Pluralistic Education PD Conference

We, at The E Pluribus Unum Project, are thrilled to invite educators nationwide to our annual hybrid Pluralistic Education conference. The in person conference is reserved for educators only, but the virtual conference is open to all. This event is an opportunity to learn Black history, Asian American history, Latine history, LGBTQIA+ history and the history of solidarity between these groups in the movement for civil rights. We are very grateful to our partner NJEA and to Princeton University Carl A. Fields Center and Asian Americans Advancing Justice for co-sponsoring the conference.

Here is a link to our promo video.

Here are links that describe our past conferences in 2024 and 2023.

Here is our program of events

Keynote Address - Dr. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University

Keynote Address - Dr. Beth Lew-Williams of Princeton University

Following the keynotes, there will be multiple workshops for teachers and curriculum supervisors on Black history, AAPI history, Latine history, LGBTQIA+ history and Cross Cultural Solidarity.

The workshop presenters are:

Dr. Sohyun An and Dr. Noreen Naseem Rodriguez, authors of Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms

Dr. Kaysha Corinealdi of Rutgers University

Tony DelaRosa, author of Teaching the Invisible Race

Kate Okeson, Executive Director of the New Jersey Advisory Commission on LGBTQIA+ Youth Equity and Inclusion in Schools

Dr. Kim Pinckney of NJEA Consortium

Gabriel Tanglao of NEA and Sundjata Sekou, a NJ Educator and NJEA Design Team Ambassador

Dr. Rosetta Treece, superintendent of Hopewell Valley Regional School District and Paul Tkacs, Social Studies educator at Hopewell Valley Regional School District

Here are descriptions of the workshops:

How to foster difficult conversations in the classroom with Dr. Rosetta Treece

Hopewell Valley Regional School District Superintendent Dr. Rosetta Treece will lead a small group session on “How to foster difficult conversations in the classroom.”

Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms with Dr. Sohyun An and Dr. Noreen Naseem Rodriguez
This session will offer a framework, resources, and key insights to support educators in elementary classrooms and beyond in meaningfully integrating Asian American histories and stories across the curriculum. Emphasizing themes of interracial solidarity and resistance—both historically and in the present—the session will highlight how these narratives enrich our understanding of our nation and shed light on the ongoing struggle for collective liberation.

Du Boisian Sociology of Education and Black-Asian Relationality with Tony DelaRosa

This talk takes you on a journey exploring the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois is often characterized as a “scholar forgotten” despite his innumerable contributions to the field of sociology. His most notable work is “The Souls of Black Folk,” where he explores the spirit and cultural wealth and gifts of the Black community. How can we revisit Du Bois' journey and apply it to our contexts in education? Furthermore, can revisiting his work help us understand Afro-Asian relationality? Because Du Bois saw African and Asian diasporic communities as mutually constitutive, we can appreciate the foundations of cross-racial literacy and solidarity through his work. So when I say “everything I learned about Pro-Asianness, I learned from Pro-Blackness,” it is because Du Bois had us in mind.

Building Continental Bridges: Black & Asian American Solidarity with Gabriel Tanglao of NJEA and Sundjata Sekou

The "Building Continental Bridges” workshop is intended to foster solidarity, show connections, collaborations, and showcase how white supremacy has pitted Black and Asian communities against each other. This session will focus on specific examples of Black and Filipinx solidarity from the past, present, and future. Additional resources available here.

Teaching with Courage: Safety, Advocacy, and Cultural Responsiveness in Challenging Times with Dr. Kim Pinckney

In today’s politically charged climate, educators face increasing pressure while striving to create inclusive, culturally responsive classrooms. This session explores strategies to protect teacher well-being, uphold professional rights, and effectively advocate for themselves and their students. Together, we’ll examine how courageous teaching can thrive even in difficult environments—grounded in empathy, equity, and resilience

Denationalization in Historical & Comparative Contexts with Dr. Kaysha Corinealdi of Rutgers University

This workshop focuses on the history of birthright citizenship denial, with attention placed on what this means in the Americas, where this citizenship guarantee has for a long time been understood as norm. Looking in particular at Panama, the Dominican Republic, and the United States, attendees will have an opportunity to explore the factors and policies that have shaped denationalization, how affected communities have challenged denationalization, and what it means for our present moment, in the United States, when constitutional guarantees to birthright citizenship are being questioned.

Spirit and Intent: LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Content in the Classroom with Kate Okeson, Executive Director of the New Jersey Advisory Commission on LGBTQIA+ Youth Equity and Inclusion in Schools

At the intersection of pragmatic and aspirational, this workshop will focus on texts and approaches that embody the spirit and the intent of an LGBTQIA+ inclusive curriculum. With a focus on solidarity, visibility, and integrity, we will discuss promising and sustainable practices that bring LGBTQIA+ inclusive content to life, and address the realities and continuing support needed by teachers in our schools now.

