Symposium Program

Shaping culture and leading change takes time, capacity, love, and care. School leaders carry this responsibility, and have the opportunity to create the conditions for change by centering justice through transformative strategies around leadership capacity, teaching and learning strategies, recruiting and retaining high quality, culturally responsive educators, and centering student and family voice in decisions. Join this panel discussion, where school leaders’ Harland Warrior, Ivery Rhodes, and Richard Brown identify justice centered strategies and equity focused tools to transform schools and systems.

Inspired by Subini Annamma’s (2016) work, this workshop uses Education Journey Mapping to reflect on how educational experiences shape understandings of race, ability, and identity. Grounded in Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit), participants will explore how intersectional identities and systemic factors influence their perspectives and practices. By creating journey maps and sharing personal stories, participants will reflect on educational pathways, uncover connections, and envision equitable futures. This session fosters actionable strategies to disrupt inequities, dismantle whiteness as property, and build inclusive, justice-centered learning environments, offering space to imagine and implement liberatory practices in education.

This workshop is designed to share equity and justice-focused outdoor learning resources and information from the new research center at the University of Washington Bothell, The Environmental Education Research Center and Collaborative for Socio-ecological Learning. Here we will share details of our backpacks programs that are designed to engage family and community in just and equitable multigenerational learning in the park and in their own communities. The backpacks program is designed to center community knowledges and practices in outdoor learning spaces and to create porosity between home, school, and community. In addition, our resources position humans as a part of natural systems and are designed to engage learners in thinking about justice-centered socio-ecological decisions with and for their own communities. Further, the backpacks model for engaging learners is designed to bridge home, school, and other learning environments to create porous learning across contexts.

Cultivating the promise of young people through connection, belonging and unwavering support are centered in the Aunties and Uncles Project. As a family-driven effort to bring trusted adults and elders from Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander communities into schools to support young, particularly in light of the ongoing racial microaggressions and power dynamics that youth of color encounter in school, the Dare2Be Project and Supporting Partnerships in Education and Beyond (SPEB) have partnered to bring this valuable community asset to fruition in partnership with the Renton School District.

In this workshop, we will interrogate how enactment of Race To The Top-fueled teacher evaluation “reforms” have functioned to maintain White cultural norms and reinforce structural inequality, and we will learn together to apply to this problem alternative frameworks for appraising teaching, such as the Framework for Equity and Excellence in Teaching by Salazar and Lerner (2019). Participants in this workshop will leave with new knowledge and skills for navigating the existing rubrics (including the 2022 revisions to the Danielson Framework) in new ways, as well as generate ideas for including elements from alternative frameworks within the TPEP process.

This interactive unconference builds awareness of our roles in advancing social justice for all aspects of the education system. Co-facilitated by a teacher union organizer and a Tribal education leader, participants will engage in dynamic discussions, collaborative storytelling, and action planning to empower awareness and present solutions based on our own perspectives as diverse peoples. Through shared stories and open dialogues, this session fosters solidarity and empowers teachers to llagarluni, to become aware of their role as changemakers. Participants will leave with actionable strategies and a renewed commitment to transforming education for equity and justice.

Join us to learn about EduDesign Learning Communities, a transformative teacher-led model of professional learning with educators. This collective learning approach supports educators to address justice-focused challenges and questions in their teaching practice and professional experiences. Discover how this model can support teacher retention for BIPOC and justice-focused teachers in their first years and beyond through nurturing authentic community connections, supporting collective wellbeing, developing critical consciousness, and building skills for more just classrooms and schools.

Equity-based school leaders listen to their students to re-imagine school, often unlearning practices that are designed to uphold power and privilege. Engage with the story of practitioners that center student voices as part of their leadership practice, continually reflect on student learning experiences, and reflect on what they learn to develop a cohesive vision for student experience in collaboration with the UW Center for Educational Leadership (CEL). School and district leaders will engage with leadership tools developed by students for leaders, hear about student interview protocols, and take stock of their own current visioning processes in light of their educational context.

Every superhero has their origin story – come hear the story of the NAKIA Academy! The Academy was named for a fictional unsung hero and a humanitarian whose philosophy includes lifting others up. The NAKIA community is in continuous growth to support educators (teachers and ESAs) in coming together to lead, organize, and create equitable spaces in education. Come interact with the academy’s mentor-leaders to share and hear lessons learned, practice showing up as your most authentic self, and explore identity markers. We will conclude with a chance to have some Q&A with participants and presenters.

Joy is often falsely perceived as a distraction from our goals, but we know from our ancestors and our histories that joy cannot be an afterthought in our efforts towards liberation—joy is the blueprint. How do we successfully disrupt cynicism? How do we find joy in the boring stuff? The annoying stuff? As we collectively dig into these questions, we’ll also share practical examples from our school about ways we have nurtured joy across everything from building instructional capacity to parking passes. Our hope is that you’ll leave feeling energized, connected, and with ideas you can immediately use.

