Course Description: 

Level up your work to “Disrupt the Canon” in your classroom with this new mini-course designed to shift your practice toward more relevant, representative, and equitable text selection and use! You’ll walk away with an understanding of how the #DisruptTexts principles are applied in preparing for and implementing literacy instruction in your grade-band--as modeled by Lorena Germán, co-founder of #DisruptTexts. By the end of the course, you’ll have an action plan to use tools to bring anti-racist, text-based instruction to life in your classroom that is grounded in the four pillars from #DisruptTexts.

Most widely published, used curriculum and materials do not authentically center Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and multilingual learners. This often leaves both students and teachers feeling frustrated and disconnected despite their desire and efforts to find the relevance that would allow them to thrive. The work of #DisruptTexts offers 4 Pillars for transforming education through literacy that we’ll use in the course to shape your learning and application:

   1.   Continuously interrogate our own biases and how they inform our thinking.
   2.   Center Black, Indigenous, and voices of color in literature.
   3.   Apply a critical literacy lens to our teaching practices.
   4.   Work in community with other antiracist educators, especially Black, Indigenous, and other educators of color.

Your learning will be organized into three “bite size” asynchronous modules (totaling 4 hours), including talks featuring #DisruptTexts co-founders Lorena Germán and Tricia Ebarvia, and content specific to the following grade bands: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. You will have the opportunity to connect with and learn from other course participants, and make a plan to carry this work forward into your ongoing work. The course will culminate in a live Q&A with Lorena Germán. For more information, please see the course brochure.