Meet the Presenters

Get ready to transform!

Click below to view our amazing lineup from the Q10 Beyond Talk: Sustaining Equity in Education Conference!

Starting the Talk: Why is Q10 important for ensuring the success of our scholars?

Presented by Dr. Talisa Sullivan, Jennifer Borrelli, Sandy Shacklady-White, and Christine Gaynor-Patterson


Beyond Talk Part One: Join TLC Consultants as they Start the Talk about Q10. Come with us on this journey and explore the theories, practices, and frameworks that connect the Q10 elements. Explore the importance of the Q10 for student success.


Beyond Talk Part Two: What does the intentional integration of the Quantum Ten look like in schools and districts? Join TLC Consultants as they go Beyond Talk about Equity and the Q10. We will continue on the journey and engage participants in the intentional integration of the Q10 elements. Engage with us on this journey to intentionally integrating evidence-based best practices in supporting our diverse learners.

Facilitating Disruptive Conversations on Racial Dynamics in Post-Apartheid Staffrooms

Presented by Victoria Simpson and Danielle van Rooyen


Using Q10 elements within post-conflict spaces to facilitate the move beyond enforced policy changes and encourage teachers to espouse the characteristics of the transformative intellectual and develop sustainable ABAR practices: An examination of dialogue-based workshops in formerly white-only schools, in South Africa.

Facilitating Disruptive Conversations on Racial Dynamics in Post-Apartheid Staffrooms

Presented by Victoria Simpson and Danielle van Rooyen


Using Q10 elements within post-conflict spaces to facilitate the move beyond enforced policy changes and encourage teachers to espouse the characteristics of the transformative intellectual and develop sustainable ABAR practices: An examination of dialogue-based workshops in formerly white-only schools, in South Africa.

Interrogating Power, Privilege, and Identity in Community-Based Engagements

Presented by Tiwana Merritt and Constance Collins


Community engagement offers a window into the complex lives of those who often find themselves marginalized and ‘access poor’. These complexities exist both aboard and close to home. This workshop will give us space to reflect critically on the ways we navigate our local and international spaces, devising ways we can meaningfully take part in community engagement with our faculty, families and students.


How do we shift the paradigm from one of giving and receiving to one of collaboration and empowerment? How do we lead with empathy and seek understanding rather than making assumptions about the needs of others?

Educational Equity through Principal Resiliency 

Presented by Tasha Cobleggin


Is your commitment to working towards educational equity being overshadowed by feelings of physical and emotional fatigue? If so, use this session time to commit to refocusing and renewing to foster long-term resiliency.

Document Today! Promote Authentic Engagement Through Integrating SEL and the Arts

Presented by Robin Williams, Carissa Marin, and Susan Young


“Document Today” is an intentional approach for social and emotional well-being. It is about encouraging our students to use the arts to share their feelings about the world we find ourselves in, and how they are coping emotionally with this pandemic. Simply… “To Encourage Artful Healing for Student Success. “ Participants will explore how dance, music, theater, visual arts, and literary arts can be integrated into daily instruction in order to give all students a voice.

Establishing Partnerships between School and CLD Families of Students with Disabilities; Challenges and Strategies

Presented by Soraya Fallah


This presentation is about creating partnerships between school, community, and culturally and linguistically Diverse (CLD) families of students with disabilities from the Middle Eastern /North African/ Southwest Asian (MENASWA) population.


Students with disabilities from CLD families of MENASWA descent are often not recorded in the United States Special Education system due to their racial classification as White. This presentation pays particular attention to those families whose voices are often unheard and describes the experiences of these families and their children who have been identified in the U.S. Special Education system. The main needs of these students, barriers to partnering with the population of the study, and some concrete strategies for improving partnerships will be analyzed.

Meet ALI: A model to intentionally operationalize the Q10 framework, applying SEL, culturally responsive pedagogy, identity development, to achieve improved life outcomes for Black teens.

