Major Educational Conferences Platform Speaker who has defended Hamas, mourned Yahya Sinwar
Sawsan Jaber, former chair of the english department at Maine West High school, has a busy year ahead.
Regardless of her speaking engagements at conventions arranged by organizations with alleged terrorist affiliations and her social media activity defending Hamas and mourning the death of Yahya Sinwar, it seems that Jaber is still very much in demand when it comes to “professional development” opportunities for teachers.
In June, she’ll be part of several sessions at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference. Last year’s ISTE conference saw over 16 000 participants live and virtually. This year, Jaber will host sessions on ‘Pedagogies of Voice:Liberating the Classroom by Elevating Student Voice and Agency.’ For more on that, you can watch Jaber discussing “Pedagogies of Voice” here:
"...share resources with teachers that allow us to do the work that would normally be labeled DEI, in a way that is maybe more subversive or that... wouldn't set off any alarm bells."
The title of this post is a quote from Jennifer Gonzalez, editor in chief of “Cult of Pedagogy”, a website for teachers where she provides resources (like the Zinn Education Project and the 1619 Project) and teaching tips, and self-described “former teacher of teachers”
Jaber will also speak on the following panels - “Building Community with BIPOC Educators: Reclaiming Our Future in Education”; “Six High-Impact Instructional Strategies Centering Student Voice in 60 Minutes” where “Participants will gain practical, ready-to-use approaches to create inclusive/responsive learning environments as a tool for liberation and empowerment”, “Arab Professional Educator Affinity Space,” “Coming Out of Our Silos: BIPOC Collaborations in Ed Spaces” (this panel is described in the following way: “Part of systems of oppression is the divide and conquer mentality. What happens when marginalized communities leave their silos to collaborate for justice and equity for all. As the landscape in schools changes and our students are more connected to the world, how does our work for equity also change?”), and “Ode to Joy: Teaching Diversity, Centering Joy, Building Community and Connection” described as “When centering cultural responsiveness and inclusion, teachers tend to focus on the oppression of minoritized groups. While it's important for students to understand systems of oppression, it is equally important for students to experience stories of how people experience joy at all points of their history as a way of humanizing them.”
For this last session, Jaber will be joined by Dr. Quentin J. Lee, the Superintendent of Talladega City Schools in Alabama.
After ISTE, Jaber is off to Arizona. She will be taking part in XITO’s Summer Institute.
The Influential Organization Training our School Districts and Teachers on Land Back Activism, Decolonialism and How to turn Students into Activists
The Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) bills itself as a
The Summer Institute is described by XITO:
“This 3-day gathering is an opportunity to engage in and learn about XITO’s decolonizing Ethnic Studies methodologies and is also a chance to collaborate and network with other educators and organizers from across the country. Workshops will include the foundational underpinnings of Ethnic Studies history and teaching, curricular examples and decolonial methods, including XITO’s TIAHUI framework, as well as an evening of Flor y Canto.
This summer we will be focusing on the concept of TIAHUI, Nahuatl for moving forward, as we continue to build together and ensure that authentic and liberatory Ethnic Studies is not appropriated and watered down. As we witness global demands for liberation, we will also focus on scaling up our Ethnic Studies organizing, staying true to the original roots of Ethnic Studies and the Third World Liberation Front movement.”
The agenda for the summer institute includes the following sessions:
Teaching Border Imperialism From Turtle Island to Palestine: Ethnic Studies as a Tool For Liberation
Breakout #1: Transformative Teaching: Interactive Read-Alouds and Art as an Entry Point For Teaching Palestine in K-5
Breakout #2: Teaching & Organizing: This is What Solidarity Looks Like
Breakout #3: Cultura Cura Required: Radical Self-Care within U.S. Settler-Colonial Institutions of Schooling
Reading the World: Paulo Freire's Conscientization Process and Praxis
Organizing & Networking for our Collective Future
After that, she’ll speaking the Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy virtual “teach-in.” She’ll join Amanda Hartmann to discuss “SOLIDARITY IN PRACTICE: CENTERING PALESTINE IN RACIAL JUSTICE AND LIBERATORY EDUCATION.”
The session is described:
Understanding Palestine is essential to any comprehensive conversation about racial justice, global liberation, and human rights. This session invites educators across all grade levels (K-20) to deepen their understanding of Palestine’s historical and contemporary contexts, unpack the urgency of discussion, instruction and action around current events, and explore why solidarity with Palestine is a critical component of justice-centered education. Together, we will examine how Palestinian liberation is interconnected with broader struggles for freedom and dignity, including movements for Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ+, and immigrant rights.
Participants will leave with tangible strategies for authentically integrating Palestine into curricula, lesson planning, and school-wide initiatives, while fostering a learning environment that nurtures critical consciousness, empathy, and action among students. This session is rooted in the belief that racial justice is incomplete without global solidarity—and that our classrooms are powerful sites to cultivate it. Finally, this session will provide educators with a list of resources to continue their own learning and facilitate learning in our classrooms.
Then she’s off to New York for the New York Public Library’s summer residency program through the Center for Education and Schools. Participants receive a $1000 stipend in addition to flights, lodging and food.
At the end of October, Jaber will present at the Illinois Association of Teachers of English.
In November, will once again present at National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention. The NCTE convention draws over 8000 teachers, 400 principals, superintendents, administrators, and district curriculum coordinators, and over 600 department chairs, teacher leaders, and emerging educators in preparation programs.
Jaber will wrap up the year by presenting the keynote address at Learning Forward, in Boston, MA.
It is a sign of the times and the scale of the problem that teacher workshops conventions, conferences, professional development programs and residencies welcome, encourage and indeed platform “scholar activists” - no less “scholar activists” who attend “summer institutes” from extremist organizations like XITO and whose views on Hamas, Israel and the likes of Yahya Sinwar are public and have been publicized.
The professionalization institutions for teachers seem to have made their position on “social justice” and the balance between “scholar” and “activism” startlingly clear.
So disturbing. Who is paying for all these conferences? Is it the taxpayer through school districts? We are paying to have our culture infiltrated and destroyed.