National Conference on Empowering Teachers in Times
of War
FINAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Opening Plenary Session | Breakout #1 | Breakout
#2 | Breakout #3 | Breakout
#4 | Breakout #5
Registration Begins
8:00 a.m.
Opening
Plenary Session: Teaching in Times of War
9:00-10:30
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Three of the most progressive and prominent thinkers, educators, and leaders from a range of activist movements in the United States will discuss how current political contexts are requiring a fundamental rethinking of what it means to prepare public school teachers to teach towards social justice. Opening remarks by Kevin K. Kumashiro.
Etta Ruth Hollins, Professor and Chair of Teacher Education, University of Southern California. Dr. Hollins is a leading scholar on preparing teachers for culturally diverse populations. Her books include Culture in School Learning, Transforming Curriculum for a Culturally Diverse Society, Teaching Diverse Populations, Preparing Teachers for Cultural Diversity, Pathways to Success in School, and Ethnic and Racial Identity in School Practices. Dr. Hollins was Vice President of AERA's Division G, Social Contexts of Education.
Peter McLaren, Professor of Education, University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. McLaren is a leading scholar on critical pedagogy, multicultural education, critical ethnography, and critical theory. His recent books include Revolutionary Multiculturalism; Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution; Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory; and Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education, now in its fourth edition. Dr. McLaren is the inaugural recipient of the Paulo Freire Social Justice Award presented by Chapman University in 2002.
1.1 Workshop: Building Empathy in a Time of War
Using techniques from the dramatic arts, participants will engage in activities that promote empathy toward the human condition during war. Participants will learn how to guide students in expressing and analyzing their cognitive and emotional responses to war through role-playing, writing, and discussion. (Eugenie Chan and Annie Elias, Marin Academy)
1.2 Workshop: Disrupting Oppression in and as a Consequence of Science: Ideas for Teacher Educators and Science Teachers
Drawing from historical incidents and generating conversation about objectivity and voice, participants will explore ways to integrate issues such as gender, race, globalization, and war into a high school science or teacher education program. Participants will experience activities that address the potentially oppressive or liberating nature of science. (Thomas M. Philip, University of California, Berkeley)
1.3 Paper Presentations: Thinking Globally
Exploring Alternative Paradigms for Understanding the Post-9/11 Multicultural Classroom
In this paper, I begin by questioning the artificial divides we have created as: pre and post 9-11; The West and the Rest; Us versus Them. Why do we see the world in terms of evolutionary linear progression in which the United States provides the roadmap for the rest of the world? In this paper I use the work of Charles Mills (The Racial Contract) and Vine deLoria (God is Red) to explore two alternative paradigms that could help us shift the way we look at the world. (Leny Mendoza Strobel, Sonoma State University)
Pedagogies of Presence: Resisting the Violence of Erasure
Hegemonic understandings of war fail to recognise the historical consistencies, persistence and immediacy of imperial violences and occupations. This paper encourages pedagogies of presence that contest the boundaries demarcating "times of war" from "times of peace," thereby resisting the erasures enforced through wilful denials of the contiguities of west/east, north/south, dominance/subordination, and visible/invisble. (Fairn Herising and Proma Tagore, University of Victoria, Canada)
When Cosmopolitan Teachers Meet Patriotic Students
In the face of the terror of terrorism and the war against terrorism, many educators are eager to transform nation-state based civic or citizenship education into a cosmopolitan educational venture. Yet, the rising tide of patriotism often overshadows or even undermines cosmopolitan educational endeavors. In this paper, I inquire into the promises and predicaments of integrating cosmopolitanism into civic education in an age of uncertainty. (Huey-li Li, University of Akron)
What Do Free Trade, Race Fear, and War All Have in Common?: What Teachers Can Do in Their Classrooms to Respond to the Neoliberal Challenge
This presentation explores how race and race fear have been used as a smokescreen while a small group of "free market capitalists" wrested away the democracy from the American public, how this same group of conservatives is using war as a strategy to maintain and extend control over the democracy, how progressives have unwittingly played into the hands of those elites, what can be done now, in schools to reverse this process, and the larger role of education in promoting a more "participatory" democracy. (Greg Tanaka, Pacific Oaks College)
Breakout
Session #2
12:30-2:00
2.1 Workshop: What's Math Got to Do With It?: How to Talk About War and Peace in a Mathematics Class
Although mathematics is a discipline that purports to teach logical analysis and critical thinking, it is not easy to apply these skills directly to social issues--in particular the contemporary "war on terrorism"--directly in the classroom. The author will share lessons she has developed to do just this in both elementary and advanced mathematics classes. (Bonnie Shulman, Bates College)
2.2 Paper Presentations: Intervening Policy
Building an Alliance: Empowering Educators through Leadership In and Out of School
This paper presents lessons learned in forming and developing the on-going Alliance for Academic Freedom to support Albuquerque educators disciplined for balanced school discussions of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This paper addresses the issue of who and what is made acceptable and marginal in schools during times of war and argues that empowering educators to teach toward social justice requires leadership within and without the school system. (Eric Haas, Arizona State University; Jan Hart, Technical Vocational Institute)
Manchester Model for Transformative Teaching and Learning
The Manchester Model proposes to redirect traditional undergraduate teacher education towards curricula of philosophy, psychology, theology, literature, arts, peace studies, and conflict transformation. The model addresses the questions of why and how we have schooling as it pursues equality and socioeconomic justice for those disenfranchised by education under American schools. (Lindan B. Hill, Manchester College)
