Saturday, October 30
3.0 concurrent Sessions
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
3.1 Panel Session
Wyatt Hall, Room 109
Awareness, Access, and Understanding: Gaining Cultural Competence through Multicultural Literature
Moderators:
Andrea Kueter, Librarian, University of Puget Sound
Laura Schick, Librarian, University of Puget Sound
Panelists:
Susan Anderson-Newham, Librarian, Pierce County Library
Terry Beck, Professor, University of Puget Sound
Christine Kline, Dean Emerita of the School of Education, University of Puget Sound
Beth Patin, doctoral candidate, University of Washington
This session will provide an overview of the importance of reading and literacy and focus on how multicultural literature can be used in the K-12 classroom to help enhance understanding and tolerance. In
addition, speakers will address how to deal with potentially harmful stereotypes in the classroom, as well
as discuss the power of images and how the process of visual interpretative analysis can act as a powerful
tool in engaging students in discussion about multiculturalism.
3.2 Roundtable Session
Wyatt Hall, Room 101
Access This! Pedagogies and Politics for Educational Justice
Moderator: Sandra Dahlberg, Professor, University of Houston-Downtown
Panelists:
Theresa Case, Associate Professor, University of Houston-Downtown
Jeffrey Flosi, Associate Professor, University of Houston-Downtown
Chuck Jackson, Assistant Professor, University of Houston-Downtown
Dagmar Scharold, Lecturer, University of Houston-Downtown
We propose a roundtable dialogue about the opportunities and challenges of teaching and learning for
justice in an open-admission, minority-serving university in the nation‟s 4th largest city. The University
of Houston-Downtown (UHD) was founded in 1975 in the wake of the educational initiatives of the Civil
Rights Era, and is today one of the last open-admissions universities in the nation, and the last in Texas.
We will discuss the centrality of race and class in our classrooms, specifically the impact of our curricular
choices on our diverse student population and the dynamic dialogues that ensue. This interdisciplinary
roundtable will address the ways our pedagogical practices are shaped by tensions between individual and
institutional commitments to educational justice and legislative mandates that undermine our mission. We
will discuss curricular initiatives that interrogate the neutrality of received knowledge, the impact of nontraditional instructional delivery systems on student success, as well as practices inspired by radical
pedagogy.
3.3 Presentation Session
McIntyre Hall, Room 103
Closing the Achievement Gap: Tacoma youth lend Their Voices, Vision, and Experiences to
the Conversation
Presenters:
Laurie Fisher Ruiz, Education Director, Peace Community Center
Saturday, October 30
3.0 concurrent Sessions
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
Bill Hanawalt, Executive Director, Peace Community Center
Using our history as a foil for our present situation, students and staff from Peace Community Center‟s
Hilltop Scholars program use their educational experiences to analyze the Tacoma School District‟s
African American Achievement Gap, and offer potential solutions through the use of story, video, spoken
word, round table conversations, acting, music, and dance.
3.4 Panel Session
McIntyre Hall, Room 107
High School Students leading Action for Racial Justice: The Princeton Race Relations
Prize as a Model of Partnership and Student initiated Pedagogy about Race
Chair: Carolyn Weisz, Professor, University of Puget Sound
Panelists:
Anthony Brock, undergraduate student, University of Washington, Tacoma
Ray Corona, undergraduate student, University of Washington, Bothell
Kayla Williams, undergraduate student, University of Washington, Seattle
Matt Grant, Principal, Olympia High School
John Siegler, Princeton Alum, Ridgecrest Capital Partners
The Princeton Race Relations Prize (PRRP) recognizes and supports high school students whose
leadership and activism advances the cause of positive race relations. This panel features the inspiring
work of three recent student winners of the PRRP from Western Washington who will each talk about
their experiences as activists and leaders. Their work includes responses to Neo-Nazi recruitment efforts
in Olympia, outreach work that involves schools, parents, and city government, and a program initiated to
help Latino students support each other to succeed in school and plan for higher education. The panel
also includes presentations by Matt Grant, Principal of Olympia High School, and John Siegler, Chair of
the Western Washington Princeton Prize Committee. Panelists will discuss and illustrate the important
role of student leadership in pedagogy about race, and the value of partnerships between high schools and
institutions of higher education.
3.5 Workshop Session
Rausch Auditorium, McIntyre Hall, Room 003
Salsa con Standards: Afro-latin Song & Dance in the Classroom
Facilitators:
Antonio Davidson-Gómez, Musician/Educator
Marisela Fleites-Lear, Professor, Green River Community College
Using the Arts to center communities of color in standards-based learning – A hands-on workshop
Mr. Antonio Davidson-Gómez is an educator and percussionist focused on a musical dialogue among
cultures. He has studied, performed and recorded in various genres with an emphasis in Afro-Latin,
Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean music. A veteran teacher of California's K-12 classrooms (bilingual
kindergarten & high school social studies, music, and Spanish), Tony designed a high school course on
world music and led student ensembles. He recently wrote curricula for the national touring exhibition,
American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music. Dr. Marisela Fleites-Lear teaches Spanish and Literature
at Green River Community College. Her research and publications examine the construction of images of
Cuban women from the perspectives of literary, gender and cultural studies. She is also a dancer and the
Saturday, October 30
3.0 concurrent Sessions
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
director of "Tacoma Flamenca." She has been teaching Flamenco in Tacoma since 2003 (currently at
Washington Contemporary Ballet).
