This session will include two presentations:

1. Shared Stories: Critical Content Analysis of Multivoiced YA novels

We will discuss what multi-voiced narratives are and introduce you to several recently published YA titles as we explore how their content can provide readers with rich representations of a diverse group of characters.

2. Smashing Stereotypes: A Content Review of Select Children’s Picture Books About Children with Disabilities

For this session, the presenters have examined multiple children's picture books to find those stories celebrating the successes of children with disabilities. In each text discussed during this presentation, children shatter the Deficit Lens Model's myths and transcend societal boundaries. When not limited by others' expectations, children with disabilities have no sense of what they can't do. It's all about what they CAN. 

In this session, we will use role-play scenarios grounded in lived experiences and research to illuminate the complexities of anti-racist pedagogies relevant to K-12 and higher education in concrete ways. In particular, we will elucidate how power, privilege, and oppression have endured in educational institutions and contributed to systemic racism. 

This presentation will examine the use of online literature circles in an undergraduate literacy course and the use of technology tools to facilitate their critical reflections. Teacher candidates will share their experiences reading social justice books for children focusing on topics such as race, bias, and microaggressions. Their reflections can inform the construction of assignments and resources to support teacher candidates’ development of culturally responsive teaching practices using self-paced remote instruction.

Attendees will leave with a better understanding of how to use sources as mirrors and windows in their classrooms to better reflect a multicultural world. The session will begin with a short presentation, demonstrate a lesson teachers could use as part of a unit on identity and share resources for later use. Come prepared to take on the role of student and participant in this session.  

This session will include two presentations:

1. Reading, 'Riting, and Racism: Using Literacy Instruction to Teach Today’s “Three R’s” 

This presentation aims to provide participants with ways to create cultures of learning that support racial literacy, promote social justice activism, and equity within their current and future classrooms. Presenters will share ideas for learning experiences using resources that facilitate racial literacy and explore the concepts of power and privilege. Practices will focus on English Language Arts instruction and skills, specifically through reading and writing.

2. Preparing Childhood Educators to Talk About Race and Racial Justice with Elementary Students

When teachers teach about historical events, the content needs to be relatable to young students, portraying the lives of children who came before them and the ways those children were impacted by that history. Our session will portray a process and the criteria we used when selecting materials for teaching about racial justice. Teaching materials included Teaching Tolerance’s (2018) Social Justice Standards and learning materials included The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson (2001).  

In this panel, SUNY Cortland and Oneonta scholars from the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, and economics, discuss how Allen’s work elevates their efforts to bring anti-racism into the classroom. Panelists discuss how Theodore Allen’s theories on the white race aid in teaching critical anti-racist topics such as Eastern European migrants and racism; de-naturalizing race; race, placemaking and toxic ecologies; racialized labor divisions as social control; and whiteness as malignant bargain.

Sixty-eight percent of all children will experience trauma during their childhood years. Children whose families and ancestors experienced oppression are also vulnerable to trauma of a historical or intergenerational nature. Discussion will include application of the principles of trauma-informed care, and how traumatic stress can negatively impact learning and behavior. Using children's literature to facilitate increased empathy among students, and facilitate greater awareness of self and others will also be explored.

This session will include two presentations:

1. Philosophical Inquiry About Diverse Cultures in Children’s Books 

The presentation will explore children’s storybooks that promote student’s philosophical inquiry about race. The presenters will discuss Sophia’s Garden's approach of engaging children in philosophy to underscore pedagogy and educational practices in early childhood that enhances higher-order thinking and language development. The presentation will discuss ways of identifying literature that represents social justice themes and existential aspects of learning. The participants will reflect on their roles in fostering philosophical thinking about race.

2. Full Circle Intercommunication: A Framework for Storytelling, Writing, and Connecting 

Participants will be introduced to and learn how to use Full Circle Intercommunication, a framework developed by the presenter, for fostering interpersonal communication between diverse learners while increasing confidence and improving writing skills through the use of digital audio recordings. How the framework is used to connect speaking, listening, writing and reading while integrating grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, note-taking, editing and revising, all around the central text of one's personal spoken story, will be demonstrated.

In this session, we will consider the words we use to teach the American Civil War. While, as teachers, we can dismiss racist interpretations of the conflict that minimize the importance of slavery, many of our students still absorb those myths as they grow up, both from school and from popular culture. Together, we will discuss how small changes in classroom language can reframe understanding, making a big difference in students’ learning.

Traumas experienced from systems of oppression are passed down through bodies, and can only be healed through the body (Menakem 2017). In this experiential workshop, I’ll discuss somatic movement literacy (SML) and how it can generate self-awareness, critical consciousness, and healing in educational spaces. Participants will get an embodied introduction to somatics, how to facilitate somatic processes, and how to connect somatic practices with educating for and taking direct action for social change.