This year, building on the work we have done together in the seminar series over the past few years, we investigate the relationship between the special nature of knowing content in teaching and the work of seeing and hearing children’s ideas with subject matter and supporting their growth. We seek to uncover and articulate the relationship between advancing justice and the teaching of content. Patterns of racism and oppression can be reproduced or interrupted depending on what content is selected for students’ learning, how it is opened up and related to students’ experiences and perspectives, and the ways in which students’ interactions with it are supported and shaped. Seeing students’ strengths, understanding their ideas, and attending to and intervening on how students are positioned – each of these critical practices depends on a nuanced and flexible knowing of content.

We have structured this year’s seminar to afford us significant opportunities to investigate how we might take up these issues in English language arts, in mathematics, social studies, and science. We will ask our seminar speakers to speak to these questions, and to share the ways that they work with their candidates to build their capacity to interact with students around content in ways that disrupt persistent patterns of oppression. Join TeachingWorks and our efforts to intertwine the high-leverage practices and challenging academic content and skills in order to disrupt racism and oppression in pursuit of a more just society.

September 13, 2018: Gloria Ladson Billings

Thursday, September 13, 2018
4:00pm - 6:00pm

Gloria Ladson-Billings
Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

September 2018: The Social Funding of Race: The Role of Schooling

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September 24, 2018: Marcelle Haddix

Monday, September 24, 2018
4:00pm - 6:00pm

Marcelle Haddix
Dean’s Associate Professor and chair of the Reading and Language Arts department in the Syracuse University School of Education
Inaugural co-Director of the Lender Center for Social Justice

September 24, 2018: Teaching is the Revolutionary Act

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