Category: Updates

Join NYCoRE as we celebrate Dr. Bree Picower’s new book, Reading, Writing, and Racism: Disrupting Whiteness in Teacher Education and in the Classroom. The event will center around a conversation between NYCoRE founder, Dr. Ariana Mangual and former long-time core member Dr. Bree Picower.

Dr. Bree Picower is an Associate Professor at Montclair State University in the College of Education and Human Development. She is the Co-Director of the Urban Teacher Residency, Newark Teacher Project and the Critical Urban Education Speaker Series with Dr. Tanya Maloney at MSU. Her newest book, Reading, Writing and Racism, is an unflinching examination of recent examples of viral racist curriculum and what it means for our educational institutions to take responsibility for addressing teachers’ understandings of race.

Dr. Ariana Mangual Figueroa is an Associate Professor of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her ethnographic research seeks to understand the ways in which the lives of children and adults in mixed-status families are shaped by citizenship status. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she taught English as a Second Language and Spanish in public schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn and worked to co-found the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).

This virtual event will be on Friday, February 26th from 5-6:30 pm. RSVP here for the link.

Educators will participate in Inquiry to Action Groups linking social justice issues with classroom practice.  Small groups will meet weekly (for a total of six, two-hour sessions plus a kick-off ) between January and March to share experiences, respond to readings, exchange ideas and develop action plans. 

Read more about the ItAGs offered this year! All ItAGs will be remote. Register here:  https://bit.ly/37SluJg

** NYCoRE strives to make ItAGs affordable with a registration fee of $35. If you are unable to pay the full fee, there are limited scholarship funds available. Please email Natalia@nycore.org for more details. **

Radical Visions: Educators as School Abolitionists

What is abolition? What is school abolition? These terms have been thrown around a lot recently, but what do they actually mean? In “Radical Visions: Educators as School Abolitionists,” we will work together to create a space where we can 1) develop working definitions of abolition and school abolition 2) connect these definitions to our identities and relationships to privilege and oppression 3) identify practices in our institutions that we want to abolish and grow 4) support one another in doing abolitionist work. As facilitators, we commit to cultivating a space where harm can be addressed and we all have opportunities to reflect through multimedia texts, writing personal memoirs, and engaging our creativity.

Facilitators:

Pam Segura (she/her) is an Afro-Latinx teacher and facilitator who lives and works in the Bronx. She is interested in abolition in the public school context because she seeks points of action and peace in these weird places we know as schools.

Jenna Queenan (she/her) is a White educator and PhD student in Urban Education at CUNY. Having recently left the DOE and entered a new institution (CUNY), she is excited to think about the questions abolitionist educators should be asking across institutions. In particular, she wants to think about how identity impacts which questions need to be centered.  

Dates: Tuesdays, 5-7 pm. Kick off on 1/29; sessions following on 2/2, 2/9, 2/23, 3/2, 3/9 & 3/16

This ItAG will hold 15 participants and seek to have at a minimum 50% of the group identify as BIPOC.

Envisioning Democracy in Schools: The Roots of Resistance for Community Control of Schools

This ItAG will collectively define democracy and what it means to have democracy in schools and education through a Marxist lens. We will explore the history of community control of schools and the fight for democracy in New York City schools. We will also examine the different models of democracy in the workplace, specifically schools. We will work towards an action to promote more democratic practices in schools. Participants and facilitators will collectively shape the direction and focus of this action.

This ItAG is open to a wide range of school staff, including but not limited to educators, RJ coordinators, guidance counselors, parent coordinators, and parents, and students.

Facilitators:

Jonathan Montero is a founding English teacher at the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering (BASE). Now in his eighth year of teaching, he leads the English Department in their efforts to center equity in their grading practices and uses Mastery based grading as a tool in that endeavor.

Rosie Frascella has been teaching in NYC for 14 years and the last 12 years at the International High School at Prospect Heights as a humanities teacher and UFT chapter leader. Rosie a core member of NYCoRE and a member of MORE.

Dates: Wednesdays, 4:30-6:30pm. Kick off 1/29; sessions following 2/3, 2/10, 2/24, 3/3, 3/10 & 3/17

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ItAG Kick Off Meeting: A general kick-off meeting for all ItAG participants will be held Friday, January 29th, 5:30– 7:00 p.m.

Registration: The registration fee is $35. This will cover the cost of materials and support NYCoRE’s ongoing work. Multiple teachers from the same school can register together for the same ItAG for a reduced rate of $30 each. Reduced rates available for students/pre-service teachers. Questions about need-based scholarships should be directed Natalia@nycore.org. Registration closes on Thursday, Jan. 28th at 3 pm.

RSVP Here