by Luke Sprinkel
Public school teachers from across Minnesota will meet in St. Paul Oct. 17 to participate in a conference put on by Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union.
At Education Minnesota’s 2024 MEA Conference, educators will learn about, and discuss, various public education topics in conference sessions throughout the day. While some of those sessions appear to cover noncontroversial topics, others are steeped in what Center of the American Experiment policy fellow Catrin Wigfall described as “ideological agendas.”
“Districts are not required to observe MEA, but most do, and have already penciled in the Thursday of the conference and Friday as days off in future school year calendars,” Wigfall explained.
At a session called “An Introduction to Supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ Communities,” teachers will be trained “with essential tools, terminology and strategies to support LGBTQ+ students in their classrooms and school community.” The session will also cover “implementing affirming and inclusive practices in school and pronoun usage.”
Another session, called “Ethnic Studies Database – A New Resource for Teachers,” will feature University of Minnesota staff discussing a “database of ethnic studies lesson plans for K-12 teachers” they are developing. At this session, the U of M staff will “introduce [the ethnic studies lesson plans] to educators, explain how they can be used, and request feedback.”
"Intersectionality and the 2SLGBTQIA+ Community" Both Aliya Finman-Palmer and KQ Quinn work for Outfront Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/Mf1Ws9hVYv
— Mark Gilson 🌱 (@markwgilson) October 13, 2024
The titles of other sessions include “Cross-Cultural Competence for Educators,” “Systems Thinking and Organizational Change towards Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access,” “It’s Not your Mother’s ERA Anymore!,” “Understanding the Needs of Muslim Students,” “Intersectionality and the 2SLGBTQIA+ Community,” “Kindergarten Literacy as Social Justice,” and “Enhancing Science Materials for Multilingual Learners.”
The keynote speaker at Education Minnesota’s 2024 conference is Micia Mosely, the founder and director of The Black Teacher Project. According to its website, The Black Teacher Project believes “every child deserves a black teacher.” Furthermore, the organization seeks to “reimagine schools as communities of liberated learning.”
Speakers at the conference’s sessions include representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota, Gender Justice, OutFront Minnesota, the Antiracism Community of Transffomation, and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Alpha News reached out to Education Minnesota with several questions about the conference. However, the teachers union did not reply to a media inquiry.
Alpha News has previously reported on topics that were discussed at the 2022 version of Education Minnesota’s annual MEA conference.
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Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
Photo “Minnesota Education Sign” by Minnestoa Education.
