Centers help K-12 educators understand and implement Colorado’s inclusive curriculum laws
Bethy Leonardi, Tania Hogan and Nicole Sager at the A Queer Endeavor and BUENO Center booth during Community Engagement Week
At a time when teachers and students across the country feel their classrooms are increasingly surveilled and politicized, as indicated in this , two University of Colorado centers are coming together to choose collaboration over competition, coalition over silos and hope for educators and students alike.
This summer, the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education (BUENO) and A Queer Endeavor (AQE), both based in the 91ý School of Education, will co-host the Chords of Esperanza: Queering Biliteracy, Centering Justicia conference, designed to support K-12 educators with understanding and how to support their students within the scope of these laws.
Bethy Leonardi, a professor in the School of Education and co-leader of AQE, described the current climate as one of fear and uncertainty. Through their work with schools, representatives from both centers are hearing from educators who feel increasing pressure about how they support students.
Tania Hogan, executive director of BUENO, said that book bans and restrictions on bilingual education and inclusive curriculum have intensified debates about what teachers can teach and how they can support students. In some cases, Hogan said, educators have been discouraged from affirming students’ identities and teaching inclusive material – even though inclusive curriculum aligns with Colorado law.
Hogan also mentioned how underrepresented communities are feeling increasingly targeted and that educators have also shared concerns about declining student attendance and families feeling hesitant to attend school meetings.
“It’s the best time to stand in solidarity together and have our two centers collaborate that haven’t before,” said Hogan.
For both centers, the conclusion was clear: collaboration would combine their strengths, providing educators with deeper support and enhanced professional development and community-building opportunities.
Both organizations are nationally recognized research and community engagement hubs. A Queer Endeavor focuses on gender and sexual diversity in education to create safe spaces for students, families and staff.
“A Queer Endeavor’s main goal is to create partnerships with school districts, schools and teachers to support schools being places of possibility for all students with a particular emphasis on students whose gender and sexual identities disrupt what counts as “normal,” said Leonardi.
BUENO works with culturally and linguistically diverse students and teachers to create equitable educational opportunities. The two centers share commitments to justice in queer and multicultural communities and, more broadly, to equity in education.
“We’re overdue in truly coming together in solidarity ... and of merging our commitments, resources and expertise to support people who might not ordinarily go to a conference focused on queer topics or a conference focused on language or immigration status,” said Leonardi.
The Chords of Esperanza will be a conference designed by educators, for educators. It is meant to be a supportive rally or refuge that offers resources, community and inspiration.
“People from a multitude of backgrounds and communities feel as though they are being silenced, so the conference is an opportunity to bring together art, music and to create a space of collective resistance and care,” said Hogan. She also said she hopes people will be challenged to get messy, be uncomfortable and to work in situations they are unfamiliar with.
The word chords in the title references the conference’s musical theme, which the organizers use as a metaphor for collaboration. Just as different tunes come together to form a melody, participants are encouraged to learn from one another as they create something new. Esperanza means hope.
“Inclusive practice allows us to center hope, to center joy, and celebrate each other and all the ways we show up, in any policy context,” said a graduate student collaborating on the project and who has chosen to remain anonymous.
The conference will focus on policy awareness and education. The organizers want to help teachers understand what laws and policies exist in Colorado and within different school districts, and that the policies support inclusive curriculum and teaching rather than hinder it. Specifically, they want to support participating teachers with navigating policies that affect students in vulnerable and legally complex circumstances. There will also be resources related to curriculum, supporting families and engaging school boards. Educators will leave with new and expanded networks of other educators who are also dedicated to justice work.
“We don’t want them to feel alone. I think a lot of educators feel like they’re doing this all by themselves, and it’s weighing heavily on them,” said Hogan.
Leonardi hopes to inspire participants to think about how they can be in solidarity to challenge and shift oppressive structures that impact specific communities with regard to gender, sexuality, language, documentation, dis/ability and intersections of these. Many organizations collaborate with each other on justice work, but truly bringing communities together is difficult and requires time and commitment. It is especially important to navigate justice work slowly and intentionally so that potential pushback and impact on students’ lives is considered.
“It’s a true, almost daily navigation of what this work needs to look like right now . . . it’s often context-specific, person-specific. So, it’s really taking the time to figure out what’s going to be the softest way forward that will make the greatest impact,” said Leonardi.
Above all, Leonardi hopes the conference will facilitate conversations about how to put the humanity of others first. “I hope that we have conversations with people that we never dreamed we’d have and that we are changed from them,” she said.
“I think there aren’t a ton of models that show us how to do coalition building in service of education justice, so the partnership is a really cool opportunity for us to model what it looks like and to resist binaries, transcend boundaries and come together in thick, complex and humanizing ways,” said a participating graduate student who chose to remain anonymous.
For now, planning is bringing together two centers with shared commitments to justice in education, but organizers say they plan to keep working together on future projects and see this partnership as a foundation for additional collaborators to join as the work grows. Chords of Esperanza may serve as a model for other organizations that hope to tackle educational equity and coalition building. Just as a symphony is composed of multiple sections of instruments playing together in harmony, social justice work requires collaboration across communities, working in tandem to create progress, unity and more hopeful futures.