Catch Us If You Can: Teaching for Social Justice Despite the Odds

New York University Social Justice Education Critical Inquiry Project   

How can teachers center social justice when up against mandated curricula and test-crazed environments?  Our Social Justice Critical Inquiry Group at New York University will present on the ways we support one another in designing, implementing, and assessing social justice curricula in a variety of K-8 classrooms.  In this panel we will share multimedia units demonstrating students engaging in social action. 

End Zero Tolerance in Public Schools   

People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER)

Learn how to effectively and creatively organize against zero tolerance policies in your community using fun activities including cultural arts such as drama, painting, music, poetry, photography and video.  Play a "Ban Zero Tolerance in Schools" Jepardy Game and take back important information to your school and community.  Hosted by PODER's Young Scholars for Justice.

Lessons from the Life of Youth in Action    

Youth in Action

Youth leaders use new media and popular education to teach their peers and community about important issues through innovative programming. Here's your chance to meet these youth and find out what it really means to be youth led. Learn about their challenges, transitions, what the roles are for adults in this picture and stories of their success.    

Leveraging Student Voices for Social Justice

Candace Cheatham (Simmons College), Leonard Gabay (CUNY Graduate Center), Rachel Martin (Stockton College of New Jersey)  

While much of the traditional research around education and equity relies on the voices of adult experts, there is considerable less that leverages the voices of the students themselves. Leveraging student voice is important given that students themselves are the consumers of the education and schooling directed at them. This panel will highlight research that brings students’ voices and understanding to the forefront of understanding issues ranging from the juvenile “justice” system, hip-hop consumption, and how students make sense of required coursework on multiculturalism. 

Models for Academic Success in a Social Justice Framework  

Khadigah Alasry (Muslim American Society-Youth Division), Peter Heinze and Sheila Belt, (South Orange-Maplewood United for Academic Excellence), Ammerah Saidi (Harvard Graduate School of Education)  

While there are mountains of research about why students from oppressed or marginalized populations fail, there is significantly less work around what helps these students succeed.  Furthermore, some of the research on models for success rely on paradigms that frame such students as extreme outliers or exceptions to the rule. The presenters in this panel will illuminate models and frameworks that individual students, policy-makers and community organizers utilize to dramatically increase the academic engagement of whole groups of students through helping students directly analyze and de-construct the hegemonic forces that serve as barriers to their success.   

Power to the Students! Student Voice in Transforming Schools & Education Systems  

Youth in Focus

How can students take leadership in transforming education systems?  The Town Researchers, a team of students from Oakland, California, will share three years of work in the Oakland Unified School District to increase student voice in school improvement, offer youth-led participatory action research tools, and dialogue about students taking back their education in this multimedia and participatory workshop.   

Using Digital Storytelling and Participatory Action Research (PAR) for Liberation: The Case of a Classroom Collective    

University of North Texas and Denton High School

In this panel discussion, high school youth will show their digital stories and PAR projects, share their reflections about the creation of a high school classroom youth collective (Youth Speak) and discuss how media, storytelling and research transformed the process of teaching and learning. Youth will also explore the benefits and difficulties of using digital storytelling.  

We Rep Ourselves: It’s Time for Media Justice     

Females United for Action

Because our brown, black, girl, genderqueer, working-class bodies & minds are under fire; because lies are being told about our communities; & because it is better to speak, we rep ourselves. Come rap about media justice, representation and community change! With games, diagrams, zines and discussion, we'll break down “media justice.” We'll share tools and help you think about ways to take the story-telling back to your own communities.   

Youth Liberation: Roots to Revolution  

Make the Road New York

ACTIVITY FULL

This workshop will use spoken word, video and interactive/experiential learning to share the work of the Youth Power Project of Make the Road New York as an example of successful youth organizing. Participants will learn about the campaigns, political education and arts/media components of the Project, while also engaging in movement building around vision, analysis and strategy.