Teach the Teachers – Youth Panel

July 2, 2020 | 2 – 4 p.m.

Aaliyah Brown, Chrissy Carter, Christa Sims, Harmony McDonald, Kahlil Darden, and Nekiya Washington-Butler.

Several dialogues about schools and schooling concern youth, but do not include them. This year’s CUESEF not only includes youth across all panels but Part I centers the voices of youth who will share their thoughts and insights about education and school experiences before and during COVID-19 as well as after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and the ensuing uprisings.

These are hard times. This year has seen unprecedented levels of turmoil due to rising alarm over the COVID-19 pandemic with the most vulnerable populations experiencing the hardest impact. While COVID-19 did not create political, social, and economic injustices that have come to define American life, the virus has surfaced them. In addition, extrajudicial and vigilante killings of Black people have sparked global uprisings at a scale unseen since the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Both COVID-19 and anti-Black state violence lay bare racialized inequities. As Pricilla Borkor, a Brooklyn protestor described in Time recently: “It’s either COVID is killing us, cops are killing us, or the economy is killing us.”

Underexplored at this moment are schools and schooling which bear out the realities of education as sites of power and control. Hence, this year’s Center for Urban Education Summer Educator Forum (CUESEF), takes a closer look at how various communities – youth, parents/families, community members, teachers, and administrators – have been affected in the wake of these crises. With this year’s theme, we hope to foster deep thinking about (in)justice and (un)learning in the U.S. and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, more specifically. A related aim is sharing ideas and strategies for intervention and change that insist on life, equity, and liberatory education as essential to the public good.

All five dialogues are free and open to the public and will be moderated by author and activist Marc Lamont Hill. Attendees are welcome and encouraged to attend all sessions. You will be contacted via email with the login information two days prior to each forum with the webinar login information.