Education, Grades, and Liberation w/Julia E. Torres
As a teacher/activist, Julia Torres's work is grounded in empowering students to use the Language Arts to fuel resistance and positive social transformation. Ms. Torres facilitates workshops and professional conversations about anti-racist education, social justice, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. She writes about these and other topics at at juliaetorres.blog.
Topics include:
How Julia uses side-by-side teaching, expert groups, and culturally relevant texts to shift traditional power dynamics in her classroom
How grades foster attitudes of competition, compliance, and insecurity in students of color, dividing them and pitting them against one another
How Julia helps students "unlearn" disempowering attitudes from past experiences
Why implementing progressive practices like going gradeless can be extremely difficult in urban school settings
Why teachers from non-urban settings should visit and learn from teachers in urban settings
Resources mentioned:
Going Gradeless in Urban Ed (Teachers Going Gradeless)
On Reading...and Grading (juliaetorres.blog)
Building Bridges (juliaetorres.blog)
