Photo: Evergreen Students Callista Lahney and Zoe Chamberlain (left to right) at NWTSJ Conference, Khristine Sandwith
By Khristine Sandwith
On Oct. 19, 2019, Evergreen students attended the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice (NWTSJ) conference in Seattle, Washington. The conference ran for its 12th year at Chief Sealth International High School, teaching and inspiring educators to get involved in social justice through the education system to strengthen their schools, students, and community. Educators around Washington and Oregon at different education levels came together to become more supportive of their students, schools, and the overall community.
The conference held workshops created and presented by educators, with each workshop’s intention being to provide multiple social justice outlets and create diversity amongst students, educators, and community learning. One sample of the workshops includes Breaking Out of Gender Boxes, taught by Blair Hennessy and Ben Malbin from Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. The main goal of their workshop was to visualize what people wanted gender equality to look like in their daily environment. This was done by understanding how gender affects personal and social development. Malbin and Hennessy used a discussion setting to ask participants their experiences, in which they noticed patterns of shame for not wanting to follow gender roles. Overall, most people reflected back on gender roles they were told when they were kids, while they were growing up, and how gender roles changed over time.
Students from Evergreen’s Diversity and Dissent in Media and Education program (taught by professors Leslie Flemmer and Grace Huerta) attended this conference. The program itself studies representations given in media and education, both modern and in the past. Throughout the fall quarter, students have studied Latinx and Native American representation in media through films and readings. At the NWTSJ conference (a conference on modern political and cultural issues incorporating education and media), students learned about different issues and perspectives that open more opportunities for representation in education.
During the conference one of Huerta and Flemmer’s students, Merina Fatherree, was surprised by the historical lack of diversity and inclusiveness in the education system. She studied these injustices during the workshops: Gender and Reproductive Justice: A Key Part of Sexuality Education, and It’s Not Enough: Bringing Women Back in American History. From those workshops, she learned about historical female figures that aren’t traditionally taught about in education systems. The first workshop she attended discussed how women broke gender roles in the Civil War by participating as soldiers through cross-dressing. Her third workshop taught gender and reproductive justice from the 1630s to 2014. She questioned how education limited, and continues limiting, its gender and racial representation. She remembered when historical figures of color were mentioned in her school and realized that they were only mentioned once or twice in the whole curriculum.
“Even though I’m not an educator, I think it’s important for people who are educators and aren’t going to education fields… to attend these things and see the plight teachers and educators are facing so that they can be allies for movements,” Fatherree said.
Students and teachers had varied experiences regarding diversity at the conference. As a Latinx advocate and teacher at Evergreen, Grace Huerta was eager to attend the conference. Huerta has a background working with Latinx students and their families, and she’s always finding more ways to support students overall. Currently, Huerta is working with and supporting Evergreen students in the Latinx studies or those who want to study in that particular field. She’s also helping potential educators who are involved in helping undocumented students. Regarding her connection to helping Latinx people, Huerta said: “What I learned over time is that we have so much work to do and it never gets old. I’ve been teaching for nearly 34 years at the high school and higher education levels and they’re always new problems, they’re always new challenges, but there’s also just wonderful opportunities for solidarity and to support folks.”
To Huerta, the conference offered an opportunity to understand educators from different levels of education. “As a college professor today, I don’t get to spend a lot of time with high school teachers, other than with brief supervision of student teachers. But during the conference I got a wonderful opportunity to sit with English teachers, ESL (English as a second language) teachers who are working with students and families…in very different ways from what I do today at Evergreen, at the college level. It was great seeing and meeting young new teachers who have such great energy to support students,” Huerta said.
I joined professors Huerta and Flemmer in the session Ethnic Studies Block: Decolonizing Your Classroom: Students and Teachers. While sessions were aimed towards educators, I was able to reflect on my personal experiences from school. Informing educators about the struggles that I had during high school allowed me to open up more throughout the day. As a student, my voice also provided schools with an opportunity to reflect upon the education system.
The second session of the Ethnic Studies workshop mainly created a discussion of the desired image of the ethnic studies class in the high school curriculum. Educators got a chance to listen to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council, and Edmonds School District student leaders about this image.
While some of the students didn’t attend the program, they still advocated the importance of the ethnic studies curriculum, which dives into how cultural power impacts people of different identities and exploring social justice. To them, it was about bringing awareness of uncomfortable topics in our global climate, but also being okay with the uncomfortable.
Overall, the NWTSJ conference motivated Evergreen students to make a difference in their community. While there is no one way of doing so, finding the passion in a specific field is the first step in making a career of enriching your community.
