Giovanni Blair McKenzie gave this speech about supporting LGBTQ youth of color and “interlocking forms of discrimination” at the 2015 Human Rights Campaign’s Time to THRIVE conference.
Family engagement sounds good in theory, but what does it look like in practice? Special thanks to The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project and the Family and Community Engagement Team at Denver Public Schools whose work informed this PD Café.
As I head back to the classroom, I think about the last school year. In the second-to-last week of school, my fifth-grade classroom was 90 degrees, with no air conditioning. My students were sitting together, helping each other, laughing, struggling and having fun. At the beginning of the year, they were unsure of each other. They smiled politely but kept to themselves or the friends they knew and never asked for help. So what had changed?