Challenging Bias in Education

Description

Challenging Bias in Education
Presented by: Dr. Raul Fernandez

This four-hour workshop will explore how our personal identities and experiences impact our view of the events and people around us and our work. Participants will explore the concepts of positionality, implicit bias, intersectionality, and allyship through presentations, breakout conversations, and facilitated discussions. They will learn from each other by sharing their own experiences, successes, and missteps. Participants will develop a firm understanding of their role and responsibility in advancing justice through practice and policy making.

1. Attendees will learn how their positionality (their unique blend of identities and experiences) impacts how they see the world and other people and, critically, how they approach their advocacy.
2. Attendees will learn how our implicit biases can lead to misunderstanding of people different from ourselves, which can lead to bad policy, practice, and advocacy decisions.
3. Attendees will consider how our intersectional identities impact our experiences of the people, events, and systems around us and how intersectionality needs to be considered in our advocacy and policy-making.
4. Attendees will better understand the characteristics of effective allyship and how to incorporate effective allyship into their advocacy.

About The Presenter:

Dr. Raul Fernandez is a Lecturer and former Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development where he studies, writes, and teaches about inequities in education. He is also an appointee to the Racial Imbalance Advisory Council of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and was recently named a Public Impact Scholar by the Initiative on Cities.

In the last few years alone, he researched and wrote a piece that helped topple a monument to white supremacy, created a film and conversation series that engaged thousands of participants in challenging dialogues on social justice issues, and trained thousands more in developing equitable policies and practices at institutions throughout the country and beyond.

Dr. Fernandez is also a member of Brookline Select Board – the first Latinx person elected to that position. He currently serves as vice chair of the Select Board as well as chair of Brookline’s Small Business Development Committee, which he founded. He also led the successful efforts to create a working group designed to better support the Brookline Housing Authority and its residents, a Racial Equity Advancement Fund, and a task force focused on reimagining public safety.