This session leverages hip-hop education research to explore innovative approaches to mathematics teaching through rap. Building on my framework for implementing mathematical rap at four levels, we will examine and enact strategies for authentically connecting mathematics with students’ cultural contexts as it pertains to mathematics learning. Participants will gain insights into designing engaging, cognitively demanding lessons that honor hip-hop’s educational potential while fostering equity and critical thinking in the classroom while “droppin’ some bars.”

This conversational and interactive workshop invites participants to explore opportunities for generative refusals in their school buildings and districts—acts that challenge ongoing colonization and assimilation efforts. Through dialogue, story sharing, and a collaborative mapping activity, we will identify spaces and practices within educational systems where meaningful change can occur and challenge assumptions of Native peoples. The conversations will be informed by the zine “Red Constellations”. By the end, attendees will leave with actionable insights to transform their educational environments and assumptions about education into spaces that allow for Native futures.

Participants will hear from a group of diverse high school students regarding positive experiences they have had with having their voices being heard and acted upon by school leaders as well as their perspectives on how their experiences could improve. There will be some sharing of strategies by the facilitators (both current high school Assistant Principals), but the heart of this session will be focused on hearing from students’ perspective. School leaders and staff will take away tangible strategies and ideas for applying student voice in their schools and classrooms.

This workshop highlights fathers’ vital role in their children’s academic and social success, focusing on fathers of color and those from diverse backgrounds. Participants will explore fathers’ unique challenges, including societal biases and stereotypes, and how these impact their confidence, engagement, and relationships with their children. Through interactive discussions and reflective activities, attendees will uncover strategies to empower fathers, celebrate authentic parenting styles, and address preconceived beliefs about fathers and men. This session emphasizes the importance of fostering stronger family-school partnerships and creating an inclusive and equitable educational environment that benefits all students and families.

This workshop invites educators and learners to reimagine a system that promotes equity in education and healthcare alongside a panel of UW students. Participants will critically reflect on and challenge current barriers affecting students’ access to academic, social, emotional, and career preparation in allied health. The session will also provide a space to share strategies for fostering community partnerships with allied healthcare and STEM programs focused on supporting underrepresented students, highlighting Doctor for a Day (DFAD), UDOC, and Summer Health Professional Enrichment Program (SHPEP) at the UW School of Medicine.

“Everything worthwhile is done with others.” – Moussa Kaba
Gather with us for a hands-on workshop exploring how individualism, a characteristic of White Supremacy culture, impacts our lives. While embroidering, we’ll reflect, share stories, and discuss how connection and solidarity foster healing and resistance. Together, we’ll create meaningful reminders of our collective commitment to social justice.

In this session, participants will engage in Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practices to explore how embodied action, creativity, and storytelling can foster resilience and catalyze justice-centered change in education. We will examine participants-generated specific school-based scenarios where systemic inequities (e.g., racialized discipline policies or access to culturally relevant curricula) affect students and educators. Participants will collaboratively envision and strategize how to disrupt oppressive practices and cultivate solidarity. Together, we will reflect on the roles of educators and school leaders in embodying practices that advance equity and joy in their communities.

This workshop seeks to explore the role of SYMBOL and RITUAL in community creation and the resulting benefits in individual student performance, personal growth and group participation. Unlike some mammals who are born ready for the world, humans learn how to live from other humans! Therefore, community is the foundation of all learning. The fundamental question in education, then, is this: how can you turn a group of individual strangers into a collaborative community that learns together? The purpose of this workshop is to investigate this same question while analyzing examples of successful classroom community creation in highly diverse, Title 1 schools.

This session is facilitated by four women leaders of color who have developed and maintained close friendship and beloved community. We will share the significance of our community and its impact on our professional and personal lives and how our ability to confide in and learn from each other transcends our roles. We will facilitate time for our session participants to reflect on their communities and engage in liberatory design activities to leave our time affirmed in their abundance of community as we navigate our next steps in educational justice work. This session has a focus on leaders of color, as we hold spaces that are frequently attacked and disenfranchised.

This workshop explores the power of building community in settler colonial systems and white, heteronormative spaces. We’ll dream of an “otherwise” — imagining new ways to connect, resist, and thrive. We’ll look at three groups enacting survivance: the Lake Washington Native Educators Group, connecting Native teachers through co-design; the Native Auntie Collective, offering opportunities for connection to Native educators; and Natives in Pioneer Square, gathering Native women and non-binary people in Seattle’s Pioneer Square to nurture community and identity. These groups show us that we don’t need permission to build the spaces we deserve. We create them together, on our terms.