Presented by Shazel Muhammad


Black youth need to know where they come from. African Link Initiative (ALI) is an evidence-based identity development program that transforms how youth of African descent see and experience their world by first transforming how they see and experience themselves. The program has three parts and culminates in a birthright trip to Ghana. In ALI, teens explore and answer 3 questions which are critical to identity development: where do I come from? Where am I now? Where can I go/grow from here? Part 1 of the journey begins with teens taking an AfricanAncestry.com DNA test to trace their specific African lineage.

The Agile Mind. How Agility Can Transform Education

Presented by Jessica Cavallaro and Roslynn Jackson


In this session, we will learn about the basics of agile, how it can be integrated into the classroom, and the results we have experienced while hybrid teaching.

S.H.I.F.T-ing Inclusive Practices through Related Services is where it’s AT

Presented by Elisa Wern, and Mia Laudato, and Dr. Hillary Goldthwait Fowles

Inner Space? – What Happens Inside a Learner’s Head?

Presented by Liz Keable


David Boud et al (1985) wrote about the “need to appreciate that what emerges from the learning activity will be determined more by the learner, than by the person who designed the activity.” So what goes on inside a learner’s head? We would normally engage with students based on their physical presence in the classroom, what they say, and how they behave because that is what we have in front of us. But what if we imagined instead, a group of floating brains, none of them empty, but filled with previous experiences, varying passions, and a whole range of attitudes towards learning. What then?

Multiple Narratives: Identity Development for Brave Spaces

Presented by Kris Stanec


What if educators establish their learning communities as brave spaces for students to share their prior knowledge and lived experiences? What if students felt that their voices and cultural identities mattered to their teachers and classmates? In this session, learn how to use Multiple Narratives, an inclusive pedagogy that facilitates authentic connections between works of art and students’ intersectional identities. Experience how to layer this approach as a component of several Q10 Elements, first allowing students time to develop their identity, while cultivating students who listen for understanding; then use Multiple Narratives to open dialogues for increased learning across disciplines.

Dismantling Barriers to Equity: Using Identity and UDL to Increase our Antiracist Practices

Presented by Jennifer Borrelli and Robin Williams


We invite participants to examine their instruction through the lens of the social identities of their learners. In order to plan equitable learning experiences, we must look beyond the dominant culture. We believe that understanding race and racism allows us to consider other ways that learners have been pushed to the margins. Through this lens, we can examine other identities and how they intersect with multiple barriers to learning. We seek to honor learner identity as we universally design instruction and inclusive culture for our underestimated learners.

SEL in Action: a case study of social emotional learning as a tool in Education in Emergencies in Nigeria

Presented by Ify Nwigwe


Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has become a very important component for teaching children in emergency situations all over the world. Schools in emergencies (Refugee camps, volatile host communities, crisis-prone areas) are meant to protect children from the physical dangers around them including abuse, exploitation, and recruitment into armed groups. We hope to sensitize the attendees to better understand and design education in emergency contexts, with a particular focus on SEL. It will also serve as a platform to share the successes and challenges of SEL action in Refugee camps in Nigeria.

Empowering Independent Learning using an Agile/Scrum approach to UDL

Presented by Heather Cowap


You love everything about UDL – except constantly chasing after students going in multiple directions as they choose from the different resources you provide them, and then work through a range of various modes of representing their learning. It (almost) makes you wish you could go back to the old way where everyone was doing the same thing at the same time and you weren’t pulling your hair out trying to track everyone’s work!


In this session I will introduce you to a classroom structure which allows those electron students to travel in the direction of optimal learning they need to take, and maintain your sanity! By setting up your classroom structure to empower students to be accountable for their work and time, learn the skills for time and work management, collaboration and communication practices and build in classroom routines which keep everyone on track.

Creating Safe Spaces: Trauma-Informed Solutions for Learning Spaces

Presented by Gary Audas Jr.


Trauma-informed interventions are a necessary part of any systems-level attempt by learning institutions to mitigate the effects of trauma on their learners. Creating Safe Spaces: Trauma-Informed Solutions for Learning Spaces provides teachers, students, and organization staff with the opportunity to realize how the reduction of conflict in classrooms can and will aid in bringing more equitable outcomes for all students. This is especially true for historically marginalized students. This training is aligned with Q-10 elements such as providing safe spaces and instilling in teachers and staff the necessity of being sensitive to trauma-affected students. It especially addresses how deficits in school systems can be remedied and work toward filling in the dearth of such system-level interventions.

