This December I attended my sixth People of Color in Independent Schools conference, and I am always amazed by the thoughtful workshops, inspiring speakers and restorative nature of the conference.

This year I chose to focus on makerspaces, and there were ample opportunities to learn with other maker practitioners. The POCC Hub has hosted a makerspace at the conference for the last three years, and it was fun to compare and contrast lower school lesson planning and resources with the host teachers from the Kinkaid School in Houston. I learned new strategies for teaching coding with the Ozobot robot, and how to introduce VR lessons on the topic of belonging with an Occulus headset.

I connected with David Clifford, a Maker coordinator at the DBI Lab at Redwood Day School in Oakland. He was part of a team of educators who partnered with the National Equity Project to developed a Liberatory Design curriculum, which they shared as a deck of "move" cards. Liberatory design is a process and practice to generate self-awareness to liberate designers from habits that perpetuate inequity. It also aims to shift the relationship between people who hold the power to design to those who are most impacted. The cards each have statements and ideas to ground and focus one's design practice. While I don't feel that lower school students can access the information from these cards as easily, they are great for teacher lesson planning and reflection.

I was blown away by the maker teacher Leah Rideway Jackson from Shaker Heights, OH. She is the director of the IDEA lab at Hathaway Brown School, and also teaches similar grades at their all-girls school. Her session shared strategies to explore identity and forge community in makerspaces. Her eighth grade project was inspired by the quote from Shirley Chisholm stating, "if they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair." Students reflected on what personal attributes and unique strengths they would bring to the table, and designed their very own chairs that conveyed this message. It was such a powerful project that allowed students of all backgrounds and experiences to create and express themselves. I have connected with her and plan to exchange ideas.

Overall, I had an amazing experience at POCC and was thrilled that I could bring back ideas to apply to my work in the Makery.