Helen Atkinson

Parent and Teacher Relationships: From Blame to Working Together

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 6-8PM

10 E. North Ave. Baltimore 21202

Teachers’ Democracy Project will share a study of the gap between parents and teachers that helps us understand why we blame each other and what we can do instead. The study was conducted in the Summer of 2018 by a team of 25 fellows who engaged in 659 interviews primarily with parents and teachers as an organizing project. The report reveals the key issues parents and teachers are concerned with and how and why they tend to blame each other for the problems that schools face. We will discuss our findings and recommendations and give audience a chance to engage in shaping solutions.

Dinner and childcare provided. RSVP for childcare to rebecca@tdpbaltimore.org

Black Lives Matter 2019

Screen Shot 2019-01-28 at 10.51.29 PM.png

An event with the Baltimore City Black Teacher Recruitment and Retention Working Group about our process and progress.

Come hear the issues we've unearthed and how district folks, teachers and other partners have engaged in authentic collaboration to tackle these challenges.

Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 6 PM – 8 PM

10 East North Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21202

Free

Dinner at 6:00

Program at 6:15

Childcare available upon request. Please email rebecca@tdpbaltimore.org

This event is in partnership with BMORE and is a part of the Black Lives Matter Week of Action

Baltimore History and Culture: Curricula from Baltimore Educators

equity graphic girl reads.jpg

Educators! Want to teach your students about Baltimore during the Black Lives Matter week of action? Come learn about this curriculum created by Baltimore City School teachers. There are lessons for elementary, middle, high school and adults. The topics include: Black women, community activism, Black Butterfly and White L, from Africa to Baltimore, and more! All lessons include Common Core State Standards, as well as one or more of the 13 Principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools is Feb 3-10, 2019. Come to the event to meet the creators of the curriculum and learn how to implement these lesson plans in your own classroom.

Wed, January 23, 2019 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Impact Hub 10 East North Avenue Baltimore, MD 21202

Dinner served at 5:00

Program starts at 5:15

Childcare provided upon request rebecca@tdpbaltimore.org

RSVP to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/baltimore-history-and-culture-curricula-from-baltimore-educators-tickets-53846703941


Accountability

Testing and Data in Public Schools (& What Accountability Could Look Like)

November 19, 2018

6-8pm

A panel and discussion about happens when testing data takes priority over authentic accountability. We will explore the history of the accountability movement in schools and explore what authentic accountability could look like in schools.

Panel will feature:

Laura Weeldryer, Chief Program Officer, Everyone Graduates Center at JHU, former public school administrator and  state school board member

Jessica Shiller, Education Advocate and Towson University Professor

Jamal Jones, parent and Baltimore Algebra Project Director

Dinner served at 6:00

Panel 6:15- 7:15

Break out into small groups for discussion. 7:15-8:00.

Black Teachers Matter 2018

Black Teachers Matter opening image.png

Baltimore Movement of Rank and File Educators (BMORE) and

Teachers’ Democracy Project partner to put on an event in conjunction with Black Lives Matter week of action. Join us for a screening and panel discussion about the Decline in Black teachers in Baltimore City Schools.

Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018

6-8pm

Free. Dinner Provided.

Location: Liberty Elementary School

Library (2nd floor)

3901 Maine Ave. 21207

Social Justice Teach-in: Making teaching relevant to students lives

matts kid.jpg

An event for teachers and students by teachers and students on Transformative Education and how to make learning relevant to students lives

Saturday, June 9

12-3:30pm

New Song Academy

1530 Presstman St, Baltimore, MD 21217

Lunch provided

RSVP to goo.gl/H2oJB9

 

Agenda

12:00 Lunch

12:30 Presenter Matt Adelberg and students on Transformative Education

1:15-2:15 Workshops 1

  • Math and Lead Poisoning curriculum for 3rd graders with Christyn Wallace
  • Civic Engagement Curriculum for High Schoolers with Patrick Oray
  • Teaching with an understanding of Trauma- Cease Fire

2:15-3:15 Workshops 2

  • Using circles to deepen inquiry for all ages
  • How to create Social Justice curriculum 101 with Kris Sieloff
  • How to start a Peer-to-peer project with Alisa Engsberg and students

3:15 closing

3:30 Adjourn

Questions? Call 410-340-8809 or email rebecca@tdpbaltimore.org

UNDERSTANDING AND NAVIGATING THE IEP PROCESS

IEP bubbles.jpg

This is  a workshop and discussion for guardians and anyone else who is interested in learning more about helping young people when they need extra support in school.

Dinner 5:30pm

Workshop and discussion 6:00pm-7:30pm

Presenters:

  • Pat Halle- Inclusion Strategist/ Disability Justice Advocate
  • Charvette Barfield- Parent Educator, Parents’ Place of Md.

