The Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts have some interesting speakers at their annual conference

Abeer Shinnawi and Sawsan Jaber will be talking about Palestine at the ELA conference..

Sawsan Jaber and Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi will be co-hosting a panel together at the PCTELA conference next week. The conference is being sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh. The Philadelphia Department of Education will be a vendor at the conference.

Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi has been covered in this substack before. She runs Altair Education Consulting - a company that provides one-on-one consultations with education professionals, professional development workshops for educators and curriculum workshops.

If you wish to hire Abeer as a keynote speaker for your event, her rate starts at $2000. Her speaking topics include: “Social Justice and Missing Narratives”, “Affinity Space: how creating a safe space becomes a brave space of empowerment for Arab/Muslim students” and “Changing the narrative on Arab and Muslim American history in curriculum”.

On the Altair consulting instagram page, altairedconsult, Shinnawi has shared her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

And on her personal twitter page, she has retweeted lies about the Al-Shifa hospital and retweeted support for Ghassan Abu Sitta, doctor and now rector of Glasgow University, who has a well documented history of terror support and has been banned from entering countries under the Schengen agreement at the request of Germany.

Shinnawi will be running a seminar with Sawsan Jaber: “Piercing Hearts and Minds: Palestine in Photo and Verse”. According to them, the subject matter is suitable for all grades through K-12. The session, they say, is “ideal for educators, activists, and anyone interested in human rights, resistance, solidarity and social justice.” Perfect for a conference designed for English and Language Arts teachers, no?

Aside from this session, Jaber is also billed as a featured speaker.

Dr. Jaber is billed as an “equity strategist”, “global educator”, “curriculum designer” and “community activist” whose work focuses on engaging all students in equity work and advocating for Arab and Muslim students.

Here are some of the good doctor’s X posts:

Shortly after October 7th (on October 7th, she was silent on X and instagram)

Ok you might say - that’s not sooo bad. Well how about “Fake beheaded babies” and Holocaust inversion?

Jaber, billed as a “curriculum designer” sees the curriculum as a weapon and a tool:

Unsurprisingly, TeachingWhileMuslim and DecolonizetheClassroom (both regularly featured in this substack) follow Jaber on instagram.

How will such extremists benefit the students of Pennsylvania? Why is the PCTELA happy to give a spotlight to such extremism. Why is the University of Pittsburgh happy to be a sponsor?