The Liberated Educator: You Are the Binder!
Understanding Who You Are As a Cultural Being
and the impact this has on your students
Find Jeff on twitter @jheil65 and on instagram @jheil65
Listen to his podcast: partial.credit
New Venture: The Liberated Educator
presenter: Jeffery Heil (he/him)
Jeffery Heil has been an educator for the San Diego County Office of Education’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS) for 25 years. He began his education career teaching in a self-contained high school in a homeless shelter run by Father Joe's Villages. It was during this time he developed his passion for teaching and anti-racism. It was also during this time that Jeff was able to determine the critical need for dismantling many of the existing systems in education that lead to the predictability of success as well as adversely affect many of our more vulnerable youth. He has made it his mission to educate people on how the opportunity gap adversely affects non-white students. Jeff also had the opportunity to work closely with Pacific Education Group (Courageous Conversations) for several years including speaking at one of their summits. In 2005, he applied for and was selected as a Distinguished Teacher in Residence at California State University, San Marcos where, for two years, he worked with pre-service educators teaching courses on equity and educational technology. Since returning to JCCS in 2007, he has served as an instructional technology coach, classroom teacher, adjunct professor of education, educational consultant, and a keynote speaker.
Purpose
" In terms of the quick fixes, I feel like I'm seeing that a lot where teachers, they want to skip that work that, Tricia and Tiana, that you were just talking about, that really reflective get in there and recognize that I have been raised in this racist educational system in a racist country and I need to get in there and do some dismantling of my own thoughts. Instead, they want the binder. I keep saying to teachers, no, you have to do the work and then you become the binder. You are the binder that you're looking for once you get in there and do that work." (Dismantling Racism in Education - podcast)
When it comes to ensuring a classroom or school is equitable and inclusive, many educators look outside of themselves to find the resources (a binder) to ensure they are doing it correctly. This is the path of least resistance and doesn’t require any real internal work for the individual teacher. This method may work in the short term, but if a racist system is ever going to change, each individual needs to put in the work necessary to become an anti-racist and anti-biased person, then they become their own resource. In this session, we will take a look at some ways to create inclusion and community in any classroom or school and then examine our own identities to determine how who we are affects institutional inequalities that contribute to the predictability of who succeeds and fails on our schools.
