Is Gentrification the New School Pushout?: A Conversation with Community about the Intersection of Urban Education Reform and Gentrification
Thais Council, Rebecca Graham, Shaeroya Earls, Shakale George, Marlyn Tillman, Georgia State University, Gwinnett STOPP
This presentation will serve as a continuation of conversations that have been conducted in an effort to include voices of those most impacted by urban education reform in Atlanta. Our participatory action research team, comprised of urban education teachers, conducted several community listening sessions in Pittsburgh and Washington Park Atlanta to determine if charter schools were keeping their promise to the neighborhoods and children they pledged to “rescue.” During this presentation, we will highlight several themes that emerged from data collected during the community listening sessions and invite conference participants to add their voices to “The New School Pushout” conversation.

Inviting the experts: A case study of an after school program
Dorian Harrison, Belmont University
This ethnographic case study draws upon understandings of ideologies and curriculum within an after school program. Data was collected across a year. Findings revealed how interpretations of curriculum by staff positioned youth as experts on their own needs and experiences.

Growing a Garden of Possibilities: Cultivating Collective Understanding, Climate and Community in Urban Schools
Cheryl Jamison, Coretta Scott King Young Women's Leadership Academy/Mercer University                                                                                                              Through the lens of single-sex classes and schools as an alternative to the traditional structure, participants will question traditional schooling, and explore practical strategies that involve students, parents and community stakeholders to cultivate positive school culture and climate that transforms learning spaces and supports improved student academic outcomes.

Re-Defining Black Males Success – From College to Career: Narratives from Recent Black Male College Graduates
George Greenidge, Joseph Peterson, Deirdre Royster, Illya Davis, Michael Williams, Said Sewell, Jeffrey Coleman, Georgia State University, Morehouse College
A recent 2018 study from Researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University and the Census Bureau concluded “that Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children.”
White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households.
With this new study’s conclusion, what tools and networks can we build in urban education, the college level and throughout society to challenge and support our young black men to become successful economically in their life and their careers.
This panel of young black Georgia State University and Morehouse graduates will explore their own narratives of completing college and entering the job market, and the obstacles that they continue to face to become economically self-sufficient in the United States of America.

Community-based Praxis: The Atlanta Schools Critical Education Network for Distinction (ASCEND)
Jacob Hackett, Nadia Behizadeh, Ayinde Summers, Maurice Hobson, Jonnie Ford, Georgia State University
The Atlanta Schools Critical Education Network for Distinction (ASCEND) is a recent research partnership between Georgia State’s Department of Middle & Secondary Education and African-American Studies, Project South, and Dr. MLK Jr. Middle School to support the curricular integration of social-justice themes for Social Studies and Language Arts teachers.

Growing as they give: Teacher development through cultural community wealth contributions
Sonia Howard, Natalie King, Georgia State University
From the findings of a study about STARS, a STEM summer program developed within a community of color, we will share some of the stories of the cultural capital teachers shared and how they grew alongside their students from the cultural community wealth inculcated within the STARS STEM program.

Music. Does it matter? This could be YOUR community's gateway to a world of billions.
Ryan Kilgore, Adelia Johnson, ShaK Jones. LaToya Brooks, Cedric Young, Billy Johnson, Kilgore Foundation
Witnessing an industry from the top of its food chain, down to the massive budget cuts of programs, brings me to this questions: Does it matter that the survival of music, a universal language of the world, is being abandoned and ignored?

Teach me football, I will teach you soccer. Multicultural cooperation between co-teachers
Bailey Kirk, Aneta Galazka, Georgia State University
The focus lately has been on the diversity of students within urban schools, but how can the diversity of teachers be used as teaching tools? In this session, we are discussing how we use our personal backgrounds within the classroom and how your culture can be used in the classroom.

