Next week, educators and allies are invited to the Seattle Department of Education & Early Learning’s 2021 Spring Institute on Children, Race, and Racism: Elevating the Brilliance of Black Boys. This annual conference brings together Seattle-area educators to engage in professional development, learning, and dialogue on the critical topic of children, race, and racism. The event will provide a learning space where attendees can center on the strengths and brilliance of Black and Brown children and shift away from deficit-based narratives.
The foundation for the Children, Race, and Racism Institute was laid by a group of educators in 1990, and 30 years later, the work continues. Over the past five years, this event has covered important areas of focus such as trauma, implicit bias, social-emotional learning, and the intersection of language, race, and culture.
Throughout the 3-day conference, attendees will hear from national and local speakers who will elevate research, best practice, and policy that supports educators in developing their culturally responsive and anti-racist teaching practices. Attendees will have opportunities to listen, learn, and engage in self-reflection and dialogue centered around the best strategies for uplifting Black boy brilliance while also deepening their own culturally responsive lens.
The first day of the conference will be kicked off by Dr. Eddie Moore Jr., nationally recognized speaker and author of The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys. His keynote, “The Black Boy Question: Can White (Women) Educators Build #BlackGenius & Black Excellence?” will challenge educators to engage in concentrated, focused inquiry around relationships with Black male students and the impact on those relationships related to issues of white supremacy, white privilege, race, and racism. Following this keynote, there will be several morning workshops to choose from (details in link below), and Dr. Moore will close out the day with a workshop titled America is Changing: #StayWokeEducators. This session will challenge participants to examine their own biases, behaviors and belief systems and empower them to build cultural competence and take action against hatred, bigotry, privilege and oppression.
On day two, the event will welcome Dr. Debra Ren-Etta Sullivan, former President of the Seattle Black Child Development Institute (BCDI) and author of multiple published works, including Cultivating the Genius of Black Children. Her keynote will center on the event’s theme of Elevating the Brilliance of Black Boys, highlighting the creativity, curiosity, and genius of Black boys. Attendees will have another opportunity to select from four workshops, and the day will end with an afternoon workshop led by Dr. Sullivan on Black Cultural Capital and the Black Community. Dr. Sullivan will discuss how every Black child has cultural capital and arrives at school with social assets that increase success. In this workshop, educators will engage in a conversation on how to develop strategies that build on that capital and promote strong asset-based, strengths-based practices that support Black learners.
The conference will close out on Friday, June 4, with a youth panel from the African American Male Achievement Student Leadership Council of Seattle Public Schools and a keynote from Chris Chatmon, CEO and Co-Founder of Kingmakers of Oakland (KOO), an award-winning nonprofit that supports school districts around the country to improve the educational and life outcomes of Black boys. His keynote, We Dare Say Love, takes up the critically important issue of what it means to educate Black male students in a school district. He will elevate the notion that “those who care deeply for Black children recognize that insisting on love anyhow is of the first order.”
Throughout the event, educators will receive tools and strategies to stop marginalizing, stop microaggressions, stop over-policing, stop oppressing, stop the bias, stop suspending and expelling, stop over-disciplining, stop over-correcting, and stop stamping out Black boy brilliance and joy. The event will honor the cultural knowledge of Black families in raising and teaching their children and define children by their aspirations and skills and not their challenges.
This event will be co-hosted by Dwane Chappelle, Director of the Seattle Department of Education & Early Learning, and Dr. William White, Director of My Brother’s Teacher at the University of Washington.
This is an event you do not want to miss!
Dates:Wednesday, June 2 – Friday, June 4, 2021
Audience: Birth through secondary educators, families, and allies
Location: Virtual! Register to learn more.
Cost: FREE Schedule, details, and registration available here: education.seattle.gov/springinstitute
