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July 20—July 21, 2023
8:00 AM-5:00 PM MT Hybrid event Join us for A Queer Endeavor’s 4th Annual Educator Institute for Equity and Justice (EIEJ) Focused on themes of healing & belonging, the EIEJ is a 2- day professional learning experience AND a time to be in community - to breathe, and to heal. Our aim is to support K-12 educators & youth serving adults to learn together as we enact equity-, justice-, & freedom-focused practices in our schools & classrooms. |
Request for Proposals / Presenters
Apply here to be a presenter! We invite sessions that focus on gender & sexual diversity, anti-racism, bi/multilingualism, equity in rural communities, supporting first-generation and undocumented students, critical dis/ability studies, and more. Proposals are due Friday, June 16. For all presenters, registration fees will be waived and you will have access to all that the EIEJ offers (including food! And swag!). Presenters can participate virtually and/or in-person. |
Registration
Now open! Register here until June 16.
*If you plan to present, please wait to register as a participant so we can waive your registration!
Now open! Register here until June 16.
*If you plan to present, please wait to register as a participant so we can waive your registration!
Sliding scale & scholarships available.
Virtual & in person.
Virtual & in person.
Context
Historically, institutions of education in the US have been biased toward particular learners: white, middle class, straight, cisgender, English monolingual speakers, and students & teachers whose cultural practices align with, create, and perpetuate dominant ideas of what’s “normal.” Deeply embedded in learning environments that maintain the status quo, these norms not only fail to affirm the diversity of many students they serve, but fail these students by design. As educators whose commitments are oriented toward justice and freedom, we know this well.
In this historical moment, educators are combating attacks on equity and justice in public education, specifically in their efforts to teach curriculum focused on systemic inequities rooted in racism, sexism, transphobia, and so much more. Forty-one states (and counting) have introduced bills or taken other action that would limit teachers’ rights to teach the truth about how power, privilege, whiteness, and systemic oppression have profoundly shaped US history. Meanwhile, 2023 has already surpassed the records broken in 2021 & 2022 for anti-trans bills in the US, most of which target youth. As educators, we each have a responsibility to interrogate the impact of enduring attacks on justice and freedom-focused teaching and learning. And, in truth, all of this leaves us, the EIEJ team, wondering, where do we go from here?
In our pursuit of living the question, where do we go from here?, we’ve focused on belonging and healing as the theme for this year’s institute.
In this historical moment, educators are combating attacks on equity and justice in public education, specifically in their efforts to teach curriculum focused on systemic inequities rooted in racism, sexism, transphobia, and so much more. Forty-one states (and counting) have introduced bills or taken other action that would limit teachers’ rights to teach the truth about how power, privilege, whiteness, and systemic oppression have profoundly shaped US history. Meanwhile, 2023 has already surpassed the records broken in 2021 & 2022 for anti-trans bills in the US, most of which target youth. As educators, we each have a responsibility to interrogate the impact of enduring attacks on justice and freedom-focused teaching and learning. And, in truth, all of this leaves us, the EIEJ team, wondering, where do we go from here?
In our pursuit of living the question, where do we go from here?, we’ve focused on belonging and healing as the theme for this year’s institute.
EIEJ 2023 Theme: Belonging & Healing
First, we are compelled to acknowledge how belonging & healing have become buzzwords that operate to uphold the kind of performative, surface-level, linear thinking about systems of normativity that we seek to disrupt. For example, notions of belonging so often rely on in/out groups, on assimilationist models of community (i.e., “they” should be more “normal,” more like “us”). These notions don't question harmful contexts, who those contexts miss or alienate--why some students might not want to belong, or how/why belonging might actually harm students. And healing is frequently framed as a linear process, in which pain or grief is something to be fixed, or named, and then “healed,” exacerbating the idea that completeness is possible and measurable, even. As we see it, healing is a movement towards wholeness, and this movement causes disruption in what we consider normal, comfortable; it’s a (beautiful) rupture in many ways.
We also want to acknowledge that for many of us, placing healing alongside systems of inequity seems impossible; these are the very systems that have and continue to cause harm. Our decision to anchor the EIEJ in healing and belonging, then, demands more than ever that we engage critical, queer, and anti-oppressive lenses. It demands that while we center care, we actively interrupt oppressive ideas about what care looks like. It demands that we question our assumptions about belonging and healing, about start and end points-- and that we ask ourselves, as educators committed to justice, what do healing and belonging feel like? How might that feeling be shaped by our lived experiences? What do healing and belonging offer us? As educators, in our current sociopolitical context - where opportunities for cultivating critical consciousness are few and far between, how do we honor healing as a community-based, collective endeavor? And, what does it mean to foster classroom spaces in which students can consider and engage in the same?
We also want to acknowledge that for many of us, placing healing alongside systems of inequity seems impossible; these are the very systems that have and continue to cause harm. Our decision to anchor the EIEJ in healing and belonging, then, demands more than ever that we engage critical, queer, and anti-oppressive lenses. It demands that while we center care, we actively interrupt oppressive ideas about what care looks like. It demands that we question our assumptions about belonging and healing, about start and end points-- and that we ask ourselves, as educators committed to justice, what do healing and belonging feel like? How might that feeling be shaped by our lived experiences? What do healing and belonging offer us? As educators, in our current sociopolitical context - where opportunities for cultivating critical consciousness are few and far between, how do we honor healing as a community-based, collective endeavor? And, what does it mean to foster classroom spaces in which students can consider and engage in the same?
Goals
- To come together as a community that reflects multiple and intersecting identities and histories and to build connections of solidarity.
- To explore what it means to heal at the same time that we grow our commitment to showing up for all students.
- To help educators develop an intersectional vision of equity and educational justice and to provide strategies for realizing that vision in their classrooms and schools.
- To showcase equity-, justice-, freedom-focused practices that teachers are enacting in Colorado-based schools and beyond.
- To prioritize conversations and topics that, in EIEJ, have been missing or lacking--e.g., education in rural communities and indigenous communities, dis/ability studies.
- To support graduate-student involvement in the design of a collaborative Institute experience focused on educator learning, research, and practice.
- To support graduate students to become involved in public/engaged scholarship and to work in and contribute to their communities.
- To share learning and progress toward our collective goals via public scholarship (blogs, editorials, social media campaigns).
Questions?
Email us at equityandjusticeinstitute@gmail.com
Email us at equityandjusticeinstitute@gmail.com
