The Keynotes

Opening Keynote

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson

Thursday, November 21, 2024 11AM-12:30PM Room 210

Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise ‘68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies and the Chair of the Africana Studies Department Wellesley College. She is the author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press) and the award winning book, Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, the Boston Globe, CNN, and a host of other outlets. She has been featured in numerous documentaries for Netflix, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, and AppleTV. She has also been interviewed on Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, MSNBC, and countless podcasts. She co-hosts the podcast, “This Day in Political Esoteric History” with Jody Avirgan and Nicole Hemmer. She is Executive Producer and Host of the award winning “You Get a Podcast! The Study of the Queen of Talk,” formerly known as “Oprahdemics” with co-host Leah Wright Rigueur.. Carter Jackson served as a Historian-in-Residence for the Museum of African American History in Boston and is commissioner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission. She lives in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and three children.

Closing Keynote

Thursday, November 21, 2024 5PM -6:30PM Room 210

Moderated Panel led by Dr. Chris Martell

Boston Public School Teachers:

Tanisha Milton (Tech Boston Academy-Dorchester)

Amy Piacitelli (Charlestown High School)

Cristina Tobar de Lufkin (Dearborn STEM Academy-Roxbury)

Christopher C. Martell is an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research examines social studies teacher education across the career-span, with a specific focus on social justice pedagogy and inquiry-based instruction. He supervises social studies student teachers in the UMass Boston-Boston Public Schools Teach Next Year residency program and is a Boston Public Schools parent.

Tanisha Milton

Tech Boston Academy-Dorchester

Tanisha Milton M.Ed., is a highly energetic Grade 8 Social Studies Educator and Grade 11/12 AP African American Studies Instructor. She has been an educator in the Boston Public Schools for 17 years and has served as a BPS New Teacher Developer, UMass Boston Teach Next Year Mentor, Grade Level Facilitator and a hiring committee member at TechBoston Academy. Currently serving as an active member of the Black Teacher Project and LiberatED Movement she continues to have a strong, impactful, and powerful passion and presence in uplifting, advocating, educating, and liberating every child that she encounters in her unique journey of teaching.

Amy Piacitelli

Charlestown High School

Amy Piacitelli is a 29 year veteran of the Boston Public Schools, teaching the last 23 years at Charlestown High School. She currently teaches World History and AP Seminar.

A passionate advocate for experiential learning, Amy co-founded the CHS EuroTrip Club- where students planned and led a trip themselves without a tour company. Designed to teach budgeting and travel skills, the program encouraged students to make travel an attainable, lifelong pursuit.

Although Amy has taken on additional roles such as History Content Team Leader, New Teacher Developer, and union representative, she has always remained fully committed to her classroom.

She was a finalist for Massachusetts Teacher of the Year in 2007 and recipient of the Boston Educator of the Year award in 2013.

Amy enjoys working with student teachers; she is currently mentoring and learning from intern number 19. She is also an active volunteer with the Fair Fix for Retirement Plus Committee, advocating for reform to the educator retirement law in Massachusetts.

Cristina Tobar de Lufkin

Dearborn STEM Academy

Cristina Tobar de Lufkin has spent much of her 18-year career in education teaching history to high school students. As a Latina immigrant and former ELL student, Cristina’s education philosophy prioritizes identity, social emotional learning, cultural responsiveness, and joy in the classroom to create intellectually engaging classroom experiences.

She taught at Chelsea High School (MA) for 15 years and now teaches at Dearborn STEM Academy in BPS. Whether teaching US history, Latin American Studies, law and government, US immigration history, or ethics and ELA to engineering students, she is most at home in a classroom.

Over the years, her professional interests have expanded to include mentoring early career teachers and teaching methods courses to teacher candidates at Brandeis and Harvard Universities. Her professional experience includes work on teacher leadership, school turnaround and redesign, trauma sensitive classrooms and culturally responsive teaching.

In addition to her work at the high school in Chelsea, she has worked closely with the Intergenerational Literacy Program (ILP) for almost two decades, supporting parents and children as they develop their literacy and language skills.

Other work includes being selected as a member of the inaugural Stanford Hollyhock Fellowship cohort, as well as mentoring and coaching prospective educators in the Harvard Teaching Fellows (HTF) program as both a supervisor and supervising practitioner.

She received her Masters Degree in Education (M.A.T.) from Boston University in 2008 as well as her Bachelors in History & English in 2007.

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