On the other side of this national struggle, how will students remember the state of your classroom?
This address calls for all educators to set their pedagogies on fire! To lean into the heat of this moment, center student voice, and allow the fire to forge another, more substantive level of engagement that is not afraid to incorporate the sociopolitical elephants in the classroom for teaching and learning. We will challenge Eurocentric pedagogical approaches that not only under-prepare students for the realities of our increasingly multiethnic, multilingual, globalized society, but are also rooted in colonial and racist ideologies that stifle the voices, identities, and realities of students of color. Drawing on over 10 years of Dr. Lyiscott's research and community engagement, we will engage in dialogue and critical self-reflection about our current classroom climates and receive tools for rooting pedagogy in the voices and identities of students to set our pedagogies on fire.
Jamila Lyiscott is a Harry Potter enthusiast, a community engaged scholar, a nationally renowned speaker and a spoken word artist. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Senior Research Fellow of Teachers College, Columbia University’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME). Across these spaces, Jamila's work focuses on racial justice, community engagement, and youth activism in education through the lens of what she has termed, "Vision-Driven Justice." She has been invited to over 100 institutions throughout the nation where she works with youth, educators, and people across disciplines to inspire vision and action. Her forthcoming book,
Confronting White Privilege Within and Beyond the Classroom, documents her powerful experiences, tools, and insights used to dismantle white privilege within predominantly white institutions throughout the nation. Jamila's scholarship and activism work together to prepare educators to sustain diversity in the classroom, empower youth, and explore, assert, and defend the value of Black life. As a testament to her commitment to educational justice for students of color, Jamila is the founder and co-director of the
Cyphers For Justice (CFJ) youth, research, and advocacy program, apprenticing NYC high school youth, incarcerated youth, and pre-service educators as critical social researchers through hip-hop, spoken word, and digital literacy.
Jamila is most well known for being featured on Ted.com where her video,
3 Ways to Speak English, was viewed over 4 million times, and for her commissioned TED Talk,
2053 in response to the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States. She has also been featured in Spike Lee’s “2 Fists Up,” on NPR, Huffington Post, Lexus Verses and Flow, Upworthy, The Root, and many other media outlets nationally and internationally. Her poetry and scholarly work have been published in several peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
