CURRICULUM
STUDY COMMISSION

Since 1949, the Curriculum Study Commission has attempted to improve language arts instruction through a collaborative format known as the “Asilomar Model.” Teachers from all levels of instruction have convened at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, meeting in small groups to identify problems, propose remedies, and share resources. The teachers teaching teachers approach maximizes small group collaboration in 5 sessions over three days to explore a single topic in greater depth.

The 2023 conference looks to challenge existing norms, effectively “Decolonizing” the extant curriculums that permeate our schools, departments, and classes we teach. A legacy in multiple canons exists that has not only perpetuated, but promulgated a Eurocentric, white-dominant legacy that endures to this day in classrooms across the country. Asilomar 69 will endeavor to decolonize curriculums by raising awareness, promoting inclusion, and proffering an opportunity to consider the content, design, and instruction of English, history, and more.

“The purpose is to create space for you to define and enter into deep conversation with meanings and manifestations of white privilege, especially as it manifests itself in your school, community, and yourself.” --Jamila Lyiscott , Black Appetite. White Food.

Social Justice Education Scholar, Author & Spoken Word Poet Jamila Lyiscott aka, Dr. J, is an aspiring way-maker, a community-engaged scholar, nationally renowned speaker, and the author of Black Appetite. White Food: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom. She currently serves as an Associate Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is the co-founder and co-director of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research.

Dr. J is most well known for being featured on TED.com where her video, ‘3 Ways to Speak English,’ has been viewed over 5 million times. Dr. J is the recipient of the AERA Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award, the AERA Scholar-Activist & Community Advocacy Award, and the CIES Ernest D.

Morrell Emerging Scholar Award. She has been invited to keynote at 100s of institutions nationally and internationally. Dr. J’s scholarship and activism work together to explore, assert, and defend the value of Black life globally. Her research examines the liberatory capacity of literacies in the lives of youth of color, racial healing, youth-led research, and the capacity of African Diasporic cultures to transgress white coloniality.

Dr. J serves as co-editor of the journal of Equity & Excellence in Education, and holds faculty fellowships at the University of Notre Dame, and Teachers College, Columbia University. In her active efforts to disrupt the bounds of the academy, she has also been featured in Spike Lee’s “2 Fists Up,” on BBC Radio, NPR, Cosmopolitan, NowThis, and many other media outlets nationally and internationally.

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SESSIONS

1. Academic Freedom in the Current Political Climate

GRADES 6-12
SESSION FULL There have always been challenges to academic freedom in our schools, and they have always been connected to larger political issues. These challenges have intensified over the past several years. This session will provide us an opportunity to share our own experiences, discuss key cases and personal responses, and gather resources on how we can potentially avoid, prepare for, and respond. This session is designed to provide a place to talk, a place to plan, and a place to gather and share resources- including resources in California Ed Code, in School and District policies, procedures, and regulations, and in our union collective bargaining agreements.

2. Refocusing Our Target: Shifting from a Monocultural Lens to a Multicultural One

GRADES 6-12
Join us for a discussion about the equity issues that impact secondary Language Arts classrooms and the need to shift perspectives and practices from a traditional monocultural lens approach to include more diverse literary material. What would this multicultural classroom look like as a result of adapting the classic (monocultural) cannon to a more diverse cannon?

Let's take a deep dive and have a discussion about some of those equity pieces that impact secondary English Language Arts classrooms that might echo the cries that need to be addressed regarding student success and buy in if we taught the necessary classic-based SKILLS with other diverse literary material. What would that multicultural classroom look like and that arguable conversation be as a result of adapting what we want the "classic (monocultural) cannon" to teach with what we can also acquire from a more diverse multicultural cannon.

5. We All Belong Here: Poetry of Inclusion, Inspiration, and Action

GRADES 6-COLLEGE, GENERAL ENRICHMENT
How do we——as teachers, students, and human beings——open ourselves to a wider curriculum, one that welcomes voices too long unheard or muted? This session will explore how poetry of awareness, hard truth, and courage can counteract exclusions, encourage equity, and give us strength to carry on. We’ll explore ways to assist our students and ourselves via poetry in collaborating and corresponding with each other. We’ll share our own writing experiences, too, so come prepared to write and share.
Pre-Conference Reading:
> America, We Call Your Name: Poetry of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2018.)
> Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection (ed. James Crews, Green Writers Press, 2019.)

