Workshop Presentations
7:15 pm - 8:30 pm
Room 1-147 - Educating Black Children: Whose Responsibility is it?
Presented by Steve White
There are three institutions most responsible for educating Black children:
- The home which includes first and foremost the parents and to a large extent, the surrounding community.
- The educational system which consists primarily of the public schools
- The media which includes music, television, movies, books & magazines, and social media.
Based on data and our own observations, all the above-named institutions have failed to properly educate Black children. In this presentation, we will examine the role and responsibility of each institution.
- What is it that parents should be doing and have failed to do?
- What is it that the school system should be doing and has failed to do?
- How has the media contributed to the miseducation of Black children?
Black children have suffered while the adults who are responsible for their growth and development have pointed the fingers at each other or worse yet, have blamed the children for their miseducation.
After examining the roles and responsibilities, we will offer detailed and real solutions to the challenges facing Black children. Everyone attending will leave understanding the challenges and what they can do in their respective places to make sure Black children receive an education that will help them reach their full potential.
Room 1-148 - Point 5: Knowledge Of Self
Presented by Amlak-Foley I
This session will focus on helping the community develop an understanding of how to ensure that schools are providing students with an experience that involves knowledge of self. This entails creating opportunities for Black students to make connections with the authentic history and dynamic culture that they derive from. Students that have true knowledge of self will have a precise understanding of their position in society and in the world.
Room 1-152 - Black Books and Literature: Escaping Through Books
Presented by Akbar Watson
This session will concentrate on exploring how to engage readers in reflective and inquisitive processes encouraging them to question and challenge their own cultural and social realities. Readers will be encouraged to think critically and reflect upon contemporary social ideologies, identity, agency , the environment, and others. Children and teenagers are encouraged to use Black Books as models for examining their real world.
Some Black Book Genres to be studied include:
- Superhero fiction
- Comics and Pulp Magazines
- Non- Fiction
Historically, Black literature has provided a moral compass that teaches lessons that enables the reader to cope with his/her circumstances and look forward to a time when the lessons that have been learned through reading and absorbing the moral world of “right” will help them in their future endeavors.