A one-day Multicultural Education Conference will be utilized to investigate issues of Social Justice, Equity in Education, Cultural Critique and Engagement, and Civic and Community Development. The Multicultural Education Conference will serve to facilitate collaboration between K-12 education institutions, youth service organizations, community development organizations, and the higher education communities. Facilitating collaboration among and between these groups of practitioners from the tri-state region who work with our youth is the primary focus of the conference. This year’s theme, “Communities of Learners, Communities of Practice, Communities of Engagement: Focus on Community”, will emphasize the necessity of creating safe and welcoming communities for young people. Increased mobility, immigration, and economic displacement make the public spaces provided by social, educational, governmental, and health agencies increasingly significant in terms of providing our youth with a sense of connection and belonging. In order to successfully create these safe havens it is essential that practitioners investigate, reflect upon, and act to create communities for our youth.

A significant outcome of the 4th Annual Multicultural Education Conference involves the creation of networks of practitioners in the region who are working from a common theoretical/philosophical foundation.
· Conference attendees will become members of a network of practitioners in the region
· Ideas generated during the break-out sessions will be documented and disseminated to everyone in the network
· a web site/ chat group will be established to provide a forum for ongoing discussion and exchange of ideas.

Featured Speakers

Dr. James Banks Opening Address
“James A. Banks is Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies and Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a specialist in multicultural education and in social studies education and has written widely in these book fields. He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). He was a Spencer Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford during the 2005-2006 academic year. He is a member of the National Academy of Education. His books include Teach­ing Strategies for Ethnic Studies,8th Edition (Allyn and Bacon); Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives, 6th Edition (With Cherry A. McGee Banks) (John Wiley & Sons); Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum and Teaching, 5th Edition (Allyn and Bacon); An Introduction to Multicultural Education, 4th Edition (Allyn and Bacon); Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action (Teachers College Press); Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society, 2nd Edition(Teachers College Press); Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives (Jossey-Bass); and Race, Culture, and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks (Routledge).” Community Book Studies are planned for two of Dr. Bank’s most recent texts:
Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society. New York: Teachers College Press, Second Edition, 2007.

Luis Urrieta Closing Address

Luis Urrieta, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in Education and Fellow in the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Chair in Education. Dr. Urrieta’s work details the struggles of activist Chicana and Chicano educators to raise consciousness in a wide range of educational settings, from elementary schools to colleges. He addresses important questions about what it means to work for social justice from within institutions, and he explores the dialogic spaces between alternatives of reproduction and resistance. In doing so, he highlights the continuity of Chicana and Chicano social movement, the relevance of gender, and the importance of autochthonous frameworks in understanding contemporary activism. Coming soon is Urrieta’s text Working from Within: Chicana and Chicano Activist Educators in Whitestream Schools. University of Arizona Press