Manuel J. Fernandez

From the Cambridge Street Upper School, Nov. 4, 2015: The Cambridge Street Upper School Cultural Proficiency Team has been invited by the National Center for Race Amity to participate in its National Race Amity Conference, to be held Nov. 19-21 at the Boston Marriott in Quincy.

“Recharging as a Culturally Responsive Educator” is the theme of the workshop to be facilitated by the team, which includes Norah Connolly, Melanie Morrison, Tracey Pratt and Betsy Preval. The upper school’s principal, Manuel J. Fernandez, has been invited to be a keynote panelist on the theme “The Role of Education in Society With Regard to America’s Racial Divide.”

This year’s overall theme is “The Impact of Media and Education on the Other Tradition” – a reference to a force that the center says has persisted throughout U.S. history as “a parallel moral counterweight” to racism, promoting humanistic and spiritual values such as access, equity and social justice.

Other presenters at the conference include Tommy Chang, superintendent of Boston Public Schools and Mary Skipper, superintendent of Somerville Public Schools; Byron Barnett, Host of “Urban Update” on WHDH-TV; Kevin Cullen, columnist for The Boston Globe; Celeste Headlee, of National Public Radio; Peggy McIntosh, anti-racist educational activist; Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association; and Margot Stern Strom, president emerita of Facing History and Ourselves. To register, click here.

For questions about the Cambridge Street Upper School’s cultural proficiency program and its participation in the conference, email team facilitator Tracey Pratt at [email protected] or Fernandez at [email protected].