Summer ended on a high note for more than 250 educators across the district who attended the 2022 SEAD Conference: The Socially Just Educator. The three-day conference, organized by the Department of Organizational Learning, took place July 26-28 at Lanier High School.
It was a return to in-person learning for the grant-funded conference, which was put on hold in 2020 and went virtual in 2021. The event featured 25 different presenters and eight community groups to help attendees understand the history, the community, and the culture of their students; to understand curriculum and instruction from an equity point of view; and to reflect on their own practices.
"The SEAD Conference was the best conference I've attended in SAISD,” Ed Tech instructional specialist Carrie Shell said. “The presenters were knowledgeable, intelligent, relevant, and purposeful.”
The conference opened with keynote speaker Madalyn Mendoza, a local writer who has published work on the continued effects of redlining in San Antonio. The session was helpful both for educators who are not from San Antonio and for those locals who may not have known the staggering, multifaceted results of the nearly century-old redlining policies in their hometown.
“The keynote speaker offered a historical perspective of San Antonio's communities regarding inequalities not only in education but our everyday walks in life,” behavior implementation specialist Kevin Howell said. “I am not native to Texas, and the session led perfectly into the next session.”
From the keynote, participants walked through the San Antonio Community Exhibit, a museum-style gallery walk with eight different organizations who shared the past, present and future of our students. The exhibit also featured San Antonio ISD student artwork and poems students wrote about the kind of teachers they hope to have.
“The whole conference was designed to help teachers see how they can apply the knowledge they gain and make this year better for their students and really serve them,” Dixie Valdez, professional development coordinator, and one of the conference’s organizers, said.
The conference then gave attendees the opportunity to choose from 40 sessions over the next two and a half days, a quarter of which had a virtual option, featuring the 25 speakers. Many of the speakers have national recognition, including authors Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul and Jason Reynolds, who co-authored Stamped adaptations for kids and teenagers, and Dr. Paul Gorski and Dr. Marceline Dubose from the Equity Literacy Institute.
“The sessions I attended started productive conversations that are important to have if we as teachers are going to properly serve our students,” Highlands High School art teacher Rachel Alvarado said. “Loudest Missing Voices (Dubose) stressed the importance of tapping into student and family knowledge to enhance engagement and deeper understanding.”
Another popular speaker was Lorena Germán, a cofounder of the groups #DisruptTexts and Multicultural Classroom, who had sessions on Restorative Writing and Textured Teaching.
“I attended Lorena Germán’s Restorative Writing for Teachers session,” Janet Hester, director for secondary reading-language arts, said. “She provided space and time for us as educators to grapple with our current realities and truth through writing, reinforcing writing as a form of powerful self-care. We worked through several thoughtful writing prompts and ended the day connecting our cathartic experience with writing to the need to provide the same opportunity for students.”
The conference was full of intentional offerings to uplift teachers, including opportunities to lunch and learn while enjoying catered lunches funded by the Teacher and School Leader Grant. There was also an evening with an author, featuring a catered meal and a discussion with Dr. Bryan Hotchkins, author of “My Black is Exhausted.”
The conference involved collaboration from several departments: academics, SEAD, disability services, and many volunteers. Organizers Valdez and Therese Shields, director of the Teacher and School Leader Grant, said they hoped the training felt relevant for teachers and gave them the tools they needed for this moment in education.
“With the ever-changing society that’s out there, we’re getting more and more students that are from other countries, and we still clearly have racial tensions that are occurring throughout the city and throughout the country,” Shields said. “When we think about how we engage students, especially how we engage students after a pandemic, we need to really focus on what’s relevant to them. We need to know their cultures, we need to know their families, we need to know their communities.”