Free childcare and transportation provided

RSVP to goo.gl/hSv4WC

Contact Tyrone Barnwell to register for transportation and childcare
(443) 904-6547
mr.t.barnwell@gmail.com

Parenting & Family Wellness

Join Teacher’s Democracy Project for a parent investment institute event 

Saturday, April 7, 10am-2pm

New Song Community Learning Center 1530 Presstman St. Baltimore, MD 21217

The goal of the event is to engage parents in: 

* Restorative Practices to use with your family

* Tools for healing and mindfulness

* Coping skills for families dealing with trauma 

* Strategies to help resolve conflicts

RSVP to:  goo.gl/SFNwJD

To register for childcare or transportation call 443-508-8461

Parenting and family wellness.jpg

Blog Post--Grace Lee Boggs

GRACE LEE BOGGS: One of the difficulties when you're coming out of oppression is that you get a concept of the messiah. You have to get to that point that we are the leaders we've been looking for. We are the children of Martin and Malcolm. I don't know what the next American revolution is going to be like, but we might be able to imagine it, if your imagination were rich enough.

Read the full transcript of interview excerpts here.

Workshop--Social Justice Curriculum Writing Workshops

Join Our inquiry-to-action-group (ITAG)

This ITAG is an opportunity for 6-8 teachers to research and implement a social justice unit plan to be published using a peer-review process (similar to the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum). Building on the curriculum planning work begun during the TDP Summer Institute, teachers get together in interest/subject area groups to discuss details of protocols they are using in their classrooms, share student projects, research useful resources, and invite local experts and community leaders to join their discussions. The goal is for teachers to find common ground in their day-to-day classroom work, and to find ways to collaborate more deeply in inter-school projects and organizing efforts. Participants may earn a stipend of up to $500. The whole project will take approximately 45 hours from early October to mid-December. Participants in the TDP Summer Curriculum Workshop have priority for this workshop:

Curriculum Workshop to discuss research, original source documents, readings, and pedagogy Individual planning and preparation of curriculum with peer feedback online Documenting implementation, refining, publishing to share online, at conferences, as school-based PD

Limited space available. Register here.

Group--The Reflective Teacher

Join us for dinner and stories about problems of practice in schools and classrooms. One or two people each month will share their stories and participate in a structured reflection process that provides substantive feedback (on issues such as race and identity), promotes a sense of mutual support, and deepens practice for all participants. Click here to register

Thursdays 5pm -7pm

Dream House, 1430 Carswell St. 

November 5, 2015

SPECIAL EVENTS

Network with other teachers and education advocates as you watch films, listen to panels and discuss ideas on a range of topics of interest to educators and community members.

Click here to register for any of the following dates. 

Thursdays 6pm-8pm  (Locations to be announced)

Oct 15   “Charters: The Illusion of Change” (Register for this event here)

Mar 17   “Teacher Activism in Baltimore”

Apr 21    “Corporatized: The Real Story About the Public Education Takeover”

Jun 9     “School Stories: The Human Face of Policy”

Education Advocacy Follow-Up Session II

July 30

9AM-3PM DREAM HOUSE 1430 CARSWELL ST., 21218

This workshop is an opportunity for 8-10 teachers and education advocates to get focused assistance on their writing skills for the purpose of reflection and advocacy. Participants will engage in peer feedback during the different stages of research and writing and analyze examples of blogs for writing styles and effectiveness of message.

Participants will also do research into specific education reform issues as they apply to Baltimore and help work on building our grassroots education activist network.

Finally, participants will practice interviewing each other to learn interviewing techniques.

TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer bck

School Stories: What Just Happened to me? Follow-Up Session II

July 31

12:30pm-2pm Dream House 1430 Carswell St., 21218

Thinking deeply about strange and con ict-ridden incidents in the classroom as a way to develop our re ective practice.

This “story-as-re ection process” using the Critical Response Process is geared toward teachers at any stage of their careers who want to talk over how to use reflection to dig deeper into classroom practice and how our educational values get expressed in the minute-to-minute decisions we make. The goal is mostly to encourage and support each other’s personal reflections on our classrooms for the purpose of improving our practice, getting closer to students, colleagues or communities in order to improve our teaching and connections.

TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer bck

The past is never gone Follow-Up Session II

July 24

9am-3pm Dream House 1430 Carswell St., 21218

Develop curriculum that helps students learn, within the con nes of a curricular mandate, how their neighborhoods have been transformed by sytematically racist policies over the years.

