In most U.S. education institutions, people who are outspoken about racism face harsher repercussions than those who are quietly perpetuating racist policies and practices. Too often, racial equity efforts are paced to prioritize the comfort of people resisting the efforts over an unbending commitment to racial justice. What’s rewarded is the illusion of racial equity; what’s punished is the demand for antiracism. What might our racial justice efforts look like if they were driven by that antiracism commitment? In this talk, Dr. Paul Gorski will share what he calls the "basic principles of equity literacy" to help avoid common racial equity detours and maximize the transformative potential of our racial justice work in education.
Dr. Gorski is the founder of the Equity Literacy Institute and EdChange. He has 20 years of experience helping educators strengthen their equity efforts in classrooms, schools, and districts. He has worked with educators in 48 states and a dozen countries. Paul has published more than 70 articles and has written, co-written, or co-edited twelve books on various aspects of educational equity including Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap and Case Studies on Diversity and Social Justice Education (with Seema Pothini). He is the author of the Multicultural Pavilion, an online compendium of free resources for educators. Paul earned a Ph.D. in Educational Evaluation at the University of Virginia and was a teacher for 15 years.
