CEJE organizes occasional events to engage the public in discussions about current educational struggles, educational policy issues, and liberatory education practices. Below are descriptions of some of our past events.
Advocacy Leadership: A Blueprint for Progressive Educational Reform, October 14, 2010
Gary Anderson, author of Advocacy Leadership: Toward a Post-Reform Agenda in Education, argues that progressives need to critique the neoliberal paradigm of school reform—a combination of quasi-markets, high stakes testing, and zero tolerance policies—but, more importantly, they need to begin to produce their own “blueprint,” one that is built on a new reform paradigm that is not merely a return to the past, nor a total rejection of all practices associated with the current reform. Anderson provides the contours of what a progressive Blueprint might look like.
The assault on Chicago’s teachers and public schools: Understanding the attack and working to stop it, April 13, 2010
Prof. Weiner teaches education at New Jersey City University and is a union activist. She co-edited The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions: Stories for Resistance, which reflects her new research on education’s global transformation. Prof. Weiner (and co-editor Mary Compton) wrote, “Teachers are in a war being fought over the future of education, and though at times it might seem as though we are losing the war without firing a shot, we have a potentially powerful weapon in our hands—our solidarity and organization into powerful teachers unions.”
Fight for Public Education, June 7, 2008
In October 2005, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation staged and “illegal” two-week walkout to fight for just learning conditions for their students, better working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively. Throughout the strike, the teachers received overwhelming support from students, parents, and the community. More than 30,000 teachers stood strong and won their demands. Jinny Sims, BCTF past president, led this historic struggle and shared the important role teachers play in fighting for social justice and a fair and decent public education.
January 12, 2008
Chilean popular education specialist Rodrigo Paredes along with members of the Pilsen Alliance, STOP, and the Save Senn Coalition led a round-table discussion with community residents, teachers, and students impacted by gentrification about their concerns and experiences. Participants engaged in a series of hands-on activities designed to analyze power relations, race and displacement. This working session was designed to provide practical and grounded materials for student-centered social justice education around the issue of gentrification.
May 18, 2007
Organized by Chicago Youth Initiating Change (CYIC) and the Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education (CEJE)
Students, teachers, community members, and university faculty from diverse backgrounds and institutions worked side by side to address two fundamental voids facing social justice educational endeavors in Chicago: the lack of meaningful curricular development and sharing by teachers on a local level and the lack of organized student presentation and action opportunities. The First Annual Social Justice Student Exposition began to fill these interconnected voids by establishing opportunities for student-centered social justice learning, presenting, and action.
Challenging stereotypes of young women of color using participatory action research
February 1, 2007
This event was co-sponsored by the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.
The “Fed-Up-Honeys” began in 2002 when six young women from the lower east side of New York city came together as part of a participatory action research project focused on the lives of young urban women. They produced a report called “Makes Me Mad: Stereotypes of Young Urban Womyn of Color” which in their words, “illuminates “stereotypes of our peers, the relationship of those stereotypes to the development of self-image, and the ultimate negative impact of those stereotypes on the viability and health of our communities.”