Education

Columbia Grad School Tells K-12 Teachers How To Be ‘Agents Of Social Justice’

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Rob Shimshock Education Reporter
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Teachers College, Columbia University hosted a workshop instructing K-12 history teachers on how to be “agents of social justice” on Tuesday.

The school offered “How Can Social Studies Teachers Be Agents Of Social Justice?” and 14 similar courses on the “Racial and Cultural Literacy” day of its multiple-day “Reimagining Education” training directed at K-12 teachers.

While the “agents of social justice” workshop instructed teachers on how to incorporate “critical race theory” into their curriculum as a means to initiate “student-school-community activism,” another Tuesday course told teachers how to help students forge “equity-based historical narratives.” Teachers College, Columbia University students taught both sessions. A third class, offered to teachers, as well as parents, argues that parents should keep students in public schools instead of moving them to “disproportionately White and higher income charter schools, private schools, or gifted and talented options.”

Other Tuesday courses are described with terms such as “decenter Whiteness” and “post-whiteness,” dedicated to topics like “racial microaggressions,” or hinge on the premise that America is “a society built on institutional racism.” (RELATED: Anti-Trump Profs Host Workshop To Help Students Identify Fake News)

Wednesday’s courses focus on implicit bias, “food justice,” and even how to incorporate social justice into mathematics. One of Thursday’s workshops explains the need to discuss race and gender in kindergarten through second grade while another introduces “disability studies.”

“While Columbia appears in the name, Teachers College is an independent entity (different from Columbia’s other professional schools) with its own president and board,” Columbia University spokeswoman Caroline Adelman told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Teachers College spokesman James Gardner told TheDCNF that the school’s mission is “to equip educators with the research-driven and evidence-based strategies and tools to engage students from all backgrounds and optimize learning so that every child excels academically and flourishes.”

“That’s the ultimate objective of Reimagining Education, which this year has drawn more than 400 educators from 24 states and 13 countries,” Gardner continued. “TC is accredited to grant professional development credits to teachers. We follow the New York State and national guidelines for the number of hours and types of workshops in which they’re required to participate.”

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