Why the Barriers of Study Manifest in Behavioral Issues

Presented by Éva Szekeres

 

Solving the Home/ Online schooling Puzzle and reducing the anxiety of teaching your children and education. With many schools staying closed for in-person teaching at the start of term, many “working from home and professional mums are faced with maintaining a work/life balance along with the extra challenges of coping with their child’s online education. Teaching your children can be hard and even a struggle day in and day out during the lockdown. However, there with a little planning and goal setting you can create a home learning environment for your kids that will facilitate the reduction of anxiety during the current situation.

Microaggressions As A Trigger to Trauma

Presented by Erikca Brown and Janecia Rolland


Participants will engage in selected material before the session that provides an introduction to micro-aggressions to provide a context for understanding the experiences of BIPOC and other marginalized people. In light of these experiences’ participants will gain an understanding of the way in which experiences with microaggressions inform the behaviors and practices and will develop an understanding of the dilemmas faced by marginalized people groups when confronting microaggressions. The selected material will serve as a primer to delve into the ways in which experiences with microaggressions may serve as a trigger(s) to trauma. 

Multi-Tiered System of Supports for Adults: Supporting the whole educator

Presented by Dr. Shelley Holt


For years educators have been told to put their own masks on first and now there is a well overdue renewed interest in self-care, mindfulness and healthy living to manage the impacts of primary and secondary trauma. If educators are mentally, physically and emotionally healthy they can better serve the needs of our students. Building support into the system to meet adults where they are and support their trauma will impact employee satisfaction, retention and lead to greater relationships with students and colleagues. We will outline the thinking and process to build an MTSS for adults.

Centering the Abundance within Black Families to Support Students

Presented by Dr. Yvette Latunde


Come and examine the possibilities for building more equitable, culturally informed, and evidence-based partnerships among Black families, communities, and schools. Learn about evidence-based practices associated with improved student outcomes for Black students. Learn “other ways of knowing,” or people’s lived experiences, understanding that science is still catching up on its knowledge of what works for Black families and students. The processes begin with the abundance within families and communities in mind, transfers power, builds capacity, and fosters collective responsibility and collective decision-making in schools.

Teacher Resiliency: Assuaging Teacher Burnout in Secondary Schools

Presented by Dr. L. Brooks


Secondary educators of at-risk populations have an almost impossible job educating adolescents. The vocation is filled with stressors: increased amounts of paper-work, lack of administrative support, high-stakes testing, technology integration, difficult students/parents. These stressors cause many teachers to experience burnout and/or leave the profession. However, within schools, there are those resilient teachers who continue to remain positive elements of the school culture and educate students. This presentation will highlight the commonalities of these resilient teachers and the potential to bring that knowledge to the professional lives of their peers.

How to Improve Digital Accessibility with Graphic Design Theory

Presented by Dawn DiPeri


Digital accessibility and graphic design theory can close equity gaps in the digital divide. By implementing small changes to curricular materials educators can improve access and lower barriers for learners. In this workshop participants will learn basic graphic design and how to apply it to reduce the cognitive load. Topics on color contrast and selection, typography, layout, and user experience design will be discussed along with visual examples of best practices. Participants will walk away with a new skillset that not only helps improve learning but also teaches an in-demand skillset in which they can apply to their equity toolkit. The 1-hour workshop will center on meeting the needs of diverse learners with digital accessibility to ensure we are providing the most inclusive classrooms we can.

Aligning CLR with PBIS: Enhancing Your PBIS with Validation and Affirmation

Presented by Daniel Russell, EdD


Since the 1970s, Black students have received disproportionate exclusionary discipline. Despite different discipline trends in education, this discipline chasm persists. The Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework has been positioned as a potential solution for mitigating this pernicious disparity, yet research has shown that this has not consistently been the case. To realize the goal of equitable experiences for Black students, it is essential that PBIS be culturally and linguistically responsive implemented. This breakout session will explore why PBIS needs to be aligned with cultural and linguistic responsiveness and how this can be done.

