question/answer period.

• Language Learning for English Language Learners (ELLs)

Sarah Ottow, Fort Atkinson Schools, Alyssa Ottow, Waukesha School District.
Academic language and higher level thinking skills are vital for the success of all students in our schools. English language learners need explicit and responsive teaching to become academic writers. Learn how to use the writing process in an elementary classroom to provide your language minority students with tools for an equitable education experience.

• Combat Ready: Teaching Literature about War

Donna Pasternak, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Much young adult and classic literature taught in U.S. classrooms ask readers to look critically at the contentious question, “What does it mean to go war.” Knowing this, how do we support young readers in a space that is safe as they explore the moral and ethical implications of war and its impact on the global communities it decimates? Join the presenter and share inclusive methods that allow students’ voices to dominate critical, discordant conversations about war.

• Children Crossing Boundaries: Teaching for Social justice within the Language Arts Curriculum

Karen K. Rigoni, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Participants will actively engage in language arts instructional practices intended to promote teaching for social justice. This project demonstrates the application of critical literacy strategies to model teaching for social justice. Student discoveries and work samples derived from a themed text set on Children Crossing Boundaries will be shared.

• Defining the Experience: Let’s Talk about Race

Cathy Sansone, Milwaukee Public Schools, Sherri Jones, WEAC
This interactive session will analyze the key concepts and vocabulary necessary in framing any conversation about race and anti-racist practices. Explore. Engage. Empower.

• Positive Classroom Climates: Empowering Youth, Managing Conflicts

Tara Serebin, Peace Learning Center of Milwaukee
As educators, how do we empower youth to think, speak and behave differently toward the daily conflict that drains classroom instruction time and strains peer relationships? How do we develop healthy classroom climates that honor diversity, tolerance and inclusiveness? This workshop will discuss effective tools and strategies used by the Peace Learning Center of Milwaukee to engage students (ages 9–13/grades 4–6) to practice healthy ways to communicate and manage conflict, resulting in improved classroom climates and youth self-esteem.

• Designing for Diversity, Professional Development to Help Teachers Uncover/Confront Personal Bias

Kristin Steinbach, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
This session will introduce teachers and school leaders to the Curricular Wisdom Paradigm developed by Henderson & Gornik (2007). Specifically, it presents the use of currere (or reflexive narrative) in professional development to help educators use personal storytelling as a means to interrogate their personal biases and explore their implicit curricula. Participants will engage in a mini lesson that details how these author’s ideas can be translated into educational practice transformative toward social justice.

• Our Immigrant Students: Their Rights, Their future

Melissa Tempel, Milwaukee Public Schools, Amanda Bossman, Voces de la Frontera
Have you ever felt helpless when deportation effects your students? How can you support these families? What are their rights? How can you be an ally? Join us for this hands-on informational workshop. Learn what it might feel like to be confronted by immigration officials and get essential information that could change the lives of your students.

• Teaching for Change: Self-Reflection and Transformative Practices for Educators

Rita Verma, Adelphi University
This session will present research and innovative curriculum ideas to encourage self-reflective practice in teacher education programs that can lead to transformation and antibias/anti racist visions of pedagogy.


• Help Me Understand You: A Deeper Look at the Potential of Refugee Students

Quin’Tara White, Michael McDonald, Pan-African Community Association
Presenters will provide a range of perspectives on working with refugee student populations. Session attendees will learn about the legal, political, and cultural definitions of the term “refugee” as well as of some of the potential resources they bring to education and various struggles they face in their everyday lives.

• Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that made History

Bonnie Brusky, facilitator, Milwaukee Public Schools
Bullied, a new documentary from Teaching Tolerance is a film that chronicles one student’s ordeal at the hands of anti-gay bullies and offers an inspiring message of hope to those fighting harassment today. It can become a cornerstone of anti-bullying efforts in middle and high schools.