REGISTRATION NOW CLOSED!!!!! Click here to register for Reimagining Education for Youth In and Beyond the Classroom: A Workshop for Critical Educators
FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2014
Opening Reception
University YMCA, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 pm
Students from Urbana High School share their experiences with Youth Participatory Action Research, highlighting findings from their exploration of institutionalized racism in their school. We will welcome our visiting scholars, Drs. Smitherman, Zentella, Alim, and Kirkland. Some of the visiting scholars' books will be available for purchase from the Illini Union Bookstore.
University YMCA, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 pm
Students from Urbana High School share their experiences with Youth Participatory Action Research, highlighting findings from their exploration of institutionalized racism in their school. We will welcome our visiting scholars, Drs. Smitherman, Zentella, Alim, and Kirkland. Some of the visiting scholars' books will be available for purchase from the Illini Union Bookstore.
SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2014
Workshop
University YMCA, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In this all-day workshop, participants will have opportunities to engage with the visiting scholars and with other participants in both interactive and lecture-style sessions.
Registration: 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.
Opening Remarks: 9:00 a.m. to 9:50 a.m.
Workshop Session 1: 10:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m.
Lunch and Keynote Panel: 12:00 p.m. to 1:50 p.m.
Workshop Session 2: 2:00 p.m. to 3:50 p.m.
Reflection: 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Workshop
University YMCA, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In this all-day workshop, participants will have opportunities to engage with the visiting scholars and with other participants in both interactive and lecture-style sessions.
Registration: 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.
- Lobby, Coffee & pastries for breakfast
Opening Remarks: 9:00 a.m. to 9:50 a.m.
- Latzer Hall, welcoming remarks from Dr. Anne Haas Dyson and introduction of the visiting scholars.
Workshop Session 1: 10:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m.
- “Understanding Language Attitudes and Myths” (or “The Miseducation of the Negro–And You too”*)
- Dr. Geneva Smitherman, Murphy Gallery
- The workshop focuses on attitudes and myths about language and language varieties, with an emphasis on attitudes and myths about African American Language (AAL, my preferred term for the speech of U.S. slave descendants. Other names include African American English, Black English, Ebonics, Black Talk, Negro Dialect, Negro English, Black Language, African American Vernacular English, Nonstandard Negro English, and Africanized English). Workshop activities include a 10-item Black Language test, excerpts from Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black, and viewing and discussion of excerpts from the video documentary, American Tongues, which showcases Americans’ attitudes about and reactions to the speech of fellow Americans. The goal of the workshop is two-fold: 1)to heighten participants’ awareness of the social basis of language attitudes (not only those of others but also their own); and 2)to provide participants with facts about language and information from sociolinguistic research so they can counter negative language attitudes and myths and stereotypes about language that they themselves may have and those they encounter in their social worlds.
- Building on Strengths: Expanding Latin@ Students' Language and Literacy Skills
- Dr. Ana Celia Zentella, Wahl Room
- To understand the strengths that Latin@ students bring to class and the methodologies that may help bridge the gap between their communities' ways of speaking and using language-- and the school's academic demands.
- Black Language and Hip Hop Culture in White Public Space
- Dr. H. Samy Alim, Room K1 & K2
- Searching for Success: Critical Reflections on the Education of Young Black Men
- Dr. David E. Kirkland, Room K3 & K4
- This presentation is based on a decade of research aimed at understanding the complexities of Black male social life and the myriad forces affecting their learning across school disciplines. The goal of the presentation is to raise awareness to the effects of educational injustice in the lives of Black males in order to find ways to intervene and interrupt cycles of miseducation. What are the forces at play (e.g., gangs, peer pressure, poverty) competing for Black male youth attention? How might cycles of inequity influence how, why, and what Black males learn within the disciplines and beyond? How might educators disrupt the cycles of inequity so that Black males might become empowered to transform their communities, their lives, their educational destinies? To answer these questions, this presentation is organized around three core experiences. The first experience characterizes real world events, while becoming the basis for reflective dialogue. Hence, following this dialogue, participants will be presented empirical data and a set of recommendations as to what works when educating Black males. The presentation will conclude extending ideas introduced in the first two parts of the discussion. The presentation will also attempt to draw connections from parts 1 and 2 to detail concrete strategies for creating optimal conditions for successfully educating Black males (from a literacies perspective) in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Lunch and Keynote Panel: 12:00 p.m. to 1:50 p.m.
- Latzer Hall
- Panelists, Drs. Smitherman, Zentella, Dyson, Alim, & Kirkland
- Moderator, Kyle Mays
Workshop Session 2: 2:00 p.m. to 3:50 p.m.
- “Understanding Language Attitudes and Myths” (or “The Miseducation of the Negro–And You too”*)
- Dr. Geneva Smitherman, Murphy Gallery
- The workshop focuses on attitudes and myths about language and language varieties, with an emphasis on attitudes and myths about African American Language (AAL, my preferred term for the speech of U.S. slave descendants. Other names include African American English, Black English, Ebonics, Black Talk, Negro Dialect, Negro English, Black Language, African American Vernacular English, Nonstandard Negro English, and Africanized English). Workshop activities include a 10-item Black Language test, excerpts from Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black, and viewing and discussion of excerpts from the video documentary, American Tongues, which showcases Americans’ attitudes about and reactions to the speech of fellow Americans. The goal of the workshop is two-fold: 1)to heighten participants’ awareness of the social basis of language attitudes (not only those of others but also their own); and 2)to provide participants with facts about language and information from sociolinguistic research so they can counter negative language attitudes and myths and stereotypes about language that they themselves may have and those they encounter in their social worlds.
- Building on Strengths: Expanding Latin@ Students' Language and Literacy Skills
- Dr. Ana Celia Zentella, Wahl Room
- To understand the strengths that Latin@ students bring to class and the methodologies that may help bridge the gap between their communities' ways of speaking and using language-- and the school's academic demands.
- Black Language and Hip Hop Culture in White Public Space
- Dr. H. Samy Alim, Room K1 & K2
- Language and Liberation
- Dr. David E. Kirkland, Room K3 & K4
- This workshop examines the politics of language, exploring the power of the spoken and written word, always articulated in dialect, to construct our identities and unleash our powerful voices. Participants will engage in two interactive activities to explore, experientially, the political role that language plays in teaching, learning, and beyond. In this way, language plays an important role in both education and the arts. A contested site, language is the place where youth struggle with words, theirs and others, to cultivate visions of justice and liberation. The workshop will suggest that, in language, youth take on new meaning beginning with a voice and verb, where words when spoken have the power to transform the world inside-out.
Reflection: 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
- Latzer Hall, small group discussions
- Faculty Facilitators: Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown (EPOL, UIUC), Dr. Georgia Garcia (CI, UIUC), Dr. Rebecca Ginsburg (EPOL, UIUC), Dr. Sandra Osorio (CI, Illinois State University), Dr. Catherine Prendergast (English, UIUC), Dr. Paul Prior (English, UIUC), Anjale Welton (EPOL, UIUC)