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In a time when equity work is being challenged and, in some places, erased, our annual Educator Diversity Summit could not be more crucial.
Since its first convening in 2020, this has become a global movement. Last year, 600 participants from 21 states, D.C., and five countries registered to join us.
This year’s theme, Unfinished and Unafraid: Advancing Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education, Justice, and Educator Diversity in a New Era, gives us a chance to come together not in retreat, but in defiance of fear, bringing together educators, advocates, students, and leaders who are ready to reimagine what’s possible.
Over the course of 3 days, we’ll explore Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) as a living, breathing force for transformation—one that heals systems, honors humanity, and builds schools where every learner and educator can thrive.
We are thrilled to be joined by national voices who are unfinished in their pursuit of justice and unafraid to tell the truth: Dr. Stacey Patton, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Dr. Bill Ayers.
Read more about each of the keynote speakers leading our plenary sessions across all three days of the Summit.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist, historian, Howard University professor, nationally recognized child advocate, and the author of Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America. She brings a powerful lens on the intersections of race, childhood, discipline, and justice in American schools and carries that scholarship not just as an academic, but as someone who has lived the cost of speaking truth in a landscape designed to silence it.
In spite of it all, she kept writing anyway. She kept teaching anyway. Dr. Patton does not speak about being resolute in the face of fear from a distance. She speaks from the frontlines, as a Black woman scholar who refused to be silenced, who chose justice over safety, and who continues to show up for the communities that need her most.
Her presence on Day 1 is not just a keynote. It is a declaration.
Learn more: https://profiles.howard.edu/stacey-patton
Nikole Hannah-Jones is one of the most consequential voices in American journalism, whose groundbreaking work has reshaped how we understand race, history, and education in this country. As the creator of The 1619 Project, she reframed how America understands its own origins by insisting that an honest education must reckon with all of its chapters, not just the ones that are comfortable.
Nikole is also a MacArthur Genius Fellow, the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting at Morehouse College, and founder of the 1619 Freedom School in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, and the Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard University, where she is the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism
Her commitment to truth-telling is at the heart of what Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education calls every educator toward: creating learning environments where every student, regardless of their background, sees their humanity reflected and their experience valued.
Nikole’s fearless pursuit of truth makes her the embodiment of what it means to be Unfinished and Unafraid. On Day 2, she will challenge us to think boldly about what becomes possible when we commit to that vision fully, and what we stand to lose when we do not.
Learn more: https://nikolehannahjones.com/
Dr. Bill Ayers is the Distinguished Professor of Education Emeritus and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a long-time scholar and activist, he has written extensively — at least 16 books — about social justice and freedom, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. This includes To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, the memoir and philosophical guide for educators that was named Book of the Year by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography.
Dr. Ayers has spent a lifetime proving that education is not just a profession. It is an act of love, resistance, and radical hope. He has spent decades advocating for humanizing, justice-centered education that sees every child as full of possibility.
His lifelong journey as a teacher exemplifies that sustaining a movement requires more than vision and courage. It requires the kind of deep, renewable commitment that does not burn out when the resistance gets louder or the road gets longer. Dr. Ayers understands that the work of building just and equitable schools is generational, and that the educators who persist in that work, even when it is contested, even when it is exhausting, are the ones who change the course of what is possible for children and communities. On Day 3, he will close our Summit by reminding us why we started and what it means to keep going.
Learn more: https://billayers.org
The keynotes are three of more than 40 sessions across our three-day gathering. Concurrent sessions span seven strands: from CRSE as a transformative force, to healing-centered practices, to policy and resistance, to storytelling as a tool for change.
The full three days are built for people who want not just inspiration, but practical tools and real community to carry back to their schools, districts, and organizations.
This is a place built for people who want not just inspiration, but practical tools and real community to carry back to their schools, districts, organizations, and communities. Whether you are a classroom teacher, a school leader, a higher education partner, a policymaker, a student, or simply someone who believes that every learner deserves to be seen, you belong here.
Learn more and register: https://www.paeddiversity.org/pedc-events/annual-summit
Whether you’re looking to learn more about our initiatives, need assistance, or just want to connect—let's talk. Your questions and feedback are important to us, and we’re eager to hear from you!
