“What should students, teachers, administrators, and a school community do to facilitate accountability and repair … when a teacher mockingly performs a Nazi salute in a classroom? When it’s discovered that a student has fallen into a rabbit hole of neo-Nazi propaganda and has circulated memes among peers that trivialize the Holocaust and degrade women? When a white student stands up in the middle of the Library and reads aloud from Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, annunciating the n-word in a mixed-race setting? When white male students on a civil rights trip through the U.S. south pose in front of a mural of Congressman John Lewis in a way eerily similar to 20th-century lynching photographs? Long-time educator, facilitator, mediator, and restorative justice practitioner Jason Craige Harris will lead a workshop on the intersection of racial and restorative justice, weaving together theory and practical insights from a lifetime of experiences. He will propose an alternative to the extremes of “you’re excused” and “you’re canceled,” which the wider culture has propagated as the only legitimate responses to harm. Jason is the Managing Partner at Perception Strategies, a global consulting firm that specializes in creating and sustaining cultures of dignity, accountability, and belonging. Jason is also the former Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Friends Seminary, where he co-led the school’s Center for Peace, Equity, and Justice.”
CLiA, North Adams Public School Student Leaders
9– 10:45 a.m.
Wachenheim 017