People of Color Conference (POCC)

The POCC conference this year was so valuable and there were SO many sessions to choose from every day. I chose to attend “Educating to Empower—Returning to Ancestral Practices of Passing Down Knowledge," “Ethical Integration of Indigenous Voices in Anti-Bias Classrooms," “The Role of the Race-Conscious Educator in Combating Oppression," and “Education for Liberation- Facilitating Transformation in the Classroom and Beyond.” Some of the highlights and biggest takeaways for me from these workshops included:

• Seeing “liberatory facilitation” modeled by a very skilled facilitator with a background in political education/community organizing. Applying principles to feelings I’ve had about what good facilitation looks like and walking away with some tangible next steps about how to incorporate them into my classes through norms creation, how I frame my role as the facilitator and facilitation techniques. - Principles we talked about included: Be an active facilitator: respond, affirm, synthesize. Be explicit about race, class and gender - we can’t address a problem without naming it explicitly. Make space for feelings while continuing to be aware of power dynamics in the room.
• The aim of education is radical transformation
• The value of moving away from hierarchical models of teaching and learning towards centering students inherent wisdom, especially in the kinds of topics we cover in Wellness and Belonging. Teachers are students and students are teachers.
• Reflecting on how to incorporate pre-colonial ways of learning and teaching, like storytelling, into my classes. By far the most meaningful part of the conference was hearing from the CPS students who attended about what landed most for them. Those conversations have left me thinking a lot about how to foster an environment where conflict/disagreement can be generative, people feel able to connect across different and disagreement, and building skills for communication around this in myself to share back with students.