Exploring Justice and Equity Through Culturally Sustaining Practices

Download Event Flyer Here

Strand Leaders

photo of Rebecca Buchanan

Rebecca Buchanan

Associate Professor, Curriculum Assessment and Instruction

University of Maine, Orono, ME

rebecca.buchanan@maine.edu

photo of Sarah Norsworthy

Sarah Norsworthy

Independent Scholar, Consultant & Collaborator

sarah@sarahcbnorsworthy.com

Strand Description

This strand is focused on merging work around equity and justice with digital technologies in order to support educators to create meaningful change in their schools and communities. As part of the strand time will examine the key aspects of culturally sustaining pedagogies including: developing a sociocultural consciousness, asset-based thinking, tapping into students’ funds of knowledge, and advocating for change in schools and beyond. We will also explore how best to use emergent digital technologies to create more inclusive and welcoming spaces. For example, how can generative AI be used as a tool for developing culturally sustaining materials for our classrooms and schools. Finally we will analyze frameworks for considering how power operates in organizations, curricular programs, and new initiatives. These frameworks will offer new ways of thinking about our practice and the world around us.

Participants in this strand will develop an understanding of key concepts related to culturally sustaining pedagogies. They will work on building the skills for thinking and talking about this work in ways that attend to nuance and interrogate existing power dynamics. The primary outcome will be an action plan and/or personal framework for integrating more culturally sustaining approaches into their own classroom practice or educational spaces where they operate. 

Rebecca Buchanan

Rebecca Buchanan (she/her) is an assistant professor of curriculum, assessment and instruction, part of the School and Learning and Teaching at the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Buchanan studies teacher learning, broadly defined. She is interested in the intersection of personal identity, professional development, school reform, literacy and language. She employs qualitative methods and discourse analysis to investigate how teachers learn in and across multiple contexts by connecting their own personal and professional pasts with the present. 

Sarah Norsworthy

Sarah Norsworthy holds her M.Ed in Reading Education from the University of New Hampshire, is a University of Maine trained literacy coach and a doctoral student at Northeastern University. She has coached educators and taught students from preschool through 6th grades. Sarah believes that actively countering the symptoms of systemic racism through noticing and naming the ways in which white dominant culture functions in the United States might allow us to construct and deliver a just, culturally and emotionally responsive education. Her work is grounded in, but not limited to, implications for literacy instruction that strengthens emotional literacy and how we might leverage digital educational technology in service to our work. Sarah has run strands of Summer Tech in the past and supports SEL instruction across Maine.

Download Event Flyer Here