This interactive session will encourage participants to think about Youth Participatory Action Research as a curricular and pedagogical model that centers youth voice as part of a humanizing pedagogy in schools. Presenters share their expertise in leveraging marginalized voices, inquiry, and performance as pedagogical strategies for engaging the academic and civic identities of students. You can register for this event here.
Conversations about educational inequalities are too often predicated upon antiquated and fallacious theories of cultural deficiency. Students of color from low-income backgrounds and in high-needs districts are viewed as lacking the “grit” of their wealthier and more successful (and often white) counterparts. At the same time, students of color are confronted with school systems and classrooms that embody the hidden curriculum of compliance and conformity to standing social hierarchies. Attempts to diversify the traditional Western canon of literature offered in ELA classrooms are maligned as “lowering expectations.” Rather than addressing structural inequities of schooling, education reformers have sought to simply imbue more “rigor” into the curriculum under the guise of equal opportunity, high expectations, and “college readiness.” Particularly in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings against ongoing racial violence and amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative that teachers incorporate culturally sustaining content and continue to deliver digital instruction in an accessible, student-centered manner. You can register for this event here.
Topher Bigelow is a ninth grade teacher bringing ELA with a US History cross curricular flair to their students at the High School for Community Leadership in Jamaica, Queens. Topher is a former Urban Teacher Resident and graduate of Queens College with a Masters of Arts in Teaching. Prior to this program, Topher graduated from City College with a degree in English and a minor in political science. Before they became an educator in the NYC public school system, they worked as an activist advocating for racial, class, and LGBTQ+ justice.
Nyree Wright is a Middle School ELA teacher in Brooklyn who has worked in the field of education since 2007. Nyree graduated from Brooklyn College(CUNY) with a bachelor’s degree in English and Children and Youth Studies in 2011. She has also completed a dual masters degree in Early Childhood Education and Special Education at The College of New Rochelle in 2013. She was a Queens College-New Visions for Public Schools Urban Teacher Resident at Hillcrest High School for the 2018–2019 school year. She graduated from Queens College (CUNY) with a Master of Arts in Teaching: English Adolescent Education last spring.
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