The North Dakota Study Group is an ongoing seminar on democratic possibilities for the U.S. and world education. Meeting annually since 1972 to engage one another and our communities in critical resistance to systemic racism in schools and in school reform, NDSG is made up of educators, students, artists, activists, historians, authors, and researchers. We meet to share stories, reflection, pedagogy, organizing strategies, and hope.
The goals for the NDSG 2020 meeting are to:
*Facilitate authentic, sustainable and healthy relationships through community building,
*Learn about, experience, and practice radical love and collective healing, and
*Develop a shared understanding of equity and collectively work within that framework.
The goals for the meeting are undergirded by key commitments to:
The goals for the NDSG 2020 meeting are to:
*Facilitate authentic, sustainable and healthy relationships through community building,
*Learn about, experience, and practice radical love and collective healing, and
*Develop a shared understanding of equity and collectively work within that framework.
The goals for the meeting are undergirded by key commitments to:
- liberatory pedagogy
- racial justice
- relationships
- personal and organizational capacity building.
Recent History: Why Re-story
The plan for the 2019 annual meeting grew out of NDSG’s journey over the last seven years of collectively experiencing place-based education. We’ve met for two years each in Detroit, South Texas, and Jackson, MS, with a year for reflection in 2017 in Garrison, NY. In each place, NDSG was warmly welcomed and offered opportunities that have enabled personal, professional, and community transformation. We are deeply grateful to the host communities for these experiences.
Here are a few messages from our meeting hosts over the last 7 years; the places, stories, and people who welcomed us guide our way now as we re-imagine who NDSG will be, what we will do, how we will change as part of our coming together.
The plan for the 2019 annual meeting grew out of NDSG’s journey over the last seven years of collectively experiencing place-based education. We’ve met for two years each in Detroit, South Texas, and Jackson, MS, with a year for reflection in 2017 in Garrison, NY. In each place, NDSG was warmly welcomed and offered opportunities that have enabled personal, professional, and community transformation. We are deeply grateful to the host communities for these experiences.
Here are a few messages from our meeting hosts over the last 7 years; the places, stories, and people who welcomed us guide our way now as we re-imagine who NDSG will be, what we will do, how we will change as part of our coming together.
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Jackson:
Albert Sykes: While Mississippi is rich in history, culture, struggle, sacrifice and the beauty of Black unity, it also has a deep-rooted history in racism, the wrecking of communities, cultures, and the destruction of many social systems that benefit its poorest and disenfranchised people. We live in a state and a country that has consistently proven their disdain for people of color. In what could be considered the not too distant past. Black people were considered property. From our fight to the ballot box to our struggle for quality education, we are still living a system that views certain groups as expendable. It is our hope that people come to experience Mississippi as it is. (Letter of welcome, 2018 NDSG/IDEA program booklet) 2019 photos |
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South Texas:
Francisco and Miguel Guajardo: The critical nature of Mexican American Studies curricula and pedagogical practices enables students to interrogate ancestral knowledge so that they might connect it and their story to prior knowledge that has been explored at different points in their lives. Knowledge construction is a relational process that occurs in both a local and a global context…[through] the coming together of life stories, culture, language, politics, ways of knowing, and different systems of inquiry. This is done through the community- based learning in cooperation with local organizations that focuses on applying student knowledge to their history, wisdom, and power. (2017, UTRGV: Reframing HSIs through a Multi-sited Ethnography, Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, with Trinidad & Kranz) 2015 photos |
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Detroit:
Grace Lee Boggs: People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values. (https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/grace-lee-boggs) 2013 photos |
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The 2019 gathering ended with little closure: meeting participants were disappointed with NDSG's failure to respond in a spirit of love and respect for the local education community and disturbed by a lack of opportunity to address pressing questions about NDSG’s identity and scope. Simultaneously, the retirement and in a few cases, death, of a few dear, key members, and changes in banking laws, call for attention to NDSG as an organization and how it facilitates what we want to become.
These experiences will inform our 2020 meeting. Experiences in Jackson are ever before the planners as we seek direction for living our commitment to interracial and intergenerational work. We recognize that future work must involve genuine learning of heart and soul before engaging the mind. As we strive to unlearn racism, we affirm that commitment to study comes from experience which intellectualizing can short-circuit. South Texas offered us rich paradigms of experiential learning in practice in bicultural and bilingual settings. Our 2020 meeting will include examples of the liberatory pedagogy and affirming interaction strategies we learned from South Texas friends. Detroit offered us models of collective action arising from devastation and loss because of the commitment of an interracial community built around the organizing of Jimmy Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs. Their voices continue to inspire as we learn to put love into action; for all of our children, in all of our schools, especially for those who have been disregarded, disrespected, and targeted. Heartened by these voices and the many voices of love and wisdom in our communities and schools, we look forward to joining together in re-imagining our collective work for education justice.
These experiences will inform our 2020 meeting. Experiences in Jackson are ever before the planners as we seek direction for living our commitment to interracial and intergenerational work. We recognize that future work must involve genuine learning of heart and soul before engaging the mind. As we strive to unlearn racism, we affirm that commitment to study comes from experience which intellectualizing can short-circuit. South Texas offered us rich paradigms of experiential learning in practice in bicultural and bilingual settings. Our 2020 meeting will include examples of the liberatory pedagogy and affirming interaction strategies we learned from South Texas friends. Detroit offered us models of collective action arising from devastation and loss because of the commitment of an interracial community built around the organizing of Jimmy Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs. Their voices continue to inspire as we learn to put love into action; for all of our children, in all of our schools, especially for those who have been disregarded, disrespected, and targeted. Heartened by these voices and the many voices of love and wisdom in our communities and schools, we look forward to joining together in re-imagining our collective work for education justice.