Why Small Victories Matter: Transforming Higher Ed One Teacher At a Time

Presented by Caroline Varin


How to change an education system that is not fit for the 21st century? Most programs and educators have been teaching students in the same manner for the past 100 years, focusing on skills and techniques that are no longer relevant for today and tomorrow’s workforce. Professors Without Borders has initiated a project that recruits inspiring educators and enables them to share their passion and skills with under-served and under-represented university students and faculty in 2-week long programs around the world. Through this model, students have been offered access to alternative and engaging learning strategies, which have subsequently been replicated by local faculty and will begin to inspire change with the next generation of leaders and teachers. This presentation will lay out the obstacles in inspiring change in education systems and explain how these have been overcome by a network of motivated and passionate educators.

Equity in Action 

Presented by Antoinette Fulcher Gutierrez


If you have been engaged in equity work, and consider yourself an ally for those who have been marginalized, especially the black community, but don’t know “what’s next”. We have something for you. We have created a format to get you started. Answering “how can I turn my beliefs in kids into action in making a true difference?” We will show you our training (it’s free for now) on how to start leading conversations about race. We will take you through a thought-provoking piece, then break it down into the pieces you need to help others grow.

Inclusive Music Practices for K-2 with a Focus on Online Learning

Presented by Dr. Angela Guerriero and Dr. Carol Ann Blank


Music-making in the early elementary (K-2) inclusion classroom is a prime opportunity to include all learners. Universal Design for Learning provides guidance for teachers to embed inclusive practices and participants will experience tools to scaffold learning using rhythm, melody, and timbre (sound quality) as vehicles for learning. This session addresses the importance of music as a crucial component of a well-rounded student. Singing and rhythm are our first languages and are culturally situated. Since learning happens in a variety of ways, a focus on on-line learning is included to address the technological challenges and benefits of virtual learning.

Co-Constructing Education

Presented by Alejandro Cisneros


Educators understand that engaging families is an important component of successful teaching; many of these same educators feel underprepared to engage with families. School and district family engagement efforts historically focus outward at educating parents, while foregoing building the capacity of educators to forge authentic partnerships with families. Founded on the concepts of authentic partnership, social justice leadership, democratic decision making, and relational trust, this session will engage educators in a reflection of praxis, with an analysis of future engagement goals. Educators will create plans with concrete strategies using existing tools to forge authentic partnerships with the families they serve.

How to Walk When Your Feet Are on Fire: Knowing the Right Pace When Implementing DEI

Presented by Dr. Judy D. White


We know that there is a sense of urgency around building race relationships and implementing the best practices for diversity, equity and inclusion. The pressure makes most of us want to run quickly to solutions and programs that accelerate becoming anti racist and “woke”. However there is an effective pace that must be recognized in order to meet our goals. Too fast and too slow will not yield the needed results to improve decades of racism. Successful implementation of programs, trainings, awareness, practices and policies must be paced. There are ten considerations that a seasoned retired County Superintendent and current College Vice Chancellor will explore in an interactive way with the audience. You have to know how to walk to and reach the destination when your feet are on fire and you want to run. Every educator and community member, will develop their personalized pace that is unique to their organization. They will learn to read the markers, and know when to sprint. Equity for all must not be abandoned. Miles McPherson’s Third Option Similarity Training will be introduced as an approach that helps with racial healing while addressing the barriers that keep us trapped in a cycle of discrimination and gap maintenance. Learn how pace is part of the solution.

Infusing Community and Family Engagement within the Q10 Framework

Presented by Marianne Gribbon and Vincenzo Renda


We likely feel the impact of COVID-19, but we may not fully understand it. It is clear that COVID called the entire system we operate within into question (standardized testing, systems of “support,” medical field, etc.). How do we now deliver when we are all questioning the world we live in? How do we work with our colleagues, when we – ourselves – are trying to make sense of what has just happened? This session will provide researched-based techniques into how we move forward together utilizing the Quantum 10.

