Main Stage: Opportunity-Centered Teaching in the "New" Focus on Race

The Black Lives Matter movement has been amplified dramatically this year, as millions of people in the United States took to the streets to protest police violence. Schools have an incredible opportunity to use this momentum and movement to deeply reimagine the curriculum and teaching in schools. Rather than returning to normalcy—to stale, dated, predetermined, irrelevant, under-responsive, disconnected, and “racially neutral” curriculum and instructional practices that maintain a white-centric status quo—teachers have a chance instead to address what I call opportunity gaps in education through opportunity-centered practices. In this session, I will describe and discuss major features and examples of these practices with connections to language and literacy.