The Faculty of Education Summer Institute (FESI) 2022 will take place on Aug. 15 and 16, exploring Collective Dreaming: Co-Constructing Conditions for Liberatory Education. 

FESI 2022 will focus on the meaning, vision, and conditions for liberatory education, which is centered on principles for social change and transformation, such as raising collective consciousness, understanding power imbalances, disrupting oppressive forces, and cultivating individual and collective agency.  

This annual event will address timely and relevant needs for students, communities, school boards and the Ontario Ministry of Education. The Institute’s belief is that a variety of stakeholders must contribute to this dialogue in meaningful and powerful ways to ensure that collective knowledge is generated and mobilized, resulting in a plan for action towards significant systemic changes for all students. 

“There is some important work being done to dismantle harmful structures in K-to-12 schooling contexts. As we dismantle, we also need to put our energy and thinking towards creating the spaces, structures, and possibilities for all students, families, and educators to bring more of their full selves into classrooms and communities. FESI 2022 invites us to dream into educational futures in which we all belong, learn, thrive, dream, experience joy, question, and advocate for more justice and humanity,” says Faculty of Education Assistant Professor Vidya Shah.  

The two-day event will feature workshops, panellists and will focus on actualizing liberatory education through the following questions:  

• What questions must be asked in order to move towards liberation? 
• How must we think differently about current practices? What systems must be abolished for more liberatory approaches to education? 
• What practical changes are needed for more liberatory approaches to education? 
• What is the place of the relationships, the emotional realm, and the spiritual realm in education for liberation? What is the place of healing, love, and joy in these efforts? 
• How do we need to relate to this work differently and prepare ourselves differently to dream collectively? 
• How might we draw on multiple knowledge systems to challenge Eurocentricity in schooling and offer different insights within education? 
• What possibilities still need to be imagined and created? 
• How do we dream collectively with families and communities? 

FESI aims to highlight local knowledge and local solutions that are relevant to young people in Ontario, with a belief that harnessing the wisdom of the local collective is key to enacting change for the betterment of our most vulnerable students. These discussions happen with a recognition of discourses, dialogues and actions operating globally, historically and presently.  

Faculty of Education members can attend the event for free (50 people max) by registering at the following link: .

For additional information, visit the FES 2022 website. Event registration is available .  

Article originally posted in the August 2, 2022 issue of

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From Aug. 23 to 25, the Faculty of Education Summer Institute, FESI 2021 – Reimagining and Restructuring Educational Pipelines, will explore the many ways that social hierarchies are reproduced within educational structures. Participants will reflect on all the different ways that students are sorted and stratified based on perceptions of their social identities. This year’s institute will not only raise questions of pervasive systems that serve to push students out of schools and limit possibilities, but also take a close look at schooling and education in the context of inequities exacerbated by COVID-19.

"While the Ontario government is making moves to de-stream select courses in the forthcoming school year, many students, parents and educators know there are a multitude of other ways our school system 'streams' students," said Sultan Rana, co-chair and organizer of FESI and course director in the Faculty of Education. "Furthermore, many of us have always known it has been predicated on the social identities these students hold. Be it special education, French immersion, gifted programs, parent councils or guidance counsellors, all are being discussed at this year's conference."

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The FESI 2021 planning committee has envisioned a conference with a variety of entry points to meet the needs of the pandemic realities. This year’s conference will have the following format:

• Day 1
  The first day will focus on problematizing practices. Two pre-recorded keynotes/panels will address some of the large barriers we are faced with in allowing students to receive and experience liberatory education. Conference guests will be able to access these recordings on their own time throughout the day.

• Day 2
  On the second day, participants will engage in small workshop sessions to either explore the themes on a deeper level by revisioning practices, or to join others with similar job responsibilities to speak about tensions and solutions to challenges that pertain directly to their work. These sessions will run synchronously and will require pre-registration due to space limitations.

• Day 3
  The third day will involve a community viewing of Pushout – The Criminalization Of Black Girls In Schools, a feature-length documentary that takes a close look at the educational, judicial and societal disparities facing Black girls. The documentary confronts the ways in which the misunderstanding of Black girlhood has led to excessive punitive discipline, which in turn disrupts one of the most important factors in their lives: their education.

"We are excited for the ambitious digital field we are playing in this year," said Rana, "which will be a mix of Zoom and a new social utility tool called Bramble that will emulate a conference hall, allowing attendees, represented by a tiny avatar, to digitally walk around a virtual conference hall and walk up and speak to actual attendees in real time."

To register for FESI 2021, visit yorku.ca/edu/fesi/register.

Article is from the August 16, 2021 issue of .

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