Equity Summit

The Equity Summit at Skyline College is an opportunity for educators, practitioners and community members throughout the region to engage in a teaching and learning experience focused on educational equity. The Summit will include a series of experiences, including equity talks and plenary sessions that engage in topics such as equity in STEM education, the consciousness gap in education, art and social justice.

Past Equity Summit Events

Past Equity Summit Speakers & Topics

Dr Dorinda Carter AndrewsCulturally relevant Pedagogy

Dr. Cesar CruzEducating Men of Color

Dr. Ali MichaelWhiteness and Education

Dr. Darrick SmithTransformative School Leadership

Dr. Roni EllingtonA Transformative Framework for STEM Education

Dr. Angela ValenzuelaSubtractive Schooling and What it Means to Care Authentically for our Youth in Schools

Dr. Michael BenitezShaping Institutional Equity

Dr Carter Adrew

Culturally relevant Pedagogy

Dr. Carter Andrews explores how enacting culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) can counter dehumanizing pedagogies and damage-centered teaching in teacher education. She also illuminates the utility of CRP for affirming students' whole selves when it combats whiteness and white supremacy. Dr. Carter Andrews challenges educators to not position Students of Color through a white gaze but rather cultivate the inclusion of Indigenous ways of being and knowing as a form of CRP.

Dr. Cesar Cruz

Educating Men of Color

Veteran educator and co-founder of Homies Empowerment, Dr. César A. Cruz will speak about educating men of color utilizing intergenerational wisdom, a youth development and asset-based approach with a 4-backpack framework that allow boys/men to open up identifying their given realities, the ways that they cope, finding resiliency and charting a course for actualizing one's purpose in life.

Dr. Ali Michael

Whiteness and Education

When we talk about “race and education,” we often scrutinize experiences and outcomes for people of color in the U.S., as though people of color are raced anomalies in an un-racialized context. In reality, all Americans are “raced,” however white Americans are often framed as “normal,” “average,” or without race. This talk will look at the ways in which Whiteness shapes the experiences and racial lenses of white Americans, as well as the way Whiteness has shaped the history and present of the United States. Ali will share her struggle to find her place in the conversation on race and education as a white woman so that she can acknowledge the ways that Whiteness is a problem and how, as a white woman, she can be part of the solution.

Transformative School Leadership

Transformative Leadership can be understood as a purposeful, inclusive, and community-minded approach to influencing institutional change. As such, it is fitting foundation for equity efforts and corresponding institutional commitments to social justice. This talk will focus on some key processes and pitfalls to consider when embarking upon transformative work in educational institutions.

Dr. Roni Ellington

A Transformative Framework for STEM Education

Much of the discourse in STEM education regarding achieving equity and diversity in STEM education are generally grounded in the needs of industry to prepare underserved students for STEM-related career, reflect a deficient-based approach and focus heavily on implementing strategies designed to "improve" outcomes for minorities STEM. These approaches to equity in STEM send the message that preparing for jobs, addressing deficiencies and implementing "effective strategies" will solve the historic inequities in STEM education. In this talk, I propose a transformative framework for STEM education that is grounded in holistic assets-based approach to STEM education that is focused on how STEM education is more than "preparing students for work" but is critical to the emancipation and liberation of underrepresented minorities. Further, I discuss how this framework can be applied in various contexts and the potential that this framework has to not only improve the learning, achievement, and persistence of underrepresented students but can transform our work to make it more inclusive, supportive and affirming for all students.

Dr. Angela Valenzuela

Subtractive Schooling and What it Means to Care Authentically for our Youth in Schools

In this presentation, Dr. Angela Valenzuela presents from her path breaking, three-year ethnography on the assimilation experiences of Mexican-origin youth attending a segregated, over-crowded, inner-city, Houston, Texas high school. She elaborates a framework that grew out of her study that shows the interconnectedness of culturally eviscerating curriculum and pedagogy and how youth are oriented toward schools. She calls for a type of caring that connects authentically with students’ cultures, languages, and community-based identities.

Dr. Michael Benitez

Shaping Institutional Equity

Michael Benitez Jr earned his Ph.D in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in Higher Education with an emphasis in Social Justice. He is an educator who integrates multifaceted pedagogies, scholarly inquiry, and personal experience to provide multi-context and issue frameworks for empowerment and transformation. He has over 15 years of experience in higher education in different capacities including teaching, academic affairs, student affairs, and diversity and inclusion.
Dr. Benitez’ scholarship and work has been focused on identity, cultural centers, ethnic studies, pedagogy and hip hop culture. He is co-editor of the anthology, Crash Course: Reflections on the Film “Crash” for Critical Dialogues About Race, Power and Privilege. He has also contributed to Being Latino On-Line Magazine, the American Mosaic Online Database, Culture Centers in Higher Education: Perspectives on Identity, Theory, and Practices, and is featured in Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity, a documentary that examines systemic inequity and racial inequity in U.S. history, culture and identity.