Mary is a fourth-grade teacher in Salem, Oregon. Each day she leaves the classroom with pockets full of intercepted notes and gratitude for the opportunity to learn with a roomful of 9-year-olds.
Elisa Pollard teaches English and language arts an alternative school setting in North Carolina. For more than a decade, she has served on the State Superintendent's Ethic Advisory committee. As a single parent with two children of her own who have received free/reduced lunch, Pollard recognizes that students often don't come to school "ready to learn." She actively searches for literature and written material to meet her students where they are and to address their educational needs by way of their social issues.
Kaitlin Cyca is a Canadian author and graduate of the University of Saskatchewan in the fields of sociology and political science. Much of her work is centered around deconstructing the insidiousness of systemic oppression and the amplification of marginalized voices. In 2019, Kaitlin is set to release her debut novel, The Day the Lilies Died, in which she interweaves the dark and twisted world of science fiction with the even darker reality of socio-political oppression.
Christopher Greenslate is a humanities teacher at High Tech High School in San Diego, California. Known for both his work as a Social Justice and Journalism educator, he has advised over 200 student activist projects over the last few years and is the co-author of "On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America" which focuses on issues of food justice. His writing has been published by Green Teacher magazine and The New York Times, and he is currently serving on the Board of Advisors at the Institute for Humane Education.
500 Pens is a coalition of writers and photographers who believe in the power of stories to help us learn from and better understand one another and to serve as a reminder that there is more that unites us than divides us. Their project began in November 2016 when their founder approached the Southern Poverty Law Center and volunteered to help cover news related to social justice, advocacy and anti-bias programs. Hoping to gather a handful of writers to help, she posted on Facebook. In a few days, more than 500 writers responded. Soon, the project was expanded to include more storytellers and
Sarah Said is a Middle Eastern daughter of immigrants from the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Currently, she lives in the suburbs west of Chicago. She is one of the founding administrators of an Expeditionary Learning school, the Elgin Math and Science Academy (EMSA), close to 40 miles west of Chicago. A mother of three children herself, Sarah serves as the school’s director of language and equity programs. In this role, she oversees the school’s Multilingual Learning program and supports the school’s equity frameworks. Sarah has strong beliefs in school-to-family connections and demonstrates
Joi Miner has been writing for as long as she can remember, but began her career as a spoken word artist. After making it to the finals in the Turner South “My South Speaks” competition, she appeared in a commercial and won slams at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the Green Mill in Chicago. Miner has four poetry collections under her belt: Graffitied Gypsy (2003), Fun House Mirrors (2005), Socioanthropologicfeminisms (2010) and Outrun The Night (2012). (Hear her read “The Day I Swam Into a New World,” Teaching Tolerance’s first-ever audio Story Corner.)A domestic violence and sexual