Leading Cultural Change with PLCs

Presented by Nina Thomas


Need to change your school’s culture? Want to encourage teacher collaboration, collegiality, and self-reflection? Join us for a look at how appropriately implemented Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) can help instructors develop a growth mindset, own their programs, and transform your school culture into a more positive environment that helps all staff improve their effectiveness. This session will highlight the PLC implementation process used at Tehachapi Mountain Adult School, examine how it has impacted our school’s culture and student learning, and provide practical tools and resources for implementing PLCs in schools. Examine how the PLCs can be a first step to implementing Q10.

Ending the White Supremacy School: Creating School as a Home of Opportunity

Presented by Pamela Moran and Ira David Socol


What happens when you eliminate Honor Rolls and Honors Courses? Or stop telling kids where and how to sit? Or transform your school library with music studios and maker spaces? Stop talking about equity and take actions to transform your school into a place that closes the opportunity gap as your next year begins. Ira Socol and Pam Moran proved what was possible in a highly diverse/income unequal public school system, and this workshop will help each participant discover what they can do and how to do it. Not a recipe, but a path crafted for each unique situation.

Q10 Beyond Talk: Sustaining Equity in Education Superintendent Panel

Michael Matsuda, Dr. Avis Williams, Dr. Jennifer Root, Lori Gonzalez, Dr. Nick Polyak, and Zandra Jo Galvan

Moderated by: Dr. Renae Bryant

Concussion Awareness: What Educators Need to Know

Presented by Dr. Felicia Conlan, Dr. Nancy Manasse-Cohick, Aaron Weinstein, Brittany Bingham, MA, ATC, LAT, and Dr. Lisa D’Angelo

 

Concussions are traumatic brain injuries that can affect learning, social interactions, and return to play for student-athletes. A multi-disciplinary panel including speech-language pathologists, an athletic trainer, and a performance coach, provide insights on the symptoms, complexity, and effects of injury, cognitive-communication issues, social-emotional concerns, and disrupted sleep. Strategies to help students recover from this invisible injury will be presented as well as the needs and challenges student-athletes face returning to the classroom, daily living, and sports play. Information on prevention, assessment, treatment, as well as the need for interprofessional concussion management, are included in this interactive seminar.

Intergenerational Historical Trauma: Growing and Restoring to Reach our Potential

Presented by Dr. Angela Clark Louque, Dr. Kivalahula-Uddin, and Dr. Carmen Beck

This session will discuss intergenerational trauma in the African American, Native American and Latin X cultures. Research has suggested that we cannot learn to our potential until we have healed and grown to reach our potential. Differences and similarities in these three cultures suggest that as collectivists groups, they are more prone to suffer from intergenerational trauma. Intergenerational historical trauma is the endurance of historical oppression usually brought on by a preponderance of negative and systemic environments. As a result of much of the trauma, needs have not been met and this void leaves people stunted in their growth. We will discuss possible solutions for educators that include strategies that are relevant to cultural constructs such as relational strategies, relevance and value laden curriculum as well as real-life application value for self and community.

Bashing Barriers, Changing Mindsets, and moving to Inclusive Learning for All (Moving Past the “Yeah, buts…”)

Presented by Christopher R. Bugaj, Beth Poss, Mike Marotta, and Karen Janowski

Your Equity Action Plan and Beyond!

Presented by Dr. Delores B. Lindsey, Dr. Randall B. Lindsey, Dr. Peter Flores, III, and Dr. Jamie E. Welborn

Your team has completed the collaborative Equity Action Plan. Now what? Join the “Pod Cast” style presentation and find our what to do next to insure the action plan is actually implemented. Four nationally recognized equity champions will engage in a conversation centered around guiding questions that takes leadership teams to and through the implementation stage of the equity action plan using the Cultural Proficiency framework. Success stories will be shared to demonstrate the importance of moving beyond the plan.

Synergism: Health and Successful Living!

Presented by Liz Arango-Howshall

Synergy comes from the inside out, with a harmonious mind leading to a life in alignment with diversity, as diversity is a pre-requisite for health and successful living.

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