We will also be having exhibitors at our conference:

The Learn AAPI History Project is a youth-led initiative dedicated to teaching and advocating for the inclusion of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history in K–12 classrooms. Through educational resources, children's books, workshops, and political advocacy, Learn AAPI History has reached over 5,000 students and educators nationwide, promoting a more inclusive and accurate understanding of history.

Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu are a New York City-based husband and wife illustration team that has been working in children’s literature for over three decades. Their early works include Jingle Dancer (Cynthia Leitish Smith), Sam And The Lucky Money (Karen Chinn), and Zora Hurston And The Chinaberry Tree (William Miller), which was a Reading Rainbow selection. In recent years they have successfully launched their solo writer-illustrator journeys while still frequently collaborating on projects.Since 2010, Cornelius has been one of the lead instructors at Fred Dolan Art Academy, a non-profit visual arts program focused on training and supporting aspiring young creatives in the Bronx community. Ying-Hwa joined the faculty in 2017 to help support their students–most of which are first-generation college attendees–get accepted into major art colleges across the United States. Their students have graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, School of Visual Art, Parsons School of Design, Fashion Institute of Technology just to name a few.Their awards and recognitions include Original Art Show at the Society of Illustrators, Bologna Art Exhibit, Best Books of the Year from New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Bank Street College of Education and many others. Their work has been praised by reviewers from publications such as Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and The Horn Book.They are represented by Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency.

Melissa Prince-Barry is the author of A Family Full of Love. Told through the eyes of the author’s two Asian-Black biracial children, this delightful story celebrates the beauty of family diversity and the powerful bond of love that ties them together. Despite their different skin tones and hair textures, this family finds joy in doing everything together—from biking and cooking to dancing and playing board games.This charming book is a celebration of what makes every family unique, while also highlighting the universal experiences that connect us all. A Family Full of Love offers much-needed representation for Asian-Black biracial children, fostering a sense of belonging and pride. It's also a wonderful story for all children, helping them see that love and fun are the common threads that make every family special, no matter their differences. Melissa was a keynote speaker at the NJSLA conference in May.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Sohyun An is a Professor of Social Studies Education at Kennesaw State University. Her research and teaching center on curriculum, pedagogy, and movement of K-12 Asian American studies and social studies education. Her recent works include Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classroom co-written with Drs. Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Esther June Kim; “Our folks Were Badass!” Learning and Dreaming in Basement (Rethinking Schools, 2023); Who’s Behind the Camera? Anticolonial Visualization of “Westward Expansion” (Social Studies and the Young Learner, 2024); Re/presentation of Asian Americans in 50 states US history standards (The Social Studies, 2022). As a co-founder of Asian American Voices for Education, she works alongside Asian American youth, educators, and community organizers to advance Asian American studies and ethnic studies in Georgia’s K-12 schools. Before becoming a teacher educator and researcher, Sohyun was a middle and high school teacher in South Korea.

Dr. Ruha Benjamin is Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024). Ruha is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and most recently the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship. For more info, visit www.ruhabenjamin.com

Dr. Kaysha Corinealdi is an interdisciplinary historian, author, and educator who specializes in twentieth century histories of empire, migration, feminism, and Afro-diasporic activism in the Americas. She is an Associate Professor of Comparative Caribbean and Hemispheric Transnationalisms in the Dept. of Latino & Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. Her book Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2022), centers the activism of Afro-Caribbean migrants and their descendants as they navigated practices and policies of anti-Blackness, xenophobia, denationalization, and white supremacy in Panama and the United States. She is currently working on a digital project on Black women leaders in the Americas, a series of critical essays on denationalization in the Americas, and a speculative biography on Black women internationalists in Panama. Her writing can also be found in Perspectivas Afro, Radical History Review, Public Books, the American Historical Review, Social Text, the Washington Post, the Global South, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, among other publications. Dr. Corinealdi is also actively engaged in public scholarship as a researcher, editor, and contributor through her work with museums, research foundations, magazines, blogs, and podcasts. She has served as keynote speaker nationally and internationally and presented her work before the Organization of American States, the Electoral Tribunal of Panama and a host of universities, professional associations, and community organizations. www.kayshacorinealdi.com

Tony DelaRosa (he/siya) is son to Pampangan & Caviteño immigrants. He is a father, husband, and an award-winning Filipino American Author, Spoken Word Poet, Educator, Coach, and Researcher. He holds a BA in Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati, a M.Ed with a focus on Arts Education and Non-Profit Management from Harvard University, and is currently pursuing his PhD in Education Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin Madison. His research focuses on how ethnic studies and race-based policies and theories in education translate into effective practice grounded in a lens of Asian American & Filipino American critical theory.

For his work, he has received the 2021 INSPIRE Award from the National Association of Asian American Professionals, the 2023 Community Trailblazer Award with TAAF, and was named one of Wisconsin's Top Asian American Leaders by Madison 365 News. He has been featured in NBC, Harvard Ed Magazine, the Smithsonian, CNN, and elsewhere.

