Kids, Books & Anti-Racism Series 2024
Closing the Opportunity Gap: Promoting Access & Equity through Literacy
Deepen your understanding of how to cultivate anti-bias and anti-racist practices in classrooms and schools. Learn how to facilitate rich, inclusive discussions with your students that will teach them to be critical readers, honor their lived experiences and ensure each child grows up literate in our educational system.
These nationally known speakers will challenge your thinking, inspire you and your students to take action, and equip you with the literature, language, and tools so you can make a difference in your school, community, and the world.
- Classroom Teachers, Interventionists & Specialists
- Literacy Coaches & Teacher Leaders
- District & School Leaders
- Complete Series ($499)
- January 17 with Carla España ($199)
- March 10 with Jennifer Orr ($199)
- May 6 with Vivian Vasquez ($199)
- Discounts available for groups, Lesley students and alumni! Email CRRLC@lesley.edu to inquire.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Read, Laugh, and Learn Together: Integrating Diverse Texts to Support Multilingual Learners in Your School with Carla España
How can you integrate content, language, and support students in their analysis of the world and life experiences through the use of children’s books? Learn more about Carla España’s critical bilingual literacies framework from her co-authored text, En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students. Carla will show sample lessons and unit designs that include poetry, language study, and action plans to design culturally and linguistically sustaining instruction for all children. Carla will also show examples of text collections that include children’s books at different levels for students and educators, helping all of us deepen our knowledge of topics such as identity; place and change, intergenerational connections; migration and immigration; community and connections that sustain me; and changemakers.
This full-day workshop will encourage educators in their journey of advocacy for diverse texts and those voices that are most marginalized in society. Join us to read together, laugh together, and develop your own critical consciousness as you learn to plan ways to use diverse texts in your teaching.
Participants will:
- Examine the world through a lens that shows how literacy, language, and power intersect
- Consider the impact of harmful language hierarchies
- Celebrate children’s dynamic use of language, or translanguaging, the ability to think in multiple languages simultaneously and use their home language as a vehicle to learn academic English.
- Understand a critical bilingual literacies approach to designing instruction for all learners in both English speaking and bilingual classrooms
- Analyze translanguaging collections of children’s books on a variety of topics
- Design a “Poetry as Teaching, Healing, and Resistance” shared reading using poetry
- Design a language study for a children’s book
Registered participants will receive a copy of the professional text, En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Teachers (co-written by Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera).
This full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through June 30 to access this recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session. Due to the workshop’s interactive structure, we highly recommend that registrants participate live on the day of the event.
Attendees will earn 6 professional development hours for their participation.
For details and pricing for this workshop with Carla España, click here.
Friday, March 8, 2024
How to Engage Your Students in Meaningful Race Conversations with Jennifer Orr
Even our youngest learners have questions about race, both historically and in their current lives. As educators we need to be prepared and capable to facilitate conversations around these questions in our classrooms. In today’s political climate that task may feel even more challenging and the fact that we will make mistakes can feel daunting. That does not make this work less important.
Join Jennifer to learn strategies you can employ to set yourself and your students up for success with these conversations and gain pedagogical understandings that can help you plan and navigate challenging conversations well.
Participants will:
- Explore strategies for building community and trust before engaging in challenging conversations
- Learn about teaching moves and rationales that support facilitating challenging conversations in your classroom
- Identify children’s books that can prompt and support race conversations
Registered participants will receive a copy of the professional text, We’re Gonna Keep On Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom (co-written by Jennifer Orr and Matthew Kay).
This full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through June 30 to access this recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session. Due to the workshop’s interactive structure, we highly recommend that registrants participate live on the day of the event.
Attendees will earn 6 professional development hours for their participation.
For details and pricing for this workshop with Jennifer Orr, click here.
Monday, May 6, 2024
Centering What Matters to Children: How to Connect Your Teaching to Your Students’ Passions and Inquiry Questions with Vivian Vasquez
Critical engagement that centers on matters of importance to children creates a space for them to systematically investigate questions or tensions about the world. This kind of work is generative, culturally sustaining, and allows for the development of new understandings, new questions, and issues of importance that make a difference in the lives of children and those around them. A critical comprehension framework will be shared that creates a space for teachers to connect their teaching to their students’ passions and inquiry questions.
Participants will:
- Learn how to use children’s books and other everyday texts such as print ads and food packaging that children encounter daily from a critical literacy perspective.
- Develop an understanding for building critical curriculum using the inquiry questions of children.
- Explore and experience what it means to read with and against text.
- Experience working with children’s books using the critical comprehension framework.
- Learn how to help children to read with a critical stance, as well as identify and examine problems.
- Understand how to use literacy to teach children to become more socially conscious, and work for social action to make a difference in their lives, the community, and the world around them.
Registered participants will receive a copy of the professional text, Critical Comprehension: Lessons for Guiding Students to Deeper Meaning (co-written with Vivian Vasquez, Katie Kelly and Lester Laminack).
This full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through June 30 to access this recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session. Due to the workshop’s interactive structure, we highly recommend that registrants participate live on the day of the event.
Attendees will earn 6 professional development hours for their participation.
For details and pricing for this workshop with Vivian Vasquez, click here.
Cancellation Deadline & Refund Policies
For a registrant who purchased the Complete Bundle and would like to cancel their registration, the last day to get a full refund is January 3, 2024. A cancellation must be submitted in writing.
For a registrant who purchased individual sessions and would like to cancel their registration, the last day to get a full refund for Carla España’s session is January 3, 2024, Jennifer Orr’s session is February 23, 2024, and Vivian Vasquez’s session is April 22, 2024. A cancellation must be submitted in writing.
Email CRRLC@lesley.edu to cancel or request a substitution. Regardless of conditions, if the event is held but you cannot attend, you will be billed for the full amount.
Registration Deadline
We highly recommend registering at least five business days before the event to allow the minimum amount of time to ship the professional texts.
Independent Learning Policy & Recordings
Each full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through June 30 to access a recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session. Due to the workshop’s interactive structure, we highly recommend that registrants participate live on the day of the event.
The registrant agrees to access the live sessions and/or recordings for the purpose of independent learning. Access to the live sessions and/or recordings is restricted to the registrant and may not be accessed in a group setting.
Requirements for Participation
In order to receive your certificate of attendance, you will be asked to complete an electronic one-page insight form. We will provide more information about this process after each session. Please allow our team 2-3 weeks to process your certificate.
Share a flyer about the series with your colleagues!
Early Literacy Success: Building Language, Sounds, and Print Knowledge in PreK
Children in PreK come to school with many different experiences with language, sounds, and print. This two-day workshop will bring to life what very young learners need to know and understand about letters, sounds, and words and how you can support their learning by building on what they already understand.
Early Literacy Success: Building Language, Sounds, and Print Knowledge in PreK (Webinar)
This session will focus on how to provide rich, engaging experiences with language, sounds, and print in the PreK classroom.
Quick Tips for Test Prep: Supporting Your Students for Success!
Are you working to support your students to excel on standardized tests? In this 2-day training, learn how to deepen students’ understanding of the demands of standardized tests so they can respond confidently and successfully!