RESI Teachers Conference promotes anti-racism in classrooms
NEW YORK - Conversations on race in the classroom aimed to spark change across the country, at this week's Reimagining Education Summer Institute at Teachers College at Columbia University.
"It's a perilous time for education and for our multi-racial democracy," Teachers College President Thomas Bailey said in the conference's opening remarks.
Hundreds of teachers joined top researchers in person and online to promote equity and anti-racism in the classroom. Now in its seventh year, RESI was created by Sociology professor Amy Stuart Wells. She now acts as executive director of the conference. The current director is Phillip A. Smith, a Teachers College graduate who works as a Research Fellow for the Institute for Urban & Minority Education. His partner is associate director Charlyn Henderson, a veteran educator who is currently pursuing her Doctorate degree in English Education at Teacher College.
"(RESI) provides educators with some language to use back home about why this is good teaching, why what they're doing is supported by research on child development, on brain science, on how we learn," Wells explained.
The conference began with success stories. The extracurricular EPIC arts program showed how America's racist history could be taught in an engaging way, allowing students to act out game shows and write songs about topics like redlining.
The passion in Asharie Wrensford's voice on the video EPIC played for the audience conveyed the raw emotion she felt learning how minority neighborhoods have been systematically oppressed, something not talked about in her Harlem school, Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts.
"Even when I was exposed to people outside of my community, I never really learned anything about segregation, racial problems, anything," Wrensford told the audience during a panel discussion after the video.
Eagle Academy Harlem history teacher Jason Hoover said he utilizes free resources, bringing his students to the lessons.
"Taking them around the city, exposing them to the history of New York City in terms of their own identity," Hoover said.
Outside the city, educators face backlash and book bans, as the debate over teaching America's past intensifies.
"All the racists on the school board attempted to whitewash our history," recalled Patricia Jackson, a teacher at Central York High School in Pennsylvania.
Jackson and her colleague Ben Hodge stood alongside their students in protest.
"Months after doubling down on their decision, the school board finally voted to reverse its resource ban," Hodge told the audience.
Henderson taught every level of school in various parts of the country before joining district leadership, and she uses that knowledge to bridge perspectives.
"You presume everyone is doing the best they know how to do, and everyone wants to do well, and you have to affirm where teachers are," Henderson said. "We have to honor their professionalism and partner with them and listen to them."
Teachers attending RESI will return home equipped with confidence and support to teach the truth.
"My role is not to save the world," Smith added. "My role is to speak, understand truism as I understand it and share that, recognizing that not everyone is going to agree."
The organizers and teachers strive to help others unlearn what they have been taught.
The RESI conference continues through Friday, and concludes with a roundtable discussion of solutions based on the week's workshops.
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