3.6 Panel Presentation
Collins Memorial Library, McCormick Room, Room 303
Programs that Work in Helping Underrepresented Students Graduate from High School
and Attend College
Facilitator: Laura Tyler, Science Educator and Author of Pasta Genetics
Panelists:
Clarence J. Dancer, Director, Seattle Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA)
Neiri Carrasco, Director, Yakima Valley/Tri-Cities MESA
Lull Mengesha, Seattle MESA Alumnus, The Boeing Company
Kim Bobby, Clinical Associate Professor, Chief Diversity Officer, and Director of Summer
Academic Challenge, University of Puget Sound
This session will highlight programs that work in Washington State by helping underrepresenting minorities attend college declaring STEM majors.
3.7 Panel Presentation
Howarth Hall, Room 203
Questioning the Efficacy of Cultural Competence for institutional Change
Panelists:
Angela Brown, Director of Employment Services, Spokane Public Schools, “Beyond
Rhetoric: From Recruitment to Classroom and Beyond”
Brown‟s model incorporates both a systemic and personal approach toward cultural competency that
allows districts, communities and higher education institutions to impact students before they become
teachers and continue that education well after they are hired. While the efforts along the continuum do
include strategies to recruit teachers of color, the emphasis of this model is truly on fostering and hiring a
highly qualified, culturally responsive staff, regardless of race. Throughout this interactive session,
participants will learn about the three stages of this model: pre-college, college partnership, district level.
Participants will also have the opportunity to utilize some of the tools and activities to understand what is
required to successfully recruit, retain and train a highly qualified and culturally responsive staff.
Da Verne Bell & Leilani Nalua’L Russell, Co-directors, Pathways to Excellence
Educational Leadership, “Intent? Impact?: Cultural Responsiveness & Competence”
This workshop will provide participants with an overview of the essential elements of cultural
competence a working definition of cultural competence and provide tools to help eliminate the
academic achievement gap through increased cultural responsiveness.
3.8 Panel Session
Wyatt Hall, Room 301
What Results Do We Really Want and for Whom?: interrogating the Contexts,
Constructions and Effects of Critical and Multicultural Teaching
Chair: Tamiko Nimura, Assistant Professor, University of Puget Sound
Panelists:
Paul Hartman, doctoral candidate, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Interrogating Normalcy in
the Classroom: New Directions for „Liberatory‟ Pedagogy”
Using my eight grade English classroom in a Chicago Public School as my research site, I
Saturday, October 30
3.0 concurrent Sessions
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
employ a postmodern/feminist/queer lens and set of research methodologies in order to explore
the ways in which the conceptions of ideas like: learning, teaching, emancipation, freedom, and
happiness have been developed by myself and my students. I attempt to draw my students into
the process of interpretation and creativity by using literature and poetry as a vehicle to delve
into societal and personal areas of contention (racism, classism, homophobia, marginalization
etc.) and find ways to explore and bridge gaps between our varying conceptions of these ideas.
My context-specific exploration offers new ways at approaching the act of teaching and thinking
about anti-oppressive pedagogy that may be more authentic and real and that may be applied to
other and broader contexts.
Zachary Casey, doctoral candidate, University of Minnesota, “Who is Multicultural
Education for? The Unintended Consequences of the Demographic Imperative”
The author, a white male teacher educator, discusses how the “demographic imperative,” which refers to
the overwhelming number of white teachers and the ever-increasing number of students of color in PK-12
schools, has resulted in the understanding and conceptualization of multicultural anti-racist education as
being solely for students of color. This emphasis on the demographic imperative as the motivating factor
in multicultural work perpetuates white supremacist thinking, as the “problem/imperative” are students of
color, not white people who have internalized privileged ways of being in a white supremacist society. In
order for the cycle of (multiculturally) under-prepared white teachers to end, we must move beyond the
demographic imperative to focus our efforts in multicultural education on both white people and people
of color.
Yukari Takimoto Amos, Assistant Professor, Central Washington University, “The
Effects of Student Evaluation in a Multicultural Education Class on a Non-Native
Instructor of Color”
This study investigated how a non-native Asian professor who teaches a multicultural education class in
a predominantly White university struggled with student evaluation for her/his tenure and promotion.
The professor‟s autobiographical narrative revealed that her/his multicultural education courses usually
scored significantly lower than the TESL courses and that she/he felt necessary to modify the course
content of the multicultural education courses so that White students would not feel uncomfortable. The
course modification resulted in the higher student evaluation score, but White students did not learn
anything significant to change the current inequality and inequity prevalent in our educational system.
