Title: Public schools as a site in the struggle for authentic democracy
Length: 1 hour
Description:
Is it reasonable to expect that the extraordinary mass of suffering produced by our current political and economic regime could give rise to a movement capable of stopping measures that are trying to prevent our survival?
I think we can. This workshop will explore the impossible. This workshop is a call to educators and communities everywhere to see educational “reforms,” such as zero tolerance policies, privatization, school pushout, and increases in testing not as problems as much as symptoms of a much broader set of issues centered around the gulf between the regime of the political—everything that concerns modes of power and the realm of politics—the multiple ways in which human beings question established power, transform institutions, and reject ‘‘all authority that would fail to render an account and provide reasons . . . for the validity of its pronouncements.’’
Together we will envision what it means to survive, and how Audre Lorde's words “we were never meant to survive” manifests itself in the school system and in our definition of citizenship. From there, we will explore the question above, looking specifically at the role of public schools and communities in doing so, through tools such as relational organizing and an intersectional approach. With these we will begin to investigate how we can move the multitude and the role that schools can play as a new location of struggle, as a public location that can produce the resources necessary to create democracy. This workshop is about possibilities that we must undertake as educators, including making politics more pedagogical and seeing schools and the pedagogical as a permanent feature of politics.
Central to my thesis work is the work of black feminists, including June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Their theories alongside that of Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, Michael Hardt, and Henry Giroux, shape this vision and critical theory of survival that I present.
Title: A Pedagogy of Survival and the Ethics of Caring
Length: 1.5 hours
Description:
Critical pedagogist, Henry Giroux says: “Market pressures work in society to undermine the social structures and public spaces which are capable of raising questions about how particular groups are being abstracted from the languages of justice, reciprocity, and compassion, and how the institutional and collective structures that once protected such groups are also being privatized, displaced, and defined almost entirely through the logic of the market.” Much of my thesis was about this collapse of public discourse during the rise of neoliberalism, and the resulting importance of rethinking the meaning of terms that we take for granted- terms which are embedded into our thinking patterns, which we passively accept their changing definitions, even when to the detriment of others. Our language naturally evolves, but as public discourse is being limited, the evolution of terms can be deadly for some; In the words of Audre Lorde, “We were never meant to survive.”
This interactive workshop will look at one such term that is vital to our current world and at the center of many political shifts: caring. What does it mean to care? Who can care? How do we define family and community? How is care being defined in shared thought, laws, school policies, and state constitutions? We will examine what media has tagged as a “zombie apocalypse,” ICE and the foster care system, the criminalization of single black mothers, constitutional amendments defining marriage, and other recent events impacting our own lives to begin answering these questions, as we redefine care.
Through our own redefinition, we will also reveal how this type of democratic process around language is critical for our survival.
Title: Audre Lorde's “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”: A Discussion
Length: 1 hour/could be during a meal
Description:
Please read The Uses of Anger by Audre Lorde (in the book Sister Outsider) before attending this workshop. As you read, mark any passages that resonate or trigger you. Email <hkhardin@gmail.com> or find me at residency for a copy. Also consider listening to this podcast:
This work has been central to my work as an educator, community organizer, and as a woman experiencing anger. It discusses the power of anger, giving us a place in which we can clarify what our anger has to teach us about institutions and about ourselves. Lorde emphasizes that we must not fear anger, rather it can be a tool of clarity as “Anger is loaded with information and energy.” So, how can we use the insight of our anger to create tangible action steps towards the schools and world we deserve? Let's talk. This will be a space simply to jointly discuss this work and its relationship to our lives.
Background about the essay, from my friend, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs: “This essay was the keynote address at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in 1981. As such Lorde’s clarity about anger that she directs specifically towards the participants in that space, speak directly to some of the contradictions of academic feminism and organized mainstream feminism. It is important to remember that only a few years earlier in 1977 Barbara Smith, sister-comrade and mentee of Lorde had felt the need to distinguish feminism from the racist “female self-aggrandizement” that she noticed going on in that space. This context is important, because sometimes our rage is most ignited by the harmful and ignorant actions by those whom we believe should know better. Self-proclaimed feminists, gathering in an inaccessible elitist format to ostensibly “respond to racism” is just one example of this.”
Title: The Teacher-Bashing Movement: Will free, public education for all survive?
Length: 1.5 hours
Description:
All of us, as educators, have reason to be concerned with the recent attack on our profession seen through a loss of job security, actions to limit teacher unions, the de-professionalizing of teaching, or simply through the message that teaching is an easy and overpaid job. In recent years media and the government have dangerously vilified teachers: Waiting for Superman simplifies the education struggle to bad teachers and teacher unions, with no critical look at race or class; The same broadcasters that discussed how repealing the Bush tax cuts for those making above $250,000 would put people in poverty, later discussed how the $76,000 average Wisconsin teachers make in salary and benefits is part of our budget problem and should be cut; Even Obama cheered when every teacher at a “failing” high school in Rhode Island were fired and praised similar moves in Chicago and New Orleans, his attitude reflected in his Race to the Top program- a program which links teacher pay to test scores, yet never considers the relationship between race and poverty to test scores. Simply attacking teachers isn’t reform.
This session will try to dismantle the argument for charter schools as the only option and uncover why teacher bashing is being used as a political approach. It will also look at the history of the school choice movement, and will examine how current legislation and education policies are framed. We’ll end with a large group discussion of unanswered questions raised by policies, this workshop, as well as the concurrent educational issues conference. While this session will look at the implications of the charter school movement, it is not an attack on every charter school (and I hope supporters will join us is in this workshop). Rather, this session will embrace a critical examination and movement of solidarity against “any large-scale strategy that promotes charter expansion at the expense of system-wide improvement and equity for all schools is a plan for privatization not reform.”
Title: Love is Lifeforce: Rigor as an essential component of the arts
Length: 1.5 hours
Description:
Using works of June Jordan (a poet, activist, educator, essayist, and Black feminist), along with thoughts of others including John Dewey and bell hooks, come explore how the arts demand rigor. We will look at the ground rules of June Jordan's "Poetry for the People" project and parts of her essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. Through dialogue, reading, and movement we will begin to define what rigor looks like in the arts and why it is essential.
Title: Occupying Education or Transforming Space?: The Teacher as an Activist
Length: 1.5 hours
Description:
Regardless of your relationship or attitude towards the Occupy movement, it cannot be denied that its presence has created important critical conversations. How can we apply these conversations, critiques, and actions to what our work as educators looks like? How can we use these lessons to transform our educational system into one that is accountable to all students?
This interactive workshop, inspired by my amazing comrade and educator Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, will lead participants through a small group process to create something new: deciding on, designing, implementing, and evaluating a site-specific direct action in relation to education. Using the resources of urgency, our communities, and each other, let's create and make decisions together around the future of our educational system, focusing on the communities we are accountable to and what it means to transform space.