School Accountability Policies: Ideological Ground for Repression and Militarism in a Post-9/11 World
Using a Gramscian political economic analysis, the paper examines the crisis of legitimacy of disciplinary neo-liberalism and the beginning of a global democratic counter-hegemonic bloc as the context for post-9/11 repression and War on Terrorism. Chicago school policy demonstrates how education accountability and surveillance produce ideological and material support for the repression of civil liberties and militarization in this context. (Pauline Lipman, DePaul University)
Terrorism and the Surveillance Economy of American Schooling
Two events from recent history--the 1999 Columbine shootings and September 11th--have greatly impacted the ways that safety is conceptualized in the classroom. This paper maps out the various technologies, discourses, ideologies, and procedures that inform how teachers, administrators, students, and parents view safety in a post-Columbine and post-9/11 world. (Tyson Lewis, University of California, Los Angeles)
3.1 Workshop: Military vs. Social Spending: Teaching Kids the True Cost of War
Activist/educator Roni Krouzman and African American student peace activist Lea Vonk will lead participants through an engaging, interactive lesson designed to help kids understand the trade-offs between military and social spending. Roni has facilitated this workshop with 1000 students across the United States, and will pass on concrete teaching techniques. (Roni Krouzman and Lea Vonk, Next Generation)
3.2 Workshop: Traversing the Labyrinth of Religious Diversity in Multicultural Education: Demystifying the Complex with Activities and Projects
This workshop will simulate the activities and projects that the author has used when teaching pre-service teachers about religious diversity. Participants will engage in interactive activities and discuss their importance in developing student awareness and sensitivity. Teaching materials and resources that promote student understanding will be distributed. (Pamela A. Taylor, Seattle University)
3.3 Paper Presentations: Rethinking Pedagogy
Pedagogy of Silence: The Stifling of Teacher Voice in Public SchoolsThis paper will briefly address the absence of teacher voice within the broader educational system. It will primarily focus on the ways administrators silence teachers, the institutional structures that allow such silencing, and the subsequent challenges to teachers in serving as active agents of social justice. (Donyell L. Roseboro, University of North Carolina, Greensboro)
Strategy, Subversion, and the State(s) of Emergency: Toward an Abject Pedagogy
In this paper, the author discusses pedagogy and strategy within the current climate of education. Deploying Lacanian psychoanalysis in a critique of standardized knowledge, the author develops a theory of "abject pedagogy" that seeks to subvert the current "regimes of truth" while providing educators with a viable pedagogy. (Kyungwon Daniel Cho, University of California, Los Angeles)
Unveiling Discourse: A Cry for Transformative Liberatory Education and Social Justice
The rhetoric of American nationalism is founded in hegemonic ideology that silences counter-hegemonic dialogue for social justice, educator voice, and preparedness. Existing educational systems and practices perpetuate the hidden curriculum and dominant power structures. The antidote is found in the dialectic or problem-posting praxis that promotes democratic liberatory practice and pedagogic freedom of voice in education. (Bonita Lara Lee, University of North Carolina, Greensboro)
4.1 Workshop: Safety, Healing, and Community in Times of War
Since 9/11, San Francisco Women Against Rape (SFWAR) has expanded its education work, based in anti-oppression and human rights frameworks, to focus on the intersections of interpersonal and state violence and promote strategies for increasing individual and community safety and healing. In this workshop, staff from SFWAR will describe its work and demonstrate aspects of an actual workshop. (Janine Grantham, Janet Arelis Quezada, and Lisa Fujie Parks, SFWAR)
4.2 Workshop: Raising Awareness and Building Community through Teacher-Led Study Groups
Teachers for Social Justice (T4SJ) has developed a model of professional development called Study Groups, in which classroom teachers investigate various topics through research and personal experience. Topics have included racism in classrooms, resistance to high-stakes testing, and discipline within a social-justice framework. This workshop will present the concept and model of the Study Group, and will take participants through a variety of activities and strategies. (Karen Zapata and Members of T4SJ)
4.3 Panel Discussion: Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Populations in Teacher-Education Programs
The increasing racial diversity of the U.S. student population has not been mirrored in the teaching profession. Contemporary educational reforms at the federal level and the state level in California are making even more difficult a change in the recruitment and retainment of diverse populations of teacher candidates and teachers, especially when being and becoming "highly qualified" teachers are prescribed in problematic ways. This panel will discuss these challenges and some approaches to recruitment and retention that have already proven successful. (Ann Berlak, San Francisco State University (chair); Kitty Kelly Epstein, Holy Names College; Steven K. Lee, Alliant International University)
5.1 Panel Discussion: Learning from Student Activists
A diverse panel of students from public and private high schools in Northern California shares their experiences engaging in various forms of activism for social justice. They with share their thoughts on bridging academics with social action, and on the role teachers can play in supporting their learning. Their teachers will share their own experiences serving as mentors and consultants. (Moderated by Mark Stefanski, Marin Academy)
5.2 Panel Discussion: The Impact of Federal and State Policy on Teacher Education Programs: Examples from California
Faculty members from teacher-education programs at various campuses of the California State University share their perspectives on and experiences with federal policy (No Child Left Behind) and state policy (especially A.B.2042) and their impact on teacher education in California. They will discuss ways that these policy are hindering efforts to prepare teachers to teach towards social justice, and ways that programs are responding in innovative ways. (Roberta Ahlquist, CSU-San Jose; Virginia Lea, CSU-Sonoma; Patricia Whang, CSU-Monterey Bay)