South Florida Alliance of "We the People – Math Literacy for All"
Maria Lovett, Scott Fiske, Paola Calcado, Mark Howard, Laverta, Florida International University
A panel of two principals, mathematics teacher, FIU professor, and student will tell their narratives about the building of a local alliance, whose mission is to transform math instruction for disenfranchised students in high schools in the 6th largest district in the nation.

Educating for Increased Awareness and Action through Critical Composition Pedagogy in an Urban Middle School
Beth Marks, Latricia Oliver, Charity Gordon, Clarice Thomas, Hiedi Godwin, Nadia Behizadeh, Kennesaw State University
Aim is increasing criticality of instruction in urban, public middle schools and making visible both how teachers enact critical composition pedagogy (CCP) in English language arts (ELA) classrooms and why. CCP’s major tenets are historicity, dialogism, problem-posing, emancipation, and praxis. Factors which enable or impede social justice instruction are examined.

#BlackTeachersMatter: A Call for Collective Learning and Liberatory Pedagogy
Jillian Ford, Precious Brown, Whitney Lott. Cierra Cooper. Tamera Tillman, Renard Snell, Kennesaw State University
The purpose of this session is to highlight the lived experiences of Black pre-service teachers who are members of #BlackTeachersMatter. Undergraduate students will lead a discussion about how their processes of engaging collectively is key in their journeys of thinking more critically about their experiences in order to become more informed and engaged in liberatory pedagogy.

A Comparative Analysis of an EPP at an HBCU versus TWI – What are the Defining Variables?
James C. Young, Rebecca Dashiell-Mitchell, Clark Atlanta University
As an HBCU – Historically Black College or University- Clark Atlanta University has a 150 year history of preparing teachers for African American learners. Its conceptual framework expands beyond traditional knowledge, skills, and dispositions versus a TWI. Is there a difference? What are the defining variables?

Unpacking Serving the Unserved: Opportunities and Challenges for Urban Student and Community Programming
Amanda Wilkerson, Deshawn Chapman, Shalander Samuels, Whitney Watkins, University of Central Florida
In some respects, incorporating visible and transformative practices regarding Urban Student populations and the communities in which they live involves hard work, dedication, and commitment. As professionals serving in respective roles, Director of a Trio Service Program, Secondary Education Urban School Instructor, Director of Post-Secondary Preparation Program for Urban Foster Students, and Project Director for Urban Teaching Initiatives we seek to, collectively, create dynamic programing experiences to best serve urban populations. Yet a main determinant to confront the intricacies of urban students and their communities include making connections and building relationships, given that widespread collaborative efforts are paramount for advancing programming initiatives. As a result, this panel discussion will focus on exploring best programming practices. Panelists will bring visibility to central concerns regarding building and sustaining important urban student programing from the perspective of new administrators working, meeting goals, and making progress in their respective areas.

Humanization and the Language of Pedagogical Love: Making Paulo Freire Visible in P-12 Urban Education
Charmaine Smith-Campbell, Mercer University
This theory to practice narrative makes Freire’s humanizing approach grounded in pedagogical love visible. It is cognitively uplifting, knowledge creating, and transformative; emerging from critical social justice traditions of Horkheimer’s Frankfurt School of theorists. It empowers and educates all learners—including urban students and teachers-as-learners in its two-way educational approach.

Oscillating Visibility: Facilitating the Success of a Secondary Student with Autism in a Summer Program
Olivia Wheat, Georgia State University
Follow one teacher’s journey toward providing appropriate support for a high school student with autism, handling major issues that arose along the way, and considerations for continuing to expand ways in which educational spaces both in and out of formal school settings can be designed to foster inclusion.

Not Just Another Book Report: Doing Confianza from Reading Funds of Knowledge
Gertrude Tinker-Sachs, Ewa McGrail, Elizabeth Sanchez.
We will discuss a university Directed Reading Course using the text Funds of Knowledge. The course required reading, reporting and also doing and making visible the funds of knowledge inherent in a local community site. The road to building confianza between African Americans and Latinx in Atlanta will be discussed.