The third César Chávez Education Conference will be held March 28-29 at California State University, Fresno featuring Dr. Barbara Flores, president of the National Association for Bilingual Education, and civil rights leader Dr. Gary Orfield.
The Kremen School of Education and Human Development presents the event as part of Fresno State’s observance of the César Chávez Day of Service Learning holiday March 31, the birthday of the late United Farm Workers union founder. The campus will be closed that day.
Other campus activities planned for the week prior to the holiday include the annual garlanding of the Chávez statue in the Peace Garden just north of the Henry Madden Library.
The conference will be held in McLane Hall Room 121 from 4 to 7 p.m. March 28 and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 29. It is free and open to the public with free parking available in Lots K, L and M. On-site registration is available.
Flores, an education professor at California State University, San Bernardino, will deliver the keynote address at 4 p.m. March 28. She coauthored “Reading in a Bilingual Classroom: Literacy and Biliteracy, The Intellectual Presence of the Deficit View of Spanish Speaking Children in the Educational Literature during the 20th Century.”
Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, will speak at 9 a.m. March 29. He has written about racial diversity in public schools and the impact of No Child Left Behind on education.
Parents, students, educators, policymakers, community leaders and researchers attending the conference engage in critical discussion of educational reform incorporating equity, democracy, academic excellence and social justice, said Dr. Laura Alamillo, an assistant professor in the Literacy and Early Education Department and conference co-chair. Workshops cover those issues and also parents’ rights, innovative practices that promote cultural literacy, student voice in education and immigrant students.
The conference is co-sponsored by the California Reading and Literature Project, San Joaquin Valley Writing Project, Teachers for Social Justice, Cineculture, Fresno Teachers Association and Fresno State student organizations Trabajadores de la Raza and Associated Students Inc.
For information, contact Alamillo at 559.278.0280 or e-mail lalamillo@csufresno.edu, or Dr. Steven Hart at 559.278.0319.
Related link:
http://education.csufresno.edu/CesarChavez2_08.ht