3.9 Panel Session
Thompson Hall, Room 193
Race, Prisons and Education: Cultures of Transformation
Panelists:
Stuart Smithers, University of Puget Sound Mark Cook, Former Black Panther, George Jackson
Brigade, Seattle Defenders Association Gilda Sheppard, Professor, The Evergreen State College
Ed Mead, Former George Jackson Brigade member, Founder of PrisonArt.org Cody Swift,
RiverStyx Foundation
Panelists will discuss race, justice, and the transformation of culture through education, from perspectives
inside and outside the prison industrial complex. Drawing on almost 50 years of combined prison time,
Mark Cook and Ed Mead, former George Jackson Brigade members, will reflect on their attempts to
pursue justice and to transform prison culture through education; Gilda Sheppard and Stuart Smithers will
discuss the pedagogical priorities of prison education as professors and volunteer instructors; and Cody
Saturday, October 30
3.0 concurrent Sessions
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
Swift will present on the community and philanthropic work to transform Washington state prisons into
communities of learning, and to begin shifting the role of prison as a mechanism for mass imprisonment
to a venue for rehabilitation, transformation, and opportunity. Professor Sheppard‟s short documentary
with Monroe Correctional Complex students, “When You Learn, You Don‟t Return,” will be presented
and discussed.
3.10 Workshop Session
Trimble Forum
Embedding Cultural Competency Training in Professional Development and Teaching and
learning, Part I
Facilitator: Eve Bowen, Retired Teacher, Tacoma Public Schools
Panelists:
Doris Sjoquist, Nooksack Valley School District‟s Cultural Competence Leadership Team
Debbi Anderson-Frey, Nooksack Valley School District‟s Cultural Competence Leadership
Team
Vicky Walkinshaw, Nooksack Valley School District‟s Cultural Competence Leadership Team
Hannah Chin-Pratt, Teacher, Lincoln High School
Sandy Austin, Instructor, The Center for Educational Leadership, University of Washington,
Seattle
As the United States' student population demographics continue to change it's imperative that our nation's
children are educated in an environment which embraces who they are, and provides quality instruction
which prepares them to thrive, positively, in this country. As an educator, I'm sure you've asked the
question: How do I meet the instructional needs of all my children? Obviously, there's no silver bullet.
However, there are more effective ways. This two-part presentation will allow our panelists to give an
overview of their efforts to bring greater cultural competency to their districts' administrators, teachers
and staff.
3.11 interactive Workshop Session
Wyatt Hall, Room 313
“It’s like, When you…”: Possibilities and Dangers of Models, Analogies and
Representation in Teaching Science
Facilitators:
Fred Hamel, Associate Professor, University of Puget Sound
Steven Neshyba, Professor, University of Puget Sound
Amy Ryken, Associate Professor, University of Puget Sound
Joyce Tamashiro, Instructor, University of Puget Sound
Scientists often draw on their own experiences, metaphors, and analogies to understand complex
phenomena in everyday terms. Science teachers often adopt a similar approach in teaching. Student
response to representations depends on factors including the student‟s cultural background and identity.
Impacts of a poor representation can include not merely poor insight into the phenomenon at hand, but a
reduced sense of belonging, among others. Participants will discuss and critique “standard” disciplinary
representations of selected science concepts, consider criteria for intentionally-constructed ones, and
brainstorm methods for creating or discovering new ones. We‟ll explore questions such as
· To whom are our representations for scientific concepts best connected?
·
How might I rethink the representations I use?
Saturday, October 30
3.0 concurrent Sessions
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·
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
How might I invite students to share and create representations of their own?
To what extent might we use student representations to rethink our sense of the discipline?
3.12 Panel Session
Murray Boardroom, Wheelock Student Center
Making Partnerships Work: learning from the Justice Construction-Work of
United Community Voices in Tacoma
Chair: Tom Hilyard, Director of Community Services, Pierce County, Washington State
Panelists:
Rev. Arthur C. Banks, President, Tacoma Ministerial Alliance
Rev. Gregory W. Christopher, Chairman, Education Committee TMA
Anthony Clarke, Psychologist
Thomas Dixon, President Emeritus, Tacoma Urban League
Carmetrius Parker, Parent Education Committee Member BC (Black Collective)
Carla Santorno, Deputy Superintendent, Tacoma Public Schools
Rev. Lorraine Sylvester, Vice President of the Board of Directors of Oasis of Hope Foundation
Left to their own devices our public schools are failing black children. The Harvard Family Research
Project boldly proclaims schools cannot do it alone. Children need multiple opportunities to learn and
grow-at home, in school, and in the community. Complementary learning is the idea that a systemic
approach-which intentionally integrates both school and nonschool supports can better ensure that all
children have the skills they need to succeed. Unified Community Voices agrees with the lessons learned
by Harvard and has undertaken the mission of making real in Tacoma the kind of partnership demanded
by that knowledge. This roundtable engagement will address the issues raised in complementary learning,
the challenges evidenced in partnering with school districts, and the systemic interventions essential to the
success of our students.