Autonomy, Equity and Collective Responsibility
With Ashley L. McCall
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
7:00 p.m.
Local governments, education institutions, and national decision makers are in the spotlight in the wake of the country’s response to America’s twin pandemics (COVID-19 and COVID-1619). As we grapple with our relationship with independence/individuality and community interdependence, we are forced to consider the ways in which our choices or ambivalence cause and/or capitalize on harm and slow progress toward equity. In this session, participants are invited to consider the role autonomy plays in your personal and professional lives and what it takes to negotiate one’s desire for autonomy and our urgent need for equitable inputs and outcomes for all.
Ashley McCall serves as a 3rd grade bilingual English/Language Arts teacher at César
Chávez Multicultural Arts Center on the south west side of Chicago and serves as a
teacher representative on the Chávez Local School Council. She works to incorporate
social justice/civic engagement experiences (e.g. Todos Cuentan, Say it Loud/Dilo Fuerte) Ashley works part time with The Academy Group and serves as a Learning Designer
of the Justice curriculum. In addition to her classroom work, Ashley partners with
teachers, families, and community leaders as a community organizer to address systemic
education inequities and advance policies that improve her students’ classroom experience
and the experiences of students across the state. Ashley was a lead author of the
policy brief “From Zero to SB100: Teachers’ Views on Implementation of School Discipline Reform”, published March 2018. She now sits on the Teach Plus board and supports the organization’s
strides toward fulfilling its mission to empower excellent, experienced, and diverse
teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that advance equity,
opportunity, and student success. Ashley graduated from Amherst College in 2012 with
a BA in Political Science and Spanish and received her MAT from Dominican University.
“What If We Radically Reimagined the New School Year?”: A blog piece written by Ashley McCall from Chicago Unheard
Co-sponsored by the Education Studies Department