“Decolonizing our Minds,” “intersectional feminism,” and “whiteness” are just some of the featured conversations at this year’s annual Northwest Teaching for Social Justice (NTSJ) Conference.
This year’s conference, titled “Rethinking Our Classrooms, Organizing for Better Schools,” will include conversations on race, transgenderism, and the environment, all from a leftist perspective. The conference will occur online on October 22nd.
Those who organize the conference explain that they are “dedicated to sustaining and strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism.”
One session is titled “Decolonizing Our Minds: Amplifying Indigenous Cultures to Inspire Responsible Action.” The description reads: “Rooting out systems of white supremacy is key to transforming students’ experiences.” During the session, the school personnel will “explore the importance of decolonizing our minds to break down white supremacist culture in the classroom.”
The description also asserts that “Whiteness permeates school culture around acceptable behavior and learning goals.” The education system can be decolonized “by using Indigenous values as an underpinning of our elementary classroom curriculum,” it explains.
Another talk is called “Strategies for Supporting Undocumented Students and Families,” and it claims, “All students have the right to a free, public education, regardless of their immigration status or that of their parents.”
Breitbart News recently reported that illegal immigration poses a massive financial burden on the American education system, costing us $78 billion annually just for remedial English instruction.
Another talk will discuss defunding the police as a potential policy solution. Called “Whose City? Using City Council Police Budgets to Teach Argument and Evidence in the Language Arts Classroom,” the session description reads “Defund? Reform? Fund? Abolish? Our students engage with these topics while learning about … real life organizations doing the work of envisioning a different policing system for their city.”
“Participants will use the interactive structures of a gallery walk, role play, and mock city council meeting on the Portland police budget,” it adds. A report found that Portland’s homicide rate increased by a whopping 207 percent from 2019 to 2021.
The description of one session, titled “Is There a Right Way to Protest? Engaging Students in the Study of Protests,” reads, “we want students to understand how to protest when they witness an injustice.”
“We will showcase a cross-curricular anti-racist multi-lesson task implemented in grades K–4, where children explored racial identity and fair representation in their classroom libraries leading to taking action in their communities,” the description of a session called “Does Our Library Reflect Me? Mathematizing Fairness of Children’s Books” reads.
A different session discusses “Using Stories and Children’s Books as Tools for Teaching About Social Justice.” Those who attend the workshop will “participate in activities to build critical consciousness about our multifaceted identities” and “consider the impact of marginalization by analyzing a fairy tale.”
“You will also learn the difference between DEI and social justice and get criteria for choosing books and designing lessons that address issues of power,” the description goes on to say.
“Black Girl Magic in School: How to Ensure Safety and Equity for Black Girls in the Classroom” will address “the fundamentals of intersectional feminism to combat interpersonal prejudice and systemic oppression, such as the school-to-prison pipeline.”
“We make way for Black girls’ identity to be considered in conversations and letting their inner magic shine unapologetically,” the description explains.
The conference doesn’t just focus on Critical Race Theory, however. One talk is titled “Understanding the Lived Experiences of Transgender Youth with Disabilities Through Narrative Photography.”
“Through photographs and narratives, participants will interrogate their own understandings of ableism, inclusion, cisgenderism, gender identity, and disability.”
“What changes are needed in schools to better support transgender youth with disabilities?” the session asks.
The 2022 conference is sponsored by the Seattle Education Association, the Washington Education Association, and the Portland Association of Teachers, among other organizations in the education industry.
Breitbart News reported that the 2021 NTSJ conference also included a number of conversations mired in Critical Race Theory and leftist Gender Theory, which endorses transgenderism while denigrating the gender binary. Last year’s conference featured a session called “What Does Whiteness Look Like in Our Schools? How Do We Interrogate and Interrupt It?” as well as one titled “Breaking the Binary: Exploring Ways to Deconstruct the Gender Binary in the Classroom.”
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com.