From Research to Practice: How Can Research Improve Culturally Relevant Educational Practices and Policies in Schools and Classrooms?
Dr. E. Sybil Durand, Dr. Ersula Ore, Dr. Melanie Bertrand, Dr. Alex Estrella-Bridges, Dr. Lauren Katzman, and Dr. Carrie Sampson
This panel will offer an overview of some of the latest research from nationally-renown faculty from Arizona-based universities. These faculty will address how their research can inform practices to improve educational equity for minoritized youth and their families. These faculty’s work includes expertise in the following areas:
(1) teaching culturally relevant young adult literature;
(2) making contemporary connections to African American history;
(3) engaging youth in research to address systemic racism;
(4) literacy development focused on linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms; and
(5) developing inclusive practices for special education services that also challenge the disproportionality of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations who are identified for special education.
During the first half of the panel, faculty will share a brief description of their scholarship and its relevance to the Teacher Leadership Summit. The second half of the panel will be interactive and allow for questions from the audience.
Panelists
Dr. E. Sybil Durand
https://asu.academia.edu/ESybilDurand
E. Sybil Durand is an associate professor in English education in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she teaches courses on young adult literature, methods of teaching English Language Arts, and methods of conducting research. Her scholarship focuses on representations of youth of color in young adult literature, including multicultural, international, and postcolonial young adult texts, and how teachers and students engage such narratives. Her most recent grant-funded study examined how middle school students engaged young adult literature in the context of a Youth Participatory Action Research after-school program.
Dr. Ersula Ore
https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/1751324
Ersula J. Ore is an associate professor of African and African American studies and rhetoric at Arizona State University. Her work examines the suasive strategies of aggrieved communities as they operate within a post-emancipation historical context. Her book "Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity" (University of Mississippi Press, 2019), Winner of the 2020 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award, explores lynching as a racialized practice of civic engagement that has, from the 1880s onward, communicated the meanings and boundaries of citizenship in the U.S. The book gives particular attention to the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today.
Dr. Melanie Bertrand
https://coe.arizona.edu/person/melanie-bertrand
Melanie Bertrand is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies & Practice at the University of Arizona and a former K-5 teacher. Her research explores the potential of youth and community leadership to improve schools and challenge systemic racism and other forms of oppression in education. Her work pushes the educational leadership field to include youth--especially youth of color and other youth facing injustice--in expanded conceptions of leadership.
Dr. Alex Estrella-Bridges
https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/96372
Alexandria Estrella-Bridges research interests involve literacy development among students from non-dominant communities and English learners. She is highly interested in aspects of policy and classroom practices that impact the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse students in school. She is a clinical associate professor within the Elementary Multilingual Education Program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and currently conducting research connected to race and language, language ideologies, and classroom language practices.
Dr. Lauren Katzman
https://www.urbancollaborative.org
Lauren Katzman, EdD. is the Executive Director of the Urban Collaborative and Associate Research Professor at Arizona State University. She is also an adjunct professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to this work, she served as the Assistant to the Superintendent for Special Education Services for the Newark Public Schools and the Executive Director of Special Education in the New York City Department of Education. In both of these positions, she developed and led significant reform efforts, increasing academic achievement, inclusive educational and experiential options, reliable data management, and statutory/regulatory compliance. She worked to develop strong interdisciplinary partnerships between districts, states, universities, advocacy groups, and communities to build the foundation for deep and sustaining systemic reforms. Dr. Katzman has also served as Associate Professor of Special Education at Boston University and co-authored the book Effective Inclusive Schools: Effective Inclusive Schools: Designing Successful Schoolwide Programs. She was a special education teacher for 14 years and has conducted program evaluations of the special education services for school districts across the country.
Panelists Facilitator
Dr. Carrie Sampson
https://education.asu.edu/about/people/carrie-sampson
Carrie Sampson is an associate professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Her scholarship focuses on how educational leadership and policymaking at the K-12 level influences equity and social justice for minoritized youth and their families. Dr. Sampson has conducted research on school desegregation policies. Her most recent line of research is centered at the school district level with an emphasis on governance, particularly the role of school boards, community advocacy, decentralization, and school choice policies.
