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You’re invited…
Education Forum-Chalk Talk: Teachers Take on Education Policy
October 4, 7:30-9 p.m., Plymouth Congregational Church
Chalk Talk offers a panel of teachers with varying viewpoints to discuss how education policies affect work in the classroom. Topics will range from teacher evaluation policies to testing. The speakers are:
- Crystal Ballard, who teaches AVID at Olson Middle School; AVID is an international college readiness program. Ballard also is a member of the African American Leadership Forum’s Education Workgroup, a group dedicated to closing the achievement gap for African American children, birth through 12th grade, in the seven-county metro area.
- Jim Barnhill, a special education teacher at South High School’s Life Skills Program, which helps students live and work independently. Barnhill is a Minneapolis Federation of Teachers executive board member, and serves on several school district working groups on teacher evaluation.
- Susan Bell, who taught grades one through eight for 38 years in both the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts. Bell was a Minnesota Teacher of the Year finalist in 2003. Now retired from teaching, she is the test coordinator at the Hmong International Academy, a job that lets her stay in touch with students.
- Paul Hegre, who taught in Minneapolis for 23 years at Nawayee Center School and Seward Montessori. Hegre is on special assignment working on the district’s teacher evaluation process. He also spent four years coordinating the district’s TAP/QComp program, a strategy to attract, develop, motivate and retain high-quality teachers.
- James Kindle, a third- to fifth-grade English Language Learner teacher at Anne Sullivan Elementary, a union steward and a member of Empowering Educators for Equity, a newly formed group that works to promote educational equity by ensuring that teachers’ voices are heard in policy decisions.
MinnCAN is proud to co-sponsor this event with the League of Women Voters Minneapolis, AchieveMpls, African American Leadership Forum, the Education Equity Organizing Collaborative and Don Fraser’s Achievement Gap Committee.
Support for these forums has been provided by a grant from the Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi LLP Foundation for Children, a supporting organization of the Minneapolis Foundation, and MinnPost.
Details are available here.