6. Desigining an equitable graDING SYSTEM

GRADES 6-12
Historically, grading has been a tool of white supremacy that benefits the dominant culture and acts as a threshold guardian to keep students of color and first generation students from higher learning. Explore and design a grading system that empowers, motivates, and reflects true learning. Come ready to roll up your sleeves, create an equitable system, provide and receive critical feedback so you can start on Monday!
Recommended reading:
> Grading For Equity by Joe Feldman.
> Point-Less An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading by Sarah M. Zerwin
> "Top 10 Standards-Based Grading Books," by Matt Townsley

Wind Down

7. What’s In a Name? Building Relationships by Honoring Student Identity

GRADES 6-12
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if you called a student a corpse flower, would they feel inspired to engage with you and their peers? In this session, we will discuss the importance of correct name pronunciation and use of preferred pronouns in building relationships with our students. Participants will access a unit of study that includes quick write response questions, nonfiction analysis, and student presentation projects. Lessons are accessible for all English language proficiency levels. Drawing inspiration from Santa Clara County Office of Education’s My Name, My Identity Campaign, participants will develop strategies for how to invite students to share their names and identities with their classmates.
Pre-Conference Reading:
> Gonzalez, Jennifer. "How We Pronounce Student Names, and Why It Matters.” Cult of Pedagogy, 24 Apr. 2014.
> Marrun, Norma Angelica. “Culturally Responsive Teaching Across PK-20: Honoring the Historical Naming Practices of Students of Color.” Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, vol. 17, no. 3, 2018, pp. 6-25.
> Santa Clara County Office of Education. My Name, My Identity. A Declaration of Self, 2016.

8. Doors, Mirrors, and Windows: A Deep Dive into Young Adult Lit and Diversity

GRADES 6-12
SESSION FULL In this session, teachers will learn about a variety of new young adult books representing a wide variety of diverse and inclusive voices and what to do with those books once they are in their classrooms. Collaboration will center on strategies to encourage students to look beyond their worldview and pick up books with representation other than their own. In addition to this, teachers will collaborate together on specific exemplary young adult books and explore how to connect some of these young adult books as supplemental texts with typical required texts in the classroom. Finally, teachers will leave with some resources to use in the future for seeking out and keeping up with new and diverse young adult titles.
Pre-Conference Reading: We will be taking a deep dive into a few YA books. Reading them is NOT required, but if you would like to add any to your TBR before Asilomar, it could be helpful. The titles are: All My Rage, Frankly in Love, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Firekeeper's Daughter, Dear Martin, Children of Blood and Bone, and Darius the Great is Not Okay.

10. Moffett In the Classroom: Putting All Symbol Systems to Work

GRADES 6-COLLEGE, GENERAL ENRICHMENT
From exploring research (provided) about a disturbing cultural event (related to "giving voice") to paired think-alouds, personal reflections, dramatic work, descriptive writing, and the production of an original argument, participants will learn about one way to foster their students' ability to read for meaning and to write meaningfully. Teachers will be encouraged throughout the weekend to share their own ways in which they use all of our symbol systems (reading, writing, speaking, listening, the arts) to foster inclusion and alternative ways of conceptualizing their world.

A bit of background: There is a Moffett renaissance about to explode throughout the country. James Moffett's Teaching the Universe of Discourse set out an agenda for the study of the development in reading for meaning and writing meaningfully which influenced California teachers for years. The idea behind this weekend's work is to participate in some classroom work where teachers will test the relevance of Moffett's central work within the context of contemporary thinking about the need for all voices to be heard and discussed openly.

The entire weekend of work was inspired by an article by Tony Burgess et al.: ""How One Learns to Discourse': Writing and Abstraction in the work of James Moffett and James Britton." Participants will discuss an event reported in the news, and subsequently explored on the Internet, followed by a sequence of four Moffett-inspired lessons designed to correspond to Moffett's account of discourse--from inner speech, to recording, reporting, generalizing and theorizing. Arguments will be forged through participants’ own lesson experiences and their personal writing. Examples of student work for each lesson will be shared, and plenty of time provided for participants to create their own lesson sequences based upon the ideas shared during the weekend.