This curriculum-focused workshop invites participants to bring the materials, books, sources and ideas they have used to expose students to critical thinking about the history of race and neighborhoods within Baltimore. We will ask questions about how to construct curriculum from both and historical events/policies--curriculum that can be used for di erent age groups and to teach di erent subjects. We will share problems we have encountered with respect to curricular mandates, debate the most salient and engaging events and the messages they provide, share classroom protocols that work to engage all students, and set up an on-going forum for exchanging curriculum plans and doing collaborative eld work on this vital topic.

TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer bck

Education Advocacy Follow-Up Session I

July 23

9am-3pm Dream House 1430 Carswell St., 21218

This workshop is an opportunity for 8-10 teachers and education advocates to get focused assistance on their writing skills for the purpose of reflection and advocacy. Participants will engage in peer feedback during the different stages of research and writing and analyze examples of blogs for writing styles and effectiveness of message.

Participants will also do research into specific education reform issues as they apply to Baltimore and help work on building our grassroots education activist network.

Finally, participants will practice interviewing each other to learn interviewing techniques.

TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer TDP Summer Institut Follow Up Sessions Flyer bck

TDP Op-Ed in Baltimore Sun

Treat neighborhood schools like charters

In the wake of a contentious debate in Annapolis this spring that featured a bill that gives charter school operators more control over their schools (while principal autonomy was rolled back at struggling traditional schools), a show down over supplemental education funding, and a great deal of rhetorical debate around "autonomy," "choice," "accountability" and "successful" schools, we are wondering where the neighborhood schools are left.

Is the implication that teachers and principals in traditional schools are fundamentally different from principals and teachers in higher status schools? Would they fail to rise to the occasion if they were given the same deal that charters have?

See Op-Ed in Baltimore Sun here.

Ask any principal or teacher what they would do if only they had the freedom to follow their beliefs; it's a safe bet they have a plan. Ask any community member who has experienced the vicissitudes of neighborhood institutions over time whether they would support a school where they could help make decisions and share responsibility for the results, and the answer would be a firm "of course."

Why not offer traditional schools and their communities the same autonomy, freedom from onerous constraints, predictability in their funding and ability to make promises that they can keep to current and prospective teachers, children and families?

All of our school communities should have the chance to write the equivalent of a charter application that establishes a community-wide commitment to a belief-based approach to curriculum and pedagogy. What if the schools that muster this support were, as a result, afforded the same per pupil funding as charters and had the ability to select additional services (beyond a reasonable set of services that ensure equity, transparency and legality) to buy from central office? What if all schools could select whether to administer "benchmark" tests in addition to those mandated by the state? What if, based on these fresh chances and fresh sense of control, these schools could attract the most talented principals of their own choosing, who could in turn attract and keep excellent existing and new teachers? Will any superintendent or school board ever be brave and supportive enough to relinquish a portion of their power in service of democratic community control?

The rhetorical argument used by charter advocates is that only charter schools have the capacity to take on what they see as an extra load of accountability. We argue that charter schools in Baltimore are perhaps subject to somewhat less routine scrutiny (process-based accountability) than traditional schools and thus have an unfair edge. To the extent that they are subject to district rules, they serve as proverbial canaries-in-the-mine for the inefficiencies that all schools experience. Charters are among a subset of schools that have privileges not shared by all public schools; to name a few: the ability to select curriculum without restraint; a per pupil funding amount that gives them greater financial control; an ability to carry forward all left-over money at year's end, thus making long-term financial planning a possibility; and an ability to opt out of various district-mandated testing regimes. No one from the central office is making unannounced visits to charter school classrooms to ensure that teachers are on page 57 of lesson 31 on exactly April 22nd. Charter school spending is not frozen arbitrarily in April. They get to select the central office services they want to pay for. One can call these autonomies, or one can call them the reduction of process accountability.

Even the end-point or outcomes-based accountability that charters do deal with every three to five years in the form of a renewal application and a "school effectiveness review" is probably no more onerous and somewhat more predictable than the review process currently faced by many other schools. Non-charter schools face their reviews without the support of an independent operator to run interference between the school and district. Charters are subject to fewer of the unpredictable threats of closure faced by many other schools under No Child Left Behind.

Of course, politically speaking, this is a difficult stance to take. In an era when only few schools are immune from these threats of sanctions, charters — and other high-status public and private schools — are oases of relative predictability and security. Why would they want to give up their edge? People will say it cannot be done. People will say we do not have the talent pool. People will say that communities cannot be trusted.

Let us not make the mistake of thinking that what is good for the charter school goose is not also good for the traditional school gander.

Helen Atkinson is director of the Teachers' Democracy Project and is a former charter operator in Baltimore; democracyproject@icloud.com. Corey Gaber is a 6th grade teacher at a charter school in Baltimore; cbgaber@gmail.com. Ben Dalbey is a parent of two Baltimore city public schools children and an early childhood teacher; bendalbey@yahoo.com.