Raising the Bar: Elevating our Practices in Teaching and Learning
Dr. Felicia Durden, Associate Superintendent of High Academic Standards for Students
Dr. Durden will provide a high-level overview of the efforts of the High Academic Standards Division of the Arizona Department of Education. She will solicit feedback from participants to inform future work and priorities to ensure Arizona educators are informed and ready to provide their best for our amazing students.
Dr. Durden has over 20 years of experience in the field of education. Dr. Durden has taught grades K-12, served as an Assistant Director of Reading and Writing, School Principal, and currently serves as Associate Superintendent of High Academic Standards for the Arizona Department of Education. Dr. Durden has a passion for ensuring high levels of instruction are provided for all students.
Educational Equity- It’s a Must!
Dr. Melissa Castillo, Associate Superintendent of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Dr. Castillo will provide a high-level overview of the efforts of the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and solicit feedback from participants to inform future work and priorities to ensure “Equity for all students to reach their full potential.”
With 30 years of experience in education as well as being a published author, Dr. Melissa Castillo is currently serving Arizona’s educators and students as the Associate Superintendent of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at the Arizona Department of Education. Her professional career includes being a teacher in Dual Language and Bilingual programs, Instructional Coach, Professional Development Coordinator, Secondary Administrator, Curriculum Director, and Educational Lead Consultant for MelCast Educational Consulting. She is committed and passionate about her work with educators, administrators and community members across the state and country on planning and implementing asset-based systems and evidence-based instructional practices that meet the needs of all students. Her role as the Associate Superintendent of EDI is her most important to date, ensuring access and opportunity for all students to a high-quality Teaching and Learning environment.
Equipping Leaders to Close the Achievement Gap While Conquering Poverty
Mr. Shawn Hurt
Do you feel pressure to close the achievement gap? The added layers of servicing students with disabilities, minority students, students living in poverty- all while in charters operating with limited resources makes this task seem impossible. This highly skilled turnaround specialist will demonstrate to participants how to achieve 1.50 years’ worth of growth for all students through implementing culturally responsive teaching strategies, facilitating data dialogs, planning purposeful professional development, and establishing sustainable partnerships.
Shawn Hurt is an educational consultant and School Turnaround Principal. He has been a Turnaround Specialist since 2011, and have impacted the education of over 5,200 students during his career. Shawn served as principal of Inkster Preparatory Academy, which was selected as a Model School for 2017 by the International Center for Leadership in Education. The Model School Conference is the nation’s premier event for rapidly improving K-12 schools and districts.
The Colored Recruitment and Retention Pipeline: A Reflexive Exercise on Best Practice
Centáe Richards, Ph.D. Associate Dean of Education & Professional Preparation at Prescott College
One of the major areas of concern in education, teaching, and learning is the glaring lack of diversity among licensed staff. Many educators already understand that in terms of recruitment, the national percentage of black teachers in the workforce has historically remained well below the percentage of students represented as black in the classroom since the desegregation of schools. Although minority student populations are growing at an exponential rate, the minority student-teacher ratio is still painfully low. Madkins (2018). Historical, socio-economic, and other compounding issues aggregate to paint a very dire picture for the black teacher pipeline, and the future of a diversified teaching workforce for many school districts nationwide.
In this workshop, participants such as future administrators, teachers, and current teacher leaders investigate the importance of allied collaboration, systems change theory, organization, and willpower required to cultivate a minority recruitment pipeline process to address systemic and historic concerns surrounding the issue of low recruitment and retention of minority educators.
An Afro-Caribbean epistemologist by trade with almost 20 years of experience, Dr. Richards has invited students and communities to probe deeper and tackle some of the most challenging issues in the education and the public sphere. Centáe Richards, Ph.D. is a dynamic public speaker and professional development facilitator in the fields of sociology and education for the benefit of social justice, agency, and personal growth for students in underserved and underprivileged factions of society. His current lines of work revolve around ethnographic representations of inner-city youth identities and their roles in the education system. His research agenda strives to understand how culturally responsive pedagogy can help play a role in the cognitive and social development of urban youth. Dr. Richards is currently exploring the collaborative manners in which adolescents use their ethnic and cultural identities in educational settings to create spaces of agency and alternative forms of learning that can inform and guide more traditional forms o curriculum in the classroom and beyond.