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Fall Forum 2007 opens by inviting all of us to take a principled stand. CES Alumni share how they developed as change agents and the important issues they stand for today as engaged adult citizens. Three award-winning performance artists — Chinaka Hodge, Aya de León, and George Watsky — share thought-provoking, inspiring images and messages about what it means to stand for your beliefs, and we hear from you about what you stand for. This interactive kick-off session galvanizes the purpose and direction we need to fully embrace the learning that awaits us throughout the Fall Forum.

Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer and adjunct professor of reading and writing. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition. She is a coauthor of Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Readers’ Workshop (Heinemann, 1997), the second edition of which will be released on its 10th anniversary in 2007. In addition to extensive writing and publishing on literacy, Ellin works with schools and districts around the country and serves as a consultant to Heinemann Professional Development.

Earlier and earlier "preparation" for schooling threatens children’s worlds of wonder, exploration, imagination, and activities of the hand and body. We must come together and take a stand in defense of childhood and play. This session uses video and other examples to focus on how play and playfulness contribute to the habits essential to using our minds well and to realizing a democratic life. Participants have the opportunity to respond to the videos, ask questions, express concerns, and offer their own perspectives on the place and value of play in their work and lives.

In this interactive workshop, Aya de León utilizes videos about fighting sexism and commercialism in hip-hop, as well as creative exercises and group discussion to offer teachers a roadmap to using hip-hop in the classroom to teach media literacy, critical thinking, and gender in media. Teachers leave with a better understanding of the power, possibilities, challenges, and history of hip-hop culture, as well as the growth of hip-hop scholarship at the university level, and the opportunities hip-hop studies offer to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, politics, art, community, culture, economics and globalization.

At this town hall meeting, Forum conveners, including Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah Meier, Larry Myatt, Ted and Nancy Sizer, and George Wood, present how they see national educational policy affecting the key issues that face our schools – paying off the education debt, closing the participation gap, and reconnecting schools and their communities. Following the initial presentation, participants join discussions for helping to make The Forum’s next campaign, Strong Public Schools for a Strong Democracy, a focal point in the coming elections and legislative sessions.

We close Fall Forum 2007 with an inspiring session that showcases the award-winning documentary Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children/Para Todos los Niños. We view this film, which documents the lawsuit prohibiting school segregation in California seven years before the landmark decision of Brown vs. Board of Education. Sandra Robbie, the director of the film and Ms. Sylvia Mendez, the protagonist will speak. Our closing speaker, Ms. Alana Murray, will speak to ways of incorporating civil rights and social justice into our teaching. This session promises to challenge and fuel us to take action in defense of every child’s right to a personalized, equitable, and intellectually challenging education.

Click on the image below to view a 3-minute video clip surveying college-age students about the Mendez vs. Westminster case.