National DEI Expert to speak at 2021 Wheeler Conference
April 1, 2021
Nationally-known author and educator, Dr. Ali Michael, will be the keynote speaker at the 2021 Wheeler Diversity Conference for area independent schools. This year’s conference will be held virtually, Saturday, May 1, and is open to educators, students, trustees, alumni, parents and DEI directors from independent schools in Rhode Island, and parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Speaker’s Bio
Ali Michael, Ph.D., is the co-founder and director of the Race Institute for K-12 Educators, and the author of Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Inquiry and Education (Teachers College Press, 2015), winner of the 2017 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award. She is co-editor of the bestselling Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories (2015, Stylus Press) and bestselling Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys (2018, Corwin Press). She also sits on the editorial board of the journal Whiteness and Education. Ali’s article, “What do White Children Need to Know About Race?,” co-authored with Dr. Eleonora Bartoli in Independent Schools Magazine, won the Association and Media Publishing Gold Award for Best Feature Article in 2014. Ali holds her Ph.D. from Penn, where she continues to be engaged with race and equity efforts on campus. She spends the rest of the time raising two amazing human beings. They are currently 9 and 6.
The Race Institute for Educators
The Race Institute for Educators is a workshop for K-12 teachers, counselors and administrators of all races who want to better understand why race matters in schools. It is for educators who want to build their skills and competencies to understand and challenge the racism around them — and in their own heads and hearts. As schools endeavor to become racially equitable institutions, individual educators often need a space to support their own developing professionalism around race issues.
