15th Annual Educational Law and Social Justice Forum will Feature the Journal of Educational Controversy’s Issue on the School-to-Prison Pipeline on May 17th

The 15th Annual Educational Law and Social Justice Forum will be held on Friday, May 17 at 4 p.m. in Miller Hall, Room 005 on the Western Washington University campus.

The forum is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Journal of Educational Controversy and the Center for Education, Equity and Diversity.

The theme of the forum will be “The School-to-Prison Pipeline and the School-to-Deportation Pipeline.”

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to a national trend in which thousands of students each year are funneled through the public schools and into the juvenile justice system as a result of school policies and practices that increasingly criminalize students rather than educate them. It is a problem that has disproportionally affected students of color, students with disabilities, and students from impoverished and disenfranchised communities.

The School-to-Deportation Pipeline refers to obstacles and fears, specifically of personal or family detention and deportation that undocumented students face in a time of enhanced immigration enforcement, new laws criminalizing immigrants, and stigmatization by public rhetoric around ethnicity and nationality. The journal looks at what teachers need to know and understand to work with undocumented students and their families.

Panelists on the forum include authors whose articles were published in the current issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy. They will address these pipelines with special attention to the problems, cases, laws and statistics in Washington State followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Panelists

• Dr. Maria Timmons Flores, Professor of TESOL, Western Washington University, has been teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students in schools, communities, and wilderness for over 25 years. It was her students in these settings that inspired her commitment to social justice and motivated Maria to earn a PhD in Bilingual/Multicultural Education. Maria’s teaching and research focus primarily on supporting teachers to understand the influence of language and culture on learning. She teaches courses in bilingual and multicultural education, learning and development, and teaching strategies to support ALL learners. Maria’s current research brings critical cultural lenses to understanding and addressing educational equity for bilingual and immigrant students.

• Dr. John G. Richardson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Western Washington University, received his PhD from the University of California, Davis, and then went on to teach at the University of Alaska before coming to Western Washington University. His primary area of research has been the institutional history of American education, and of special education in particular. His most recent publication is Comparing Special Education (Stanford, 2011, with Justin Powell). His current research is a cross-national study of special and vocational education as contemporary means to control the expansion of mass schooling.

• Dr. Thelma Jackson, Race & Pedagogy Chism Series Lead Educator/Scholar-in-Residence, University of Puget Sound, brings a broad range of experience and expertise in the education field from community mobilization to educational transformation. She has a long history of serving and providing leadership to various education related boards, commissions and associations in Washington State including serving the Board of Trustees for Evergreen State College. Dr. Jackson has been a keynote speaker and has provided leadership and facilitation to numerous workshops, seminars and education-related events throughout her career. She has received a number of recognitions and awards for her outstanding community service. Dr. Jackson received her doctorate in Educational Leadership and Change from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA. She and her husband live in Western Washington.

• Maggie Wilkens is state field coordinator at the League of Education Voters. A sociology major and ethnic studies minor, Maggie works to untangle the roots of structural inequality through reforming one of our biggest and most important social institutions: the education system.

• Tracy Sherman is a Policy Analyst at the League of Education Voters and handles a variety of issues including early learning and school discipline. Before returning home to the Pacific Northwest, she was the Associate Director of Government Relations at the American Association of University Women in Washington DC. There she advocated on numerous education civil rights issues including stopping bullying and harassment in schools, ensuring equitable access to school athletics, and increasing the number of women and minorities in science and engineering careers. In her spare time she helps find dogs permanent homes as a foster and volunteer with Saving Great Animals.

• Anne Lee is the Executive Director of TeamChild, a nonprofit civil legal advocacy project for youth in Washington State. Anne’s legal practice has focused on children’s rights, education law, and public benefits. She was one of the authors of the education advocacy manual, Make a Difference in a Child’s Life, and has provided training for hundreds of CASA volunteers, foster parents, youth, social workers, attorneys, and judges on a variety of topics, including advocacy, education law and benefits. Anne received her law degree from New York University School of Law and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University.

The journal’s special issue on the "School-to-Prison Pipeline" and "The School-to-Deportation Pipeline" is now online. The issue is co-edited with Dan Larner from the Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University.

The forum will be held during Western’s annual Back2Bellingham alumni weekend.

Location: Western Washington University, Miller Hall 005, Center for Education, Equity and Diversity (CEED)

Date: May 17, 2013

Time: 4-6pm