Teaching for Inclusion, Equity and Social Justice Symposium
October 25, 2011
Elementary ITE consecutive program held their Teaching for Inclusion, Equity and Social Justice Symposium on Tuesday, October 25, 2011. The day is designed as a culminating event for the first 7 weeks of the program, to bring together all Elementary Options in a shared experience, to connect to our field partners, and to link selected equity theories and frameworks to practical hands-on experiences as a final preparation to teach for inclusion, equity and social justice during practicum.
The goals of the day were to:
- Provide hands-on experiences for teacher candidates to develop strategies and approaches that they can apply in practicum
- Identify and counter deficit orientations/develop strategies to use students' strengths as instruction starting points
- Build on students' funds of knowledge/develop approaches that include student voices and the concept of the co-construction of knowledge
- Learn how to reshape prescribed curriculum to be responsive and relevant to students
- Encourage relationships between schools and communities
- Extend and deepen critical literacy skills
- Engage students in social justice work
- Make explicit the power dynamics of mainstream society/recognizing dominant culture in school curriculum
- Share power in the classroom
- Make explicit the philosophical and theoretical bases from which a teacher works, and which guide the curriculum decisions she/he makes.
Many thanks to Professor Kathleen Gallagher, Academic Director for the Centre for Urban Schooling and Canada Research Chair in Theatre, Youth, and Research in Urban Schools, who provided the keynote address: Mining Stories for Equity, elementary option coordinators, Serge Parravano and Julia Arnold, who co-chaired the event, and to all presenters and instructors who share their insights, organization, and questions about this important work.