FALL CONFERENCE
October 30, 2024
8:30 am - 4:00 pm
at Connecticut Convention Center
100 Columbus Blvd, Hartford, CT 06103
Early Bird Pricing
(Register by September 1, 2024)
Early Bird Individual Registration: $325 per person • Groups of 3 or more: $250 per person
Pricing (After September 1, 2024)
Individual Registration: $350 per person • Groups of 3 or more: $275 per person
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dena Simmons, Ed.D.
Dr. Dena Simmons is a lifelong learner, truth-teller, and abolitionist from the Bronx, New York. She is the founder of LiberatED, an organization that centers radical love, healing, and justice in education so that all children could live, learn, and thrive in the comfort of their own skin. She is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University of Chicago and a Spring Point Partner Learner-in-Residence. She is the former Assistant Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she supported schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society. Prior to her work at the Center, Dena served as a middle school educator, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer. She has been a leading voice on teacher education and has written and spoken across the country about social and racial justice pedagogy, diversity, emotional intelligence, and bullying in K-12 school settings, including the White House, the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, the United Nations, two TEDx talks, a TED talk on Broadway, and Oprah’s OWN series, Speak Sis. Dr. Simmons has been profiled in Education Week, Edutopia, Learning for Justice, the Huffington Post, NPR, the AOL/PBS project, MAKERS: Women Who Make America, and a Beacon Press Book, Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists. Dena is a recipient of a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, a J. William Fulbright Fellowship, an Education Pioneers Fellowship, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, a Phillips Exeter Academy Dissertation Fellowship, a Hedgebrook Writing Residency, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellowship, and an Arthur Vining Davis Aspen Fellowship among others. She earned her doctorate degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she served as faculty in the Summer Principals Academy.
Dr. Gholnescar (Gholdy) Muhammad
Dr. Gholnescar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture. She has previously served as a classroom teacher, literacy specialist, school district administrator, curriculum director, and school board president. She studies Black historical excellence in education, intending to reframe curriculum and instruction today. She also co-authored Black girls’ literacies: An Edited Volume. Her Culturally and Historically Responsive Education Model has been adopted across thousands of U.S. schools and districts across Canada. In 2022, she was named among the top 1% Edu-Scholar Public Influencers due to her impact on policy and practice. She has also received numerous awards from national organizations and universities. She was named the American Educational Research Association Division K Early Career Award and the 2021 NCTE Outstanding Elementary Educator in the English Language Arts. She has led a federal grant with the United States Department of Education to study culturally and historically responsive literacy in STEM classrooms. Her book, Unearthing Joy, is the sequel to Cultivating Genius and provides a practical guide for putting culturally and historically responsive education into curricular practice.
Dr. Muhammad is the author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy and Unearthing Joy: (A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Teaching & Learning).