Events and Resources

Book Talk and Methodologies Conversation with Stacey J. Lee and Ujju Aggarwal
Wednesday, March 6 | 3:30 – 5 p.m. ET
Virtual

Co-sponsored by: The Practice of Freedom Project, The Kinloch Commons for Critical Pedagogy and Leadership, and the Center for Urban Education

WATCH RECORDING

Maya Mathematics for Educators
Workshop 1: April 18, 3:30 – 5 p.m.
Workshop 2: April 24, 3:30 – 5 p.m.

Join us for two Maya mathematics virtual educator workshops. Both workshops are designed for applicability in teaching K-12 across content areas, and will include time for questions, dialogue, and practice.

To register, email BKR15@pitt.edu.

Presented by the Kinloch Commons, Center for Urban Education, and Practices of Freedom Project.

Workshop 1: Maya Number System
April 18, 3:30 – 5 p.m. ET, with briana rodríguez

In the first workshop, we will learn the number system and related symbology. Participation in the first workshop is required for participation in the second. You may participate only in the first workshop, if you’d like. 

Workshop 2: Codices, Days, Symbols
April 24, 3:30 – 5 p.m. ET, with briana rodríguez and Willy Barreno

In the second workshop, we will do a deep dive into one example of Maya mathematics.

Wednesday, May 8 and Wednesday, August 21
Facilitated by Chris Wright and Kate Joranson

Presented by the Kinloch Commons, co-sponsored by the Center for Urban Education and the Practices of Freedom Project

Teaching & Learning Liberatory Praxes in the University
Wednesday, May 8 | 3 – 4:30 p.m. ET
Virtual

We will study Robin DG Kelly’s “Black Study, Black Struggle” to anchor a dialogue on the tensions among freedom work, university structures, and ideological commitments. We will collectively grapple with community building and educational institutions, engaging the undercommons as pedagogy and praxis.

Refusing Teacher/Learner Binaries
Wednesday, August 21 | 1 – 2:30 p.m. ET
Virtual

We will explore the meaning of liberatory education in the documentary, “A Luta Continua!” to reflect on the ways the binary positions of student and teacher reinforce oppressive logics, and think collectively about how we might refuse, resist, and reimagine pedagogical relationships.

As long as there have been occupying powers, there has been organized resistance. Many of these resistance movements, particularly the anti-colonial armed liberation struggles of the Global South, incorporated liberatory education programs as a strategy to build critical consciousness within their movements and amongst the masses. This study group is a comparative study of these movements and their use of education programs as political strategies of liberation. 

We will begin the first study session by examining the characteristics of these education programs and the political context from which they emerge. The second session will focus on how these education programs shape the process and outcomes of resistance movements. We will spend our third study session analyzing and reflecting on the global impact of these projects and their place in the global liberation movements. We will then wrap up the last study session by reflecting on our observations and the possibilities for schooling in a liberated context. 

Guiding questions:

1. What are the characteristics of these education programs? 
2. How do they help shape the process and outcomes of these resistance movements?
3. How are these educational projects part of a global momentum? 
4. What are the possibilities for schooling in a liberated context? 

Hana Dinku is the Director of the Lealtad-Suzuki Center for Social Justice at Macalester College. Hana’s research, study, and community organizing efforts focus on the intersection of education, race, gender, and social justice. She is committed to working with local, national, and global communities to dismantle systems of oppression and empower youth through liberatory education.

Presented by the Kinloch Commons; co-sponsored by the Center for Urban Education and the Practices of Freedom Project

Study Group Dates:

• Thursday, June 13 at 5:30-7:30 p.m. ET
• Thursday, June 27 at 5:30-7:30 p.m. ET
• Tuesday, July 9 at 5:30-7:30 p.m. ET
• Wednesday, July 24 at 5:30-7:30 p.m. ET

education & The Black Fantastic: Damien Sojoyner, in conversation with Sabina Vaught
Thursday, September 5 | 5 p.m. ET, 2 p.m. PT
Virtual

“What is the Black Fantastic? The Black Fantastic is our freedom. The Black Fantastic is liberation,” says Ekow Eshun. It is temporal reclamations, ambitiously creative imaginings, aesthetic invocations and evocations, repurposings and rearrangements beyond modernity, conjure, realms, the political and artistic. And more. The Black Fantastic is expressed in the provocations of curiosity and questioning.

We invite you to join the Practices of Freedom Project, the Center for Urban Education, and the Kinloch Commons for a year of asking: What is education in the Black Fantastic? What is our educational freedom? Our liberation?

We begin the year with a dialogue with Damien Sojoyner, a scholar in the Black Radical Tradition who is the first scholar to connect the Black Fantastic to experiences of schooling. His ideas will provide the contours of what questions and study come next.

We welcome you to a year of extraordinary programming.