The National Charter Collaborative (NCC) is partnering with the UNCF to host a 4-part virtual series “Ever Rising: A Homecoming of HBCUs and K-12.” The series will highlight the impact of HBCU culture on charter school founders and leaders and a vision of what is possible with HBCUs and charter schools, both now and in the future.  The series kicks off in February 2023 and culminates in May 2023 during National Charter School Week.

This March Kingmakers of Oakland (KOO) hosts the Spring Symposium conference, to be held in-person in downtown Oakland and virtually, with this year’s theme – STEP UP TO THE M.I.C.- Amplifying Multiracial Intergenerational Cross Functional Voices To Transform Education.

On March 25th from 10:00am-2:00pm, Kingmakers of Oakland hosts its highly anticipated Student Showcase. Experience the KOO effect at this youth-curated exposition drawing local news coverage that demonstrates how our students, who we call “Kings” interpret their learnings.

Kingmakers of Oakland has received national recognition from press and funders for its unwavering commitment to centering Black boys while leveraging a Targeted Universalism framework that uplifts entire school systems and their communities. We want to deepen our engagement with schools, families and community members so we hope that you can join us for this special event. Register now for the Student Showcase.

In a continued effort to boost family engagement practices between school and home, the U.S. Department of Education has partnered with Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Overdeck Family Foundation to launch a virtual Family Engagement Learning Series. The six-month series will explore bright spots in the field and provide education leaders and practitioners with resources and evidence-based strategies to support student success.

The second webinar in this series will focus on how family engagement can improve school attendance and student engagement with their learning. We know students who are chronically absent—meaning they miss at least 18 days of school in a year—are at serious risk of falling behind in school. Even before the pandemic, eight million students fit into this category. Now, the numbers are even worse: some estimates show that the number of students chronically absent doubled to 16 million in 2021-22, affecting one in three students nationwide. There are no easy solutions to this problem, but family engagement practices do offer some promise when it comes to improving attendance and student engagement.

We invite you to join us on Tuesday, March 28th at 1 p.m. EST to hear from experts in the field who will share the latest research and on-the-ground lessons for how family engagement has helped their states, districts, and schools measurably boost attendance and student engagement. The conversation will be moderated by Hedy Chang, Founder and Executive Director of Attendance Works, and will focus on the work of EveryDay Labs, Parent Teacher Home Visits, and TalkingPoints, which all have evidence of improving attendance, together with districts that have implemented these practices using American Rescue Plan Funding and ESSER II funds.

We are excited to welcome the following confirmed panelists:

o Hedy Chang, Founder/Executive Director, Attendance Works

o Kate Pechacek, National Senior Director of Impact Solutions, Talking Points

o Gina Martinez-Keddy, Executive Director, Parent Teacher Home Visits (PTHV)

o Todd Rogers, Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

o Kari Sullivan, Connecticut State Department of Education

o Susan Fergusson, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Torrington Public Schools (CT)

School and district attendees will walk away with knowledge about what funding is available to improve attendance and student engagement, and what evidence-based resources and practices can help them accomplish these goals.

The US has been talking about post-pandemic educator shortages for two years with no widely-recognized solution or innovation in addressing them, in either the short or long term. This is the moment for states and districts to solve for the current crisis while also building for the future.

Join members of the One Million Teachers of Color (1MTOC) Campaign for a panel discussion focused on teacher and school leader shortages, through the lens of how practitioners and policymakers must focus on three areas of the educator pipeline in order to fortify it now and in the future: quantity, quality, and diversity.

Panelists for this panel include:
• Sharif El Mekki, Founder & CEO, Center for Black Educator Development
• Lynn Jennings, Senior Director of National and State Partnerships, The Education Trust
• Kim Oliver, Vice President of Policy, Advocacy, and Community Coalitions, TNTP
• Harrison Peters, Co-Founder & CEO, Men of Color in Educational Leadership

Steering Committee members of the One Million Teachers of Color Campaign include: TNTP, The Education Trust, Center for Black Educator Development, Men of Color in Educational Leadership, The Hunt Institute, Latinos for Education, New Leaders, and Teach Plus. For more information visit: https://1mtoc.org/partnersandfunders

Share space with change-makers like you who are in search of a collective experience to highlight current triumphs and challenges, leverage student voice, and move from aspiration to action. Tap into the power of:

Deeper Network of educational leaders, community partners, and students from around the globe
Deeper Impact with student agency, community outreach, and school design collaboration
Deeper Dialogue embedded in advisory sessions, powerful keynotes, and interactive workshops.

Don’t miss our action-packed Annual Conference with hundreds of educational innovators, movers, shakers, and change-makers.

