Monday, June 19, 2023
2:00 p.m. ET
Join NCTE and NCTE’s Black Caucus for our third annual commemoration of Juneteenth in the event “Liberatory Literacies: Teaching Multimedia and the Arts.”
This event is open to NCTE members. Join NCTE today.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
BernNadette Best-Green, PhD, is an associate professor of education and English at San Joaquin Delta College located within the California Central Valley in the city of Stockton. BernNadette is a published author who seeks to help bridge the gap between theory and research involving classroom practice that improves language education for ethnolinguistically minoritized and multidialectal youth whose linguistic dexterity and plurality enable them to blend and alternate between the standard and nonstandard “Englishes” within their linguistic repertoires in creative, dynamic, and expansive ways. Her research is inspired by her experience as a veteran K–12 educator (teacher, administrator, program coordinator) and practitioner-researcher of culturally diverse African American, Asian American, and Latinx elementary and middle school students in Northern California.
Dr. Best-Green is also a seasoned practitioner-researcher and an ardent teacher educator who is passionate about recruiting, supporting, and preparing diverse, equity-minded aspiring and pre-service teachers to serve our increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse K–12 classrooms. At Delta College, Dr. Best-Green coordinates the Faculty Equity Training Academy (FETA) where she teaches a two-semester course that guides faculty cohorts through the process of researching, designing, executing, and evaluating practitioner inquiry projects that are designed to support historically marginalized and disproportionately impacted student subgroups by improving teaching and learning within their own classrooms.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Hodari Davis is a partner and chief innovation officer of Edutainment for Equity (E4E) an Oakland-based media and consulting company. E4E works with companies, organizations, city governments, and school districts applying innovative practices and professional development training aimed at dismantling systems of oppression. Hodari is a faculty member at the Institute for the Future and a doctoral student at the UC Davis School of Education. He has presented at conferences, festivals, forums, and universities all over the world. Hodari is also a multimodal artist and poet whose latest project, “Exhibit A: Oakland,” an interactive data visualization project on anti-Blackness in Oakland, premiered in 2022 at the Life is Living Festival. As a longtime resident of Oakland, Hodari is honored to have been inducted as an inaugural member of the Bay Area Hip Hop Archives.
Temptaous Mckoy, PhD, is an assistant professor of English with a focus in technical and professional communication (TPC), as well as the coordinator of graduate studies in the Department of Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies at Bowie State University. Her research focuses on redefining the field of TPC and challenging it to be more inclusive of the (in)formal communicative and learning practices as found in Black communities, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). She is an HBCU alum (Elizabeth City State University) and also a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. She obtained her BA in English from Elizabeth City State University (’13); her MA in professional communication and leadership (’15) from Armstrong State University (Now Georgia Southern at Armstrong); and her PhD in rhetoric, writing, and professional communication from East Carolina University (’19). She is the author of a three-time award-winning dissertation: “Y’all Call It Technical and Professional Communication, We Call It #ForTheCulture,” as well. Recently, she served as chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Black Technical and Professional Communication Task Force. In addition, she is one of the coeditors of the Technical Communications Quarterly Black Technical Communication Special Issue, published July 2022.
Dr. Donja Thomas is a passionate educator, activist, writer, scholar, keynote speaker, and Black studies curriculum developer from Columbus, Ohio. She is committed to establishing learning spaces of introspection that generate more critical and expansive understandings about cultural consciousness and equity-focused teaching, learning, and service.
For over a decade, she has been engaged in creating classroom curriculums that center the use of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, critical conscious literacies, and the importance of employing curricular practices rooted in the Black experience (literary, historical, and cultural) inside and outside the classroom, in order to advance Black Studies and Critical Studies in K–12 schooling.
Dr. Thomas’ academic endeavors have received support from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Pulitzer Center and New York Times’s 1619 Project Education Network, Pittsburgh Public Schools Leadership Academy, Ohio English Association Educational Foundation, and Ohio Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts, among other notable organizations. She is also the author of several publications centering the role of Black studies, Black culture, and literacy in education.