Opening Ceremony
March 22nd 2024, 9:00 – 9:30 am EST, OISE Auditorium
OISE Dean’s Address
Dr. Erica Walker is Dean and Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. An award-winning former public high school mathematics teacher from Atlanta, Georgia, she earned her doctorate in education from Harvard University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural factors as well as educational policies and practices that facilitate mathematics engagement, learning, and performance, especially for underserved students. Recognized as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and by the National Association of Mathematicians and the Association for Women in Mathematics for her scholarship, leadership, and practice, she collaborates with teachers, schools, districts, organizations, and media outlets to promote mathematics excellence and equity for young people.
Traditional Haudenosaunee Opening/Thanksgiving Address
Iehnhotonkwas Bonnie Jane Maracle, Wolf Clan, Mohawk Nation at Tyendinaga Territory, holds a B.A. in Indigenous Studies from Trent University, a B.Ed. & M.Ed. from Queen’s University, and is a Ph.D. Candidate, Indigenous Studies, at Trent University. Bonnie is a Traditional Teacher in Residence at First Nations House.
something no one owns
Poetry Performance by Kai Butterfield
In our efforts to collaborate despite and because of difference, we often reproduce relational dynamics that are marked by possession and the collapsing of complex identities. “something no one owns” considers the stakes of refusing oppressive relational dynamics as we work in and beyond the university. It also calls us to consider the liberatory possibilities that can emerge from our work to develop and enact critical, expansive forms of belonging.
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Kai Butterfield is an artist, Ontario Certified Teacher, and PhD student in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto). They live intentionally as a reverberation of their Guyanese, Grenadian, and Bermudian ancestors’ will, which continues to stretch across time and space.
Through their academic and artistic work, Butterfield critically examines Eurowestern understandings of the human to imagine life beyond destructive ways of being. Their doctoral research is focused on theorizing an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist approach to restorative justice that does not reproduce anti-Black notions of the human. Similarly, Butterfield uses poetry to explore the ways that Black women and queer people refuse the systems that seek their death, opening possibilities for Black liberation.