What happens to public schools when a neighborhood gentrifies? In many cases, the newcomers either avoid their local schools or use their political power to push aside families who have lived in the neighborhood for years. But there’s a third possibility, one that can bring greater equity, and that’s the story of this new book.

Join Clara Hemphill, founder of the InsideSchools website; Mark Winston Griffith, co-host of the School Colors podcast; and Takeesha Wright-Sheppard, former PTA president of Brighter Choice Community School as they discuss Hemphill’s new book about how schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant adapt to neighborhood change.

A diverse teaching force, research makes clear, benefits all students—improving attitudes about race and young people’s sense of self-efficacy. Yet while students of color comprise more than 50 percent of public school enrollment nationally, nearly 80 percent of teachers are White. In many states, most students attend schools and districts that do not employ a single teacher of color. Why should this be and what can we do about it?

Join FutureEd and TNTP for a dynamic webinar on these issues on Tuesday, April 4, at 12 pm ET. Moderated by FutureEd Senior Fellow Lynn Olson, the panel will include:

• Tequilla Brownie, CEO of TNTP
• Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of Center for Black Educator Development
• Mayme Hostetter, President, Relay Graduate School of Education
• Tami Jenkins, Tech Teach Across Texas

Register here

Read FutureEd’s recent report: Teachers Like Us: Strategies for Increasing Educator Diversity

Join Roots ConnectED for an online workshop that offers a new approach to family programming, one that pushes us towards authentic relationship building. This workshop will cover the key elements needed for successful community programming and elements of careful program planning, particularly in diverse school environments. Participants will leave with an opportunity to think about how this presentation has a direct impact on their practice and will consider next steps in continuing to build their vibrant school communities. 

Roots ConnectED is a non-profit organization which accompanies school communities to use an anti-bias framework to develop curriculum, culture, and learning environments centered in equity, inclusion, and justice.

Speaking up in the moment against implicit biases, racist comments or actions, and microaggressions can be difficult. Sometimes we are on the receiving end of the comment and sometimes we are the ones who have made the comment and are being asked to reflect. We know harmful expressions can leave us wondering how to process our own feelings and to respond in ways that advocate for ourselves and others. Gaining comfort to meaningfully respond and address these moments requires practice, empathy, and deep understanding. 

Join Roots ConnectED for an online workshop where we will work together to name what is problematic, identify impact, and lay the groundwork for change. Facilitators  will share an approach, internal reflections, and sentence starters to support speaking up when something doesn’t sit right, and create theater to provide a structured way to practice speaking up in the moment, to reflect together, collaborate and try again. 

This is a learning community, an interactive workshop, designed to help participants gain practice and comfort in addressing those moments where we may feel or observe implicit biases, racist comments or actions, and microaggressions.

Roots ConnectED is a non-profit organization which accompanies school communities to use an anti-bias framework to develop curriculum, culture, and learning environments centered in equity, inclusion, and justice.

People often think elementary students are  too young to talk about their identities – particularly race, power, and gender –  in early elementary school. Roots ConnectED (a non-profit organization which accompanies school communities to use an anti-bias framework to develop curriculum, culture, and learning environments centered in equity, inclusion, and justice) has found that K-2nd grade students are not only open to these conversations, but that, when addressed at a young age, they are able to continue these conversations as they get older and have a deeper understanding of how their identities impact their experiences. 

Join Roots ConnectED for an online workshop that looks at how an anti-bias lens allows for these conversations to be embedded into every day lessons and conversations.  Participants will learn from sample lessons that address these issues and have an opportunity to think about the implication in their own lessons, units, and/or read alouds.

This 3 day Inclusive Practices Institute offered by anti-Bias Education non-profit Roots ConnectED*  invites teams of 3 – 5 educators and school leaders to share in the exploration of the principles and strategies of inclusive education in order to increase access to general education curriculum, support individual needs and ensure all students are meaningfully included in learning. 

Equity and access are a primary focus in developing inclusive schools and classrooms. Educators will explore the Framework for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and consider how to develop powerful goals for units and lessons that increase student access and eliminate barriers to learning. 

Teams will also have the opportunity to examine co-teaching  practices. We will look at the co-teaching relationship,  best practices for co-planning and how to best leverage adults in the inclusive classroom. We will zoom in on the effective use of high impact co-instruction models such as stations and parallel teaching.  Participants will learn how these models can be used in the classroom to more effectively teach to the edges, accounting for the inherent variability in all learners. 

*Roots ConnectED is a non-profit organization which accompanies school communities to use an anti-bias framework to develop curriculum, culture, and learning environments centered in equity, inclusion, and justice.