The Innocent Classroom

When children of color enter their classrooms each year, many often encounter low expectations, disconnection, and other barriers to their success. In The Innocent Classroom, Alexs Pate traces the roots of these disparities to pervasive negative stereotypes, which children are made aware of before they even walk through the schooldoor. The cumulative weight of these stereotypes eventually takes shape as guilt, which inhibits students’ engagement, learning, and relationships and hurts their prospects for the future.

This symposium is an intensive, child-specific approach to a diverse classroom. Led byauthor Alexs Pate and the Team at Innocent Classroom Technologies, the workshop will provide context and practical strategies for building relationships with every child, especially children of color and indigenous children. Through real-world examples and conversations, educators learn to build relationships that dismantle racial bias and undermine the negative effects of stereotypes, low expectations, and implicit bias in educator child relationships.

In this unique environment, participants will have the chance to interact with Alexs and his team directly via a live stream, while processing their learning in virtual break-out rooms with peers from around the state.