Wind Down

11. Writing on the Road

GRADES 6-COLLEGE, GENERAL ENRICHMENT
Writing teachers rarely have time to practice the craft of writing themselves. It’s easy to lose touch with what the experience is like for our students. This workshop provides the space and time to explore writing in a way that makes us better teachers of writing. Any personal or fiction writing is appropriate for this session (narrative essays, memoir, short stories, poetry). (Note: Academic/textbook writing is not well suited to this process.)

Writing is a source of immense power. In learning to harness this power, we gain the ability to understand our lives and to find our place in the world. Writing teachers rarely have time to practice the craft of writing themselves. It’s easy to lose touch with what the experience is like for our students. This workshop provides the space and time to explore writing in a way that makes us better teachers of writing. We remember and experience the true writing process, with all its thrills and challenges, and we investigate methods for generating and revising early drafts. Participants choose a writing destination on Saturday morning and work independently for the first two sessions of the day. Spots on “the road” might include the beach, the lodge, the back deck, Point Lobos, the cemetery, a coffee shop, etc. Any personal or fiction writing is appropriate for this session (narrative essays, memoir, short stories, poetry). (Note: Academic/textbook writing is not well suited to this process.)

After taking a few hours to write, we meet to give and receive feedback on our drafts in small groups. The classroom-ready feedback protocol was developed by the Bay Area Writing Project and transfers very well to middle and high school classes. The process inspires reluctant writers to take risks, to recognize the “gems” in their first drafts, and to develop an ear for successful writing. Writers read their first-draft writing out loud to their partners; listeners note and share the strong lines that they heard and ask questions (which are not answered). Writers consider this feedback in their revisions. Most workshop participants choose to share their writing again on Sunday morning with the whole group, in our final celebration.

For many years, the Asilomar Conference featured an open conversation called “the State of the Profession,” which was usually facilitated by Miles Myers, former NCTE Executive Director. Its aim was simple: bring together those interested in the larger conversation about the issues of the day and the ideas people were discussing in their Asilomar sessions. The focus of this year’s Asilomar conference guarantees important and engaging conversations within the sessions. This open forum on Saturday evening, led by Jim Burke, will provide an opportunity to bring ideas from those different sessions into a larger conversation with each other, while also making room to discuss the challenge

Jim Burke is the author of more than twenty-five books about teaching, learning, and secondary literacy. He taught high school English for more than thirty years, most recently at Middle College High School, a public program located on a community college campus. His more recent efforts have focused on social emotional learning and how those ideas and strategies can help students and teachers flourish in their work.

teachers face as they try to navigate what Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay call “impossible conversations” and the toll these challenges can take on teachers and the profession at large.

Jim Burke is the author of more than twenty-five books about teaching, learning, and secondary literacy. He taught high school English for more than thirty years, most recently at Middle College High School, a public program located on a community college campus. His more recent efforts have focused on social emotional learning and how those ideas and strategies can help students and teachers flourish in their work.

Recent Conferences

Asilomar 68

October 4-6, 2019

Asilomar 67

October 12-14, 2018

Asilomar 66

October 6-8, 2017

Asilomar 65

October 7-9, 2016

Asilomar 64

October 9-11, 2015

Asilomar 63

Sept 26-28, 2014

Asilomar 62

October 18-20, 2013

Asilomar 61

Set 28-30, 2012

Contact

Conference Registrar steweinberg@gmail.com
Conference Chair chair@curriculumstudy.org
Website Manager jim@curriculumstudy.org
CSC Commission Chair danreynolds1979@gmail.com

CURRICULUM
STUDY COMMISSION

SESSIONS

1. Academic Freedom in the Current Political Climate

2. Refocusing Our Target: Shifting from a Monocultural Lens to a Multicultural One

4. An Interdisciplinary Take on Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

5. We All Belong Here: Poetry of Inclusion, Inspiration, and Action

6. Desigining an equitable graDING SYSTEM

Wind Down

7. What’s In a Name? Building Relationships by Honoring Student Identity

8. Doors, Mirrors, and Windows: A Deep Dive into Young Adult Lit and Diversity

10. Moffett In the Classroom: Putting All Symbol Systems to Work