Django Paris delivers Second Keynote and Workshop: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

The Equity and Advocacy Committee and NYC Men Teach welcomed back Django Paris on March 12th for his second talk titled, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in the Current Moment (Reflecting) Forward. With over 100 participants, including students, faculty and community members this talk defined Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy as teaching that seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation and revitalization.

As done in the fall, Dr. Paris opened his interactive keynote with a land acknowledgement stating that we are on the stolen land of the Lenni Lenape people and took it a step further to recommend we read and advance books by native writers, such as Debbie Reese. During his interactive keynote, Django Paris reminded us to listen and build reading lists to make sure we are growing while we engage in equity and justice work. The interactive keynote opened with Olivia Roach and featured the Culturally Sustaining work of School of Education students and faculty – Megan Moskop, Myrna Gatica, Matthew Blake, and Dr. Carla Espana. The conversation ended with a call to action asking us all to think about, “How can we work together to sustain our students and communities?”