Kids, Books & Anti-Racism Series: Summer Literacy Institute with Kass & Cornelius Minor
Reaching All Learners: Taking Action for Equity
In this four-day Summer Literacy Institute, re-energize your teaching by taking an in-depth look at how reading identity intersects with racial, gender, and class identity.
Join us to learn how to strengthen your school and classroom communities to shift learning cultures and foster students’ agency and reading growth.
Registration for this event has closed.
- Classroom Teachers, Interventionists & Specialists
- Literacy Coaches & Teacher Leaders
- District & School Leaders
- Additional fees for graduate credit
- Group discounts available! Email CRRLC@lesley.edu to inquire.
Reaching All Learners: Taking Action for Equity with Kass & Cornelius Minor
As educators, we often wonder how to be responsive to students when their needs, communities, backgrounds, and experiences are different from ours. We strive to provide reading and writing opportunities for all children that are engaging and responsive to them. But too often, current reading instruction leaves too many with negative reading identities, complicating the work even further. We know that reading does not happen in isolation. However, because so many people treat it this way, many kids are left out of a positive culture of reading that will contribute to their success.
Participants will leave this institute with concrete ways to think about how to connect reading to students’ lives, communities, and aspirations. We will examine reading identity and how it intersects with racial, gender, and class identity. Throughout the institute, participants will learn how to effectively respond to the students in front of them through exploring student identity; observing students; and conducting authentic assessment. We will consider how powerful reading experiences are the means for both student reading growth and for building and shifting powerful learning communities.
The institute will be led by The Minor Collective, a community-based movement designed to foster sustainable change in schools, established by Kass Minor, an inclusive educator, and Cornelius Minor, literacy leader and author of We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be. Lesley University faculty will also guide you in your thinking around these topics.
Topics
- Developing student identity
- The role of community in growing positive identities and agency in our students
- Facilitating authentic learning opportunities
- Building and shifting school culture
- Protocols for discourse and problem-solving
- Designing inquiry projects that foster student reading growth and strengthen the classroom and school community
Participants registered for noncredit will receive a copy of the professional text, Being the Change: Lessons and 
Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara Ahmed.
You’ll earn 24 professional development hours in this institute. There is also an option to complete this institute for graduate credits (2 or 3 credits). Please check the “Registration Policies & Graduate Credit Option” tab for more details.
Kass Minor
Kass Minor is an inclusive educator and community organizer who is deeply involved in local, inquiry-based teacher research and school community development. Alongside partnerships with the University of Chicago, Teachers College Inclusive Classrooms Project and the New York City Department of Education, since 2004, she has worked as a teacher, staff developer, adjunct professor, speaker, and documentarian. Along with her partner and husband, Cornelius Minor, she established The Minor Collective LLC, a community-based movement designed to foster sustainable change in schools, redefining what it means to develop affirming, welcoming school culture and instructional practice through the lens of racial justice, decolonization, and liberation. Her work has recently been featured in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, KQED Mindshift, Parents Magazine, Teaching Tolerance Magazine, and NY Times Serial Podcast Nice White Parents. For more on Kass’s work and
publications, visit kassandcorn.com.
Cornelius Minor
Cornelius Minor is a Brooklyn-based educator. He works with teachers, school leaders, and leaders of community-based organizations to support equitable literacy reform in cities (and sometimes villages) across the globe. His latest book, We Got This, explores how the work of creating more equitable school spaces is embedded in our everyday choices — specifically in the choice to really listen to kids. He has been featured in Education Week, Brooklyn Magazine, and Teaching Tolerance Magazine. He has partnered with The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, The New York City Department of Education, The International Literacy Association, Scholastic, and Lesley University’s Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative. Out of Print, a documentary featuring Cornelius made its way around the film festival circuit, and he has been a featured speaker at conferences all over the world. Most recently, along with his partner and wife, Kass Minor, he has established The Minor Collective, a community-based movement designed to foster sustainable change in schools. Whether working with educators and kids in Los Angeles, Seattle, or New York City, Cornelius uses his love for technology, hip-hop, and social media to bring communities together. As a teacher, Cornelius draws not only on his years teaching middle school in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but also on time spent skateboarding, shooting hoops, and working with young people.
Kids, Books & Anti-Racism Series
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Reading to Make a Difference: Using Literature to Help Students Speak Freely, Think Deeply, and Take Action with Lester Laminack
This event has passed.
Friday, April 9, 2021
Book Clubs for a Better World: Reimagining Reading Instruction as Liberatory Spaces with Sonja Cherry-Paul
This event has passed.
July 12 – 15, 2021 (Summer Literacy Institute)
Reaching All Learners: Taking Action for Equity with Kass & Cornelius Minor
This event has passed.
Thank You To Our Sponsors
Gold Sponsor
Edith Michelson Milender, Lesley Class of 1958
Silver Sponsor
Terri Ziegler-Lowell, Lesley Class of 1994
Diversity Scholarship Sponsors
Sarah Bishins Family
Susan Farris Family
Gary Nelson, Publishers Representative
Registration Deadline
Registration for this workshop has closed. If you are interested in registering, email us at CRRLC@lesley.edu by 9:00am ET on Friday, July 9, 2021 and we may be able to accommodate.
Independent Learning Policy & Recordings
This institute will not be recorded. The registrant agrees to access the live session for the purpose of independent learning. Access to the live session is restricted to the registrant and may not be accessed in a group setting.
Certificates of Attendance
Only registered participants will receive a certificate of attendance for their participation by completing an insight form, which will be provided to participants at the end of the event. Please allow our team at least 1 week to process your certificate.
Graduate Credit Option
Both course sections can be taken for either 2 or 3 credits.
To register for graduate credit, there are two registration and payment processes:
- Register through the link found on this page. You’ll be prompted to pay the fee of $75 for the two required professional texts.
- Email CRRLC@lesley.edu for details about how to complete the second registration and payment process.
Graduate Credit Costs
- 2 graduate credit option: $1,340 ($650/credit* + $40 registration fee), plus cost of required texts ($75)
- 3 graduate credit option: $1,990 ($650/credit* + $40 registration fee), plus cost of required texts ($75)
- Tuition discounts
*Fees subject to change
Cancellation Deadline & Refund Policies
Non-credit
You must cancel in writing two weeks before the start of the event to get a refund, minus a $50 processing fee. Email CRRLC@lesley.edu to cancel. If you are unable to attend, you may send a substitute at any time. Regardless of conditions, if the event is held but you cannot attend, you will be billed for the full amount.
Graduate credit
Review the university’s cancellation and refund policies for credit-bearing courses.
Required Texts
Professional texts will be shipped to the designated address you provided upon registration after a purchase order or payment is processed.
If you’re taking this institute for noncredit, you will receive Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara Ahmed.
If you’re registering for graduate credit, you will receive the following required professional texts:
- Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara Ahmed
- Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad
Kids, Books & Anti-Racism Series
“The training last year at the Summer Institute was easily the most impactful professional learning of my 13-year teaching career…this training transformed my teaching. I am even more hopeful that this will transform our school. Other teachers are implementing the work from last summer, and our school is sending a different set of teachers this summer to learn, grow, and be inspired.”
Kristina Becker, Primary Teacher, Council Bluffs, Iowa