Oakland University to host ‘Teaching Race in America’ for educators

“Teaching Race in America: A Professional Development Conference,” scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 9, will bring together high school and middle school teachers and university professors to discuss and provide strategies for teaching race in social studies and English Language Arts (ELA) classes.

The conference will feature presentations by Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator of The New York Times 1619 Project and Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University School of Communications), Roy Finkenbine (professor of History and director of Black Abolitionist Archives at the University of Detroit Mercy), Carlin Borsheim-Black (professor of English Education at Central Michigan University). Other presentations will be conducted by local secondary educators and university professors.

Hannah-Jones will demonstrate how to use the “1619 Project” to navigate challenging topics including slavery, segregation, and racial inequality.

Finkenbine and Borsheim-Black will provide teaching strategies for educators. Finkenbine will discuss teaching “Race and Slavery in America's Past” and Borsheim-Black will offer insight into teaching racial literacy in secondary ELA. 

Breakout sessions will include presentations by local educators focused on practical and innovative strategies to discuss racism and race in social studies and ELA classes.

“Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education and Human Services and the OU Kresge Library worked with area teachers to organize the conference,” said Elaine Carey, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Our goal is to engage courageous educators and teachers of ELA and social studies to be strong advocates for their fields and allies for their students.”

Furthermore, Carey said the conference will foster collaboration and an ongoing conversation between secondary educators and Oakland University professors. That conversation will continue after the conference by providing resources such as reading lists and in-class activities that will be available for participants at the conference and after. The conference committee also plans to set up a private networking forum that will enable participants to seek support and advice as challenges and opportunities arise in the classroom.

Attendees will gain State Continuing Education Clock Hours (SCECHs), new strategies, digital resources, reading lists, and connections to feel comfortable and empowered to teach race in the classroom.

Send questions about the conference via email to [email protected].

To register to attend and see full conference schedule, visit: https://www.oakland.edu/cas/professional-development-conferences/

About the Keynote speakers:

Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative reporter who covers civil rights and racial injustice for The New York Times magazine.  Nikole got hooked on journalism when she joined her high school newspaper and began writing about students like her, who were bused across town as part of a voluntary school desegregation program. Prior to joining The New York Times, Hannah-Jones worked as an investigative reporter at ProPublica in New York City, where she spent three years chronicling the way official policy created and maintains segregation in housing and schools. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2017), the National Association of Black Journalists Journalist of the Year (2015), the George Polk Award for radio reporting (2016), the Pulitzer Prize (2020), and NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Nonfiction for The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Currently, Hannah-Jones is the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy. 

Roy Finkenbine
Roy E. Finkenbine is professor of History and director of the Black Abolitionist Archive at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he teaches courses in African American history, modern Africa, slave resistance, the Civil War era, and the Underground Railroad. He previously taught at Hampton University. While on the editorial staff of the Black Abolitionist Papers Project at Florida State University in the 1980s and 1990s, he co-edited the five-volume Black Abolitionist Papers, 1830-1865 (1985-1992) and Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation (1993). He has authored Sources of the African American Past (1st ed., 1997; 2nd ed., 2004), as well as over a dozen articles and book chapters related to the black abolitionists, reparations for slavery, and the Underground Railroad. He serves on the Michigan Freedom Trail Commission. His op-eds have appeared in the History News Network, Time, Newsweek, RawStory, AlterNet and Faithfully Magazine. Currently, Finkenbine is completing a book entitled The Indigenous Underground Railroad: Freedom Seekers and First Nations Peoples in the Old Northwest.

Carlin Borsheim-Black
Dr. Carlin Borsheim-Black is an award-winning teacher-researcher and professor of English education in the Department of English, Language, and Literature at Central Michigan University. Borsheim-Black’s teaching and scholarship focus on possibilities and challenges of antiracist teaching in the context of literature study, especially in predominantly white classrooms and communities. Her book, Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students, co-authored with Dr. Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides, offers English teachers specific practices for merging goals for racial literacy with goals for literature instruction in secondary English classrooms. The book was recognized with the 2022 Outstanding Book Award by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Borsheim-Black’s research has been published in Research in the Teaching of English, English Education, Teachers College Record, and Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. She currently serves as co-editor of Michigan Reading Journal.

Sponsors who have helped make the conference possible include: