Wanting to create or grow your Equity Team? Challenged by the obstacles embedded in the system? This session shares our multifaceted approach to advancing equity work that includes district officials, students and accessing external networks. Collaborating together, we will design next steps that align with your current context.

Today's classroom is highly likely to include students with an Individual Education Plan (IEP) yet many general education teachers have not had training or instruction on how to meet their unique needs. This can lead to ableism, frustration and lack of success for everyone. Come learn some basics around what makes up an IEP and the predominant law guiding them, appropriate instruction and how to work with the special education staff. You will also learn about ableism/anti-ableism and how to help neurodivergent students feel they belong in your classroom.

Examining stories of LGBTQ+ activism from an antiracist and Ethnic Studies framework, participants will experience how to connect historical narratives, focusing on Bayard Rustin’s life work, to explore the many forms of social justice activism that can lead to cultural and political transformations. Participants will learn about and discuss ways to empower our student to assert their voices through social justice activism, with a focus on the intersections of race, gender and sexual orientation. We will view parts of videos to examine historical LGBTQIA figures and the story of high school students who tried to start a GSA in Utah in the face of right-wing opposition. We will also look at poems, excerpts of Rustin’s writings and our own “hero-activists” to help us determine what skills make a powerful activist. The stories will serve as a catalyst for activities that engage students in reflecting on their own lives and the possibilities for creating social, political and cultural changes in their schools, communities, and their world. We will use a variety of activities to experience the collaborative effort at defining activism that we want our students to experience.

This session should particularly benefit GSA/QSA advisers, BSU and other social justice student clubs, social studies, Ethnic Studies and language arts educators, counselors or others working with LGBTQ+ students and families, and human rights/social justice activists in their unions.

The history of Black and Indigenous hair in the United States illuminates another facet in which BIPOC folx have been discriminated against, oppressed, and erased since 1619. Hair holds special significance for Black and Indigenous People, and always has, from pre-colonization, to present day as ongoing colonization persists. But with fierce love for oneself, each other and identities that cannot be erased, the celebration of our Hair continues and marches on and over the white supremacy constructs that tell us that we don't matter and that our hair is somehow wrong. We resist this racist premise because we know we are beautiful and worthy beyond measure. We insist on living as our authentic selves as resistance, reclamation and in the joy of honoring ourselves.

How do we teach the history of Indigenous peoples with truth, compassion, and accuracy? This interactive session equips educators to model and teach the true story of Native education in elementary classrooms, including the boarding school era and its lasting impact on Native families. Participants will experience a modeled mini-lesson, examine data on Native student enrollment and chronic absenteeism in California, and reflect on the barriers Native students face in today’s schools. Attendees will leave with age-appropriate strategies, resources, and a personal action step to bring Indigenous perspectives into their teaching.

The power of poetry and both fictional and memoir narrative writing in conveying what is feels like to live as a Palestine in this world opens up avenues of discussion for our students. This workshop will explore how creative writing and narrative tell the story of both Palestine and Palestinians. We will look at various authors’ choices of the structure of the writings, word choices and figurative or metaphoric language to help students think about, discuss and write about the levels of meaning implied in the writing. Participants will explore how creative writings, allowing for student interpretations, will lead to lessons on point of view and meaning in Palestinian writings. The workshop will draw upon the Common Core English Language Arts Standards and Ethnic Studies guiding principles. Participants will also have the opportunity to examine ways in which these lessons can lead to stronger verbal and written communications, using evidence in the writings to draw conclusions from the writings. Some of the authors to be included are Mahmoud Darwish, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mosab Abu Tohah, Fady Joudah, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Jewish poets, and other poets such as June Jordan.

This session will benefit 9-12 educators and with modification 6-8, and will benefit community college professors