INTENSIVE INSTITUTES
This year, your registsration for NAME's conference INCLUDES participation in an Intensive Institute. There are both full- and half-day options. Most sessions are scheduled for Wednesday afternoon to accommodate travel into NOLA on Wednesday morning. (Please understand that space is limited by room capacities; please make your selection early.)
If you want to ONLY attend an Intensive Institute (not the full conference) :
We are offering one-day cost for anyone who wants to attend the intensive institutes
the one-day cost to attend the institute is:
- For members - $35 for half-day Institute and $70 for all-day Institute
- For non-members - $50 for half-day Institute and $100 for all-day Institute.
- NAME's 2025 Intensive Institute Offerings:
This immersive workshop invites educators to experience firsthand how Afro-diasporic movement traditions serve as tools for historical exploration, community building, and personal agency. Rooted in the presenter's work with The Fairytale Project, Aesthetic Inheritances, and movement-based workshops centered on migration stories, this session blends dance, storytelling, and ritual to offer a transformative, embodied learning experience. Participants will engage in guided movement exercises inspired by Black cultural traditions—such as the ring shout and other communal dance practices—while exploring their connections to history, identity, and liberation. Through reflective discussions and creative exploration, educators will leave with practical strategies to integrate embodied pedagogy into their classrooms, fostering deeper student engagement and cultural affirmation.
Presenter: Stacey Allen, Director of Artistic Programming at The Anderson Center for Arts and a consultant for the Outsider Preservation Initiative, is an award-winning dancemaker, curator, and advocate for arts education, equity, and reproductive justice. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Nia's Daughters Movement Collective and the author of A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way and D is for Dance: Dancing Through the Diaspora. Stacey's book, A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way, won NAME's Multicultural Children's Publication Award in 2024.
This institute is designed to assist anyone interested in publishing about multicultural education in professional journals or other related publications. The session is particularly beneficial to graduate students and junior faculty. During this interactive workshop, participants will learn about the process of writing for publishing from the NAME editor's perspective. Topics to be covered include getting started (selecting appropriate journals, turning dissertations into articles, etc.), the submission and review process, and the relationship of publishing to tenure. Participants should be prepared to share and discuss their article ideas. Participants will receive materials to support their work towards becoming published authors.
Presenters: Kevin Roxas, Dean of Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University; & Alyssa Dunn, Director of Teacher Education, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
In the era of the anti-DEI movement, criticism of CRT, book-banning and other regressive educational policies how does one remain true to multicultural education? This Intensive Institute is designed primarily for educators wanting to learn how to implement the principles and practices of multicultural education. The institute will review definitions, goals, theories and application. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the various components of a course along with suggestions on the best practices in teaching about multicultural education.
Presenter: William A. Howe, Past President of NAME and Co-author of Becoming a Multicultural Educator: Developing Awareness, Gaining Skills & Taking Action, with P. L. Lisi. (2023, 4e).
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs that receive federal funding. "On April 19, 2024, the U.S. Department of Education released its Final Rule under Title IX. On January 9, 2025, a federal district court issued a decision vacating the 2024 Final Rule. The Department's 2020 Title IX Rule is now back in effect and is the basis for OCR enforcement of Title IX (USDOE)." This intensive institute led by experienced Title IX experts will provide attendees with the information needed to understand the current status of the law, protections provided, and obligations of educational institutions. With the new federal administration, other changes have been proposed and those will be explored to the extent that this information has been made available. Connections, parallels, and intersections between Title IX and multicultural education will be explored. Case studies will be included. This institute should be of interest to all designated Title IX Coordinators from Elementary to Higher Education, other school administrators, parents/guardians, school board members, and advocates. Attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance for this Title IX training.
Presenters: Jan Perry Evenstad, Professor Emeritus, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Advisory Board Member of ATIXA; & Marta Larson, Educational Equity Consultant, former Program Manager, Equity Assistance Center at University of Michigan.
María L. Gabriel has been an educational Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) leader in Northern Colorado for 21 years of her career. She has held the DEI leadership position in two school districts. She feels that over the past four years, People of Color holding DEI titled positions are one of the most controversial positions across the country. She will share her personal story of being a Latina educator for nearly three decades which has included racial trauma endured as a DEI Practitioner. Participants will receive a journal and sensory items as they engage in self-reflection and healing practices based in Healing-Centered Education (Acosta, 2020) and considerations for addressing Complex PTSD (Gutiérrez, 2022). By acknowledging the significant barriers to being critical multicultural educators, she aims to create a safer and braver space for reflection, writing, speaking, moving, and healing.
Presenter: María L. Gabriel, PhD, is a PK-12 Latina educator in public education in Northern Colorado since 1997 and is currently DEI Coordinator for the Thompson School District. In 2022, she was named NAME's Multicultural Educator of the Year.
Radical Self-Love (RSL) has long been a tool for resistance and reclamation, particularly for marginalized communities. In education, RSL offers a powerful response to policies and practices that often dehumanize students and educators from historically oppressed groups. This intensive institute will explore how embracing Radical Self-Love can disrupt systemic inequities and foster healing in schools. Through reflection and collective practices, participants will develop strategies to empower themselves and create more inclusive, compassionate educational environments. By embracing our full selves, we can better affirm and uplift all of humanity in our work toward educational justice.
Presenter: Krista McAtee, Teacher and Adjunct Professor in Sonoma, CA
Despite well over 100 years of multicultural education, public schools in the US have never been fully resourced to prepare children with the historic understanding necessary to strategize and overthrow the infrastructures of anti-Blackness. American schools historically silence critical historic voices, dismiss historic and contemporary anti-Black violences, and cultivate a misunderstanding of Black realities and movement building. Indeed, even before the current white supremacist regime, whiteness has continued to crush and appropriate seemingly every effort to equalize, elevate, sustain, or otherwise support Black education.
During this workshop, the presenters will utilize interest convergence and counterstorytelling to illuminate how Black leaders and movements have been appropriated and silenced through public and school-based symbolic violence, ultimately presenting children with uncomplicated heroistic leaders as if they operated in silos without the reality of white violence. Through a series of interactive activities embedded in a 3-hour workshop, we illustrate how to analyze Black history in context and examine systems of whiteness via personal, professional and historic storytelling. Using everyday examples (including the civil rights movement, Brother George Floyd Guilt Money, diversifying the teacher workforce, and exploitation of Black athletes), participants will identify their own localized and silenced historic protest movements, including how those could be more fully integrated into local core curriculum across P-20 levels. Participants will also learn how to identify ongoing harms and ways to move forward with a healing framework to combat hate.
Presenters: Martin P. Smith, Associate Professor (and former Associate Dean and Associate Vice Provost), Duke University; KO Wilson, Associate Dean, Health and Human Services, Seattle Central College; & Christopher B. Knaus, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, University of Washington Tacoma
- Details for this session will be posted soon.