February has been the Month of Conferences

The past couple of weekends have entailed participating in conferences. Two weekends ago, I went to New Haven to attend the Black Solidarity Conference. Taking place over the span of three days, the Black Solidarity Conference provides undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to fellowship and discuss important issues within the Black community. The theme of this year's BSC was "From the Pulpits to the Polls: Ushering in a New Era of Activism." As you can infer, the focus for the conference this year was education and religion as mechanisms to bring about advancement for African Americans. The event was incredibly positive and I learned a lot. The first event that I attended was a panel on education. The panel session featured educators that represented different elements of educators. I thought the panelists themselves had very thoughtful things to say on their own, but I was particularly struck by their responses to the very thoughtful, but challenging questions, launched at them by some students. One student asked the TFA panelist about his experience as a person of color, working within the overwhelmingly white context of TFA that reflects a particular brand of college grad (for those of you who may not know, TFA employs many ivy-league/ liberal arts graduates). I felt like his response to the question reflected a necessary nuance; he was honest yet appropriately political.

I also attended some sessions at the Ethnography Forum hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. I thought that the sessions were fairly delightful. I'll share some of my notes to give you a flavor of what the panel discussions and workshops featured. Check out the notes from an inquiry session that I attended.

-Structure is key to collabortive work

- It is imperative that teachers examine their own baises about students. Teachers must evaluate themselves- see what they do and do not like about students (more importantly why). Teachers must learn to like all students. 

-Teachers must find community- join forces with likeminded practitioners.

- Descriptive reviews of students can be monumental to teacher research- students can help teachers see the bigger picture. 

-You can not take the behavior of a student for face value. Sometimes there is a story behind their actions. Some students are not the same in every class. Descriptive reviews and continual observation help teachers better understand their students. 

-- You have to discover what matters to the student and why

- Be conscious of differentiated expectations that we (teachers) develop for students. Sometimes we expect more from students

- A panalist told a really great story about working for 440. He was sent to work on a project with the Philadelphia Writing Project. The findings of this project showed a correlation between teacher satisfaction and student performance. He showed his findings to 440. They were like, eh, we don't care- we need hard data about students (not teachers). He pushed for his research and within the confines of the Philadelphia school district, he was able to affect some change in favor of Philly teachers.