This three-evening series, held in the spring semester, features guest presentations and related readings by noted educational researchers and practitioners. Graduate students, teachers, school leaders, and community advocates are all invited to attend. Download the DSS 2008 Brochure!
In an era marked by public policies that often result in test-driven teaching and disdain for schooling as an avenue for social justice, educating for democracy has never been a greater challenge. This year's Distinguished Speaker Series will feature three lectures by noted educators who will address what is at stake today. Drawing on their own practice and research, they will present alternatives far more likely to help us provide what every child in our society deserves.
Featured Speakers:
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Dr. Amanda E. LewisBoth in popular culture and academic discourse there is a growing sentiment that we are "beyond race." In this talk I argue that such sentiments are both incorrect and dangerous -- particularly in discussions of education. In demonstrating the current significance of race, I will outline some flaws in the racial reasoning of much educational research. Ultimately, I make the case that we cannot educate for democracy -- that is, we cannot educate our children or train new teachers or design more equitable educational policies and practices -- without an honest and informed discussion about the persisting relevance of race in American society.
Dr. Amanda Lewis is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology and African American Studies and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how race shapes educational opportunities from kindergarten through graduate school and on how our ideas about race get negotiated in everyday life. A native of San Francisco, she was educated in San Francisco public schools and received her B.A. in educational studies from Brown University, her M.A. in education for the University of California at Berkeley and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan. Her book on how race shapes everyday life in elementary schools, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the colorline in classrooms and communities, (Rutgers University Press 2003) was featured in a number of radio and newspaper outlets. She had two additional books published recently: her edited volume (with Maria Krysan), The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity (Russell Sage, 2004), and Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice (with Mark Chesler and Jim Crowfoot √ Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2005). Her research has appeared in a number of academic venues including Sociological Theory, American Educational Research Journal, American Behavioral Scientist, Race and Society, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, and Anthropology and Education Quarterly. She lectures and consults regularly on issues of educational equity and contemporary forms of racism.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Linda Christensen: Lewis & Clark CollegeIn some of today's best teacher education programs, prospective teachers are implored to "teach for democracy," to help students "read the word and the world," to speak to students in a "language of possibility." But what happens when theory meets the classroom? In this session, Linda Christensen will draw on her 30 years as an inner city classroom teacher in Portland, Oregon, to explain her model of critical teaching for democracy by discussing a unit on language. Using stories and examples from her classroom work, Christensen will explore ways she has attempted to create democratic, emancipatory classrooms by grounding the curriculum in the language and lives of students, teaching students to pose essential and critical questions about language and society, and encouraging them to reflect on ways to make a difference in the world around them. She will provide examples that demonstrate how to value the cultures of marginalized groups while giving them access to the language and tools of power.
Linda Christiansen is the Director of the Oregon Writing Project located in the Graduate School of Education
at Lewis & Clark College. The OWP is part of the National Writing Project network, the oldest and largest professional development project in the U.S. NWP sites use a teacher-teaching-teachers model that draws on the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of successful classroom teachers. Linda is the author of Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word and co-editor of Rethinking School Reform: Views from the Classroom and Rethinking Our Classrooms. A member of the editorial board of Rethinking Schools, she was named the 1998 U.S. West Outstanding Teacher of Western United States for "Reaching Beyond Classroom Walls."
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Kris Gutierrez: University of California at Los Angeles
This talk presents a robust vision of expansive education that counters current educational practices for students from non-dominant communities. Schooling today is too often organized around educational policies that employ narrow and reductive views of learning. This talk will argue that prevailing notions of learning, and academic literacy in particular, are neither expansive nor harness the repertoires of practice of K-12 students, especially non-dominant students. Drawing on empirical work with innovative K-12 projects, Gutiérrez presents cases that illustrate the transformative potential of ecologies of learning organized around humanist and robust views of learning and schooling. In particular, the talk will build on previous work to examine how learning in these robust ecologies is mediated by sociocritical literacies in which students begin to reconceive of who they are and what they can become educationally and sociopolitically.
Dr. Kris Gutiérrez is Professor of Social Research Methodology in the Graduate School of Education &
Information Studies and the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles as well as Director of the Education Studies Minor, Director of the Center for the
Study of Urban Literacies, and CO-PI of UCLA Center on the Everyday Lives of Families. Kris's research centers on the processes by which people negotiate meaning in culturally organized contexts, using language and literacies that are embedded within sociohistorical traditions. Dr. Gutierrez received the AERA Distinguished Scholar Award in 2007.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - CANCELED; check back for further details
Jane Knitzer, Ed.D.: Columbia University
Drawing on the work of the National Center for Children in Poverty, which is affiliated with Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Dr. Knitzer will highlight the demographic realities facing poor children in America. She will discuss the powerful lessons learned from research about how to promote resilience, healthy development, and early school success in young low-income children, as well as emerging community and policy strategies that can be used to support an ever more diverse community of young children and families.Dr. Jane Knitzer is the Executive Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), whose mission is to promote research-informed policy to improve the lives of low-income children and families. She is also a Clinical Professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health. As a psychologist, Dr. Knitzer has focused her own research on improving public policies related to children's mental health, child welfare, and early childhood. Her work on mental health includes the groundbreaking policy report, Unclaimed Children: The Failure of Public Responsibility to Children and Adolescents in Need of Mental Health Services and At the Schoolhouse Door: An Examination of Programs and Policies for Children with Behavioral and Emotional Problems.
All events will be held:
4:30 to 7:30 pm
Tabas Auditorium
Bank Street College, New York City
Coordinator of the Distinguished Speakers Series: Dr. Linda Levine
For further information, please contact Maritza Parchment at 212-875-4461
Download the DSS 2008 Brochure!
Learn more about Amanda Lewis!
Click here to see information about last year's series: 2007 Distinguished Speaker Series