He co-founded NYC's first Asian American teacher support, development, and retention initiative called AATEND under NYC Men Teach, the NYC DOE, and Office of the Mayor. Today, he coaches CEOs and Principals on crafting and refining their short-term and long-term racial equity strategy. Lastly, he authored the debut book "Teaching the Invisible Race," which was a Finalist for the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and 2024 IPPY Silver Medal Awardee.

Follow him on IG and Twitter at @TonyRosaSpeaks.

Dr. Beth Lew-Williams is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University. Her first book, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University Press, 2018) maps the tangled relationships between local racial violence, federal immigration policy, and U.S. imperial ambitions in Asia. The Chinese Must Go won the Ray Allen Billington Prize and the Ellis W. Halley Prize from the Organization of American Historians.

Her second book, John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law (Harvard University Press, September 2025) was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Drawing on dozens of archives across the US West, the book reveals the depth of anti-Chinese discrimination beyond federal exclusion and tells the stories of those who refused to accept a conditional place in American life.

Lew-Williams earned her A.B. from Brown University and Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. She has held fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. At Princeton, her teaching was recognized by the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award.

Dr. Noreen Naseem Rodríguez is an assistant professor of elementary education and educational justice in the College of Education and core faculty in the Asian Pacific American Studies program at Michigan State University. Her award-winning research engages critical race frameworks to explore the pedagogical practices of teachers of color and the teaching of "difficult histories" through children's literature and primary sources, and has been supported by the Spencer Foundation. She has authored over 40 scholarly and practitioner articles and book chapters and is co-author of Social Studies for a Better World: An Anti-Oppressive Approach for Elementary Educators (Norton, 2021) with Katy Swalwell and Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms”(Routledge, 2023) with Sohyun An and Esther Kim. Before becoming a teacher educator, she was a bilingual elementary teacher in Austin, Texas for nine years.

Kate Okeson (she/they) is the Executive Director of the New Jersey Advisory Commission on LGBTQIA+ Youth Equity and Inclusion in Schools. She comes to the Department of Education after more than 25 years in the classroom.

In both advocacy and education spaces, Kate organizes people and resources to affirm and accept our young LGBTQ+ community through education, outreach, and social opportunities. Over the last several years, this has meant supporting educators and school leaders in implementing the LGBTQIA+ inclusive education mandate sustainably, with appropriate support and integrity.

Kate’s work in education comes from her 25+ year career as an art educator and artist who focused on bringing inquiry-driven processes and exploration to the classroom. Among other recognitions, she is the recipient of the 2024 National Education Association's Virginia Uribe Memorial Award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights. In all educational practices, she attends to the discipline of creative and critical thought as a means to ask beautiful questions which lead to growth and action.

Dr. Kim Pinckney With over 20 years in the training and education fields across K-12, government, higher ed, and industry sectors, Dr. Kim Pinckney currently leverages her performance improvement and instructional design skills as an Associate Director within the New Jersey Education Association’s Professional Development and Instructional Issues Division. As their Consortium Coordinator, she oversees the implementation of a grant to develop shareable, peer-reviewed, curricular resources inclusive of the Holocaust, Amistad, LGBTQIA+, Persons with Disabilities, Asian American Pacific Islanders, and Diversity and Inclusion. Dr. Pinckney holds an MA in Second Language Acquisition and a PhD in Instructional Design & Technology. Through KP Solutions & Consulting, LLC she is a passionate inclusive education advocate, instructional designer, and performance improvement consultant. She is also a proud Board Member of The E Pluribus Unum Project. Her research interests include exploring the intersections between learning theories, special populations, digital-age technology demands, needs assessment and evaluation best practices, and maximizing knowledge transfer.

Sundjata (Sund-Jata) Sekou (Say-Coo) is a third grade Black male educator at Mount Vernon Avenue Elementary School in Irvington, New Jersey. He wants you to know that he loves his students, the urban community where he teaches, the struggles, triumphs, the parents, the “ups and downs.” He also loves the students who are born in this country, the immigrants, the Haitian Creole speakers, the Spanish speakers, Jamaican Patwa speakers, Asian and Pacific Islanders, students with IEPs, students who are very difficult in his classroom, and anyone else that he missed. The reason he loves them is because “they are him and he is them.”

Gabriel A. Tanglao has been an educator at heart, activist in spirit, and organizer in practice. Having experienced life as a Filipino-American in the modern diaspora, Gabriel consciously represents his pre-colonial Kapampangan roots. Honoring his family and ancestors, Gabriel has served public educators across New Jersey building a movement for justice-centered unions and liberatory education. Gabriel will begin his new role serving over two million educator-unionists across the country with the NEA Center for Racial and Social Justice.

Paul Tkacs has been a proud member of the Social Studies department at Hopewell Valley Central High School since 2006, where he currently teaches AP United States Government and Politics as well as USII History. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Social Studies Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and later completed a Master of Science in Educational Theory and Practice from Arkansas State University. A passionate educator, Paul is committed to helping