Join us as we practice applying critical theory to our K-12 practice and pedagogy!
During this dynamic 4-week course which includes 4 synchronous sessions & 2 office hour sessions, we will work to demystify many of the complex theories educators are asked to apply including: anti-racism, colonialism, disability justice, queer theory, radical inclusion and others while considering what these transformative and critical theories might look like in reality.
Apply these theories and learnings to one of your own lessons or units with the support of our team and your peers. Leave with skills--rather than a series of techniques--in how to work towards a humanizing and inclusive classroom.
The course will be capped at 25 participants.
Register NowMeet the Team
Janaya Little
Janaya began her work as an educator by dedicating herself to curating critical and inquiring based learning experiences for her phenomenal elementary and middle school students while strengthening her pedagogical content knowledge in English and History instruction. She was able to explore opportunities to collaborate with her colleagues in identifying equity and community-based educational practices for instruction and curriculum while working in urban education spaces. During her ten years as a teacher these classrooms were the spaces where she developed her work as a field scholar of culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical inquiry, and the creation of classrooms as liberatory spaces. She fostered this learning by engaging in the scholarship of teacher educators such as Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings and furthered her passions for constructing liberatory classrooms through higher education.
Janaya is currently a full-time Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is in the Teacher Learning Teacher Education Program. Her passion for teacher education is led by her desire to radically transform student learning experiences and in order to do that she believes teachers must experience something radically different. She is a practitioner-researcher who engages Afrofuturism and critical theories of education in her scholarship to create new imaginations of teacher education and designs for teacher learning that explores alternate liberatory realities of education and learning.
sahibzada mayed
mayed is a design researcher and creative strategist. They bring a critically-informed approach to community-centered design that seeks to advance culturally thriving, regenerative, and sustainably empowering outcomes. Inside and out, mayed is an abolitionist at heart. She seeks to articulate the ways in which carceral logics and discourses are reproduced in our lives, and dreams of the ways in which we can liberate ourselves and reclaim the freedom to define our own realities. His work embodies the radical critique needed to disrupt oppressive systems and the speculative dreaming that is necessary to imagine new worlds.
mayed is actively involved in political organizing and grassroots activism, primarily concerning police and prison abolition, militarism, decoloniality, surveillance technologies, carceral mental health care, and Disability justice. She is persistently engaged in developing a pluriversal politic that strives for freedom and collective liberation. He believes we are all interconnected and that transformation starts from within us- from one heart to another.
Session Dates
This course requires approximately 15-20 hours. Course participation includes:
- four (4) synchronous sessions (~1.5 hours each, Tuesdays and Thursdays in weeks 2 & 4).
- Individual/small group meetings with instructors (weeks 1&3)
- Assigned readings, videos, and an ongoing discussion forum to engage with fellow participants
Course Meeting Schedule:
- Week 1, Office Hours [set up on Calendly beginning July 17]
- Week 2, Content: Tuesday (August 1) & Thursday (August 3)—6-7:30; 90 min synchronous
- Week 3, Office Hours
- Week 4, Wrap Up: Tuesday (August 15) & Thursday (August 17)—6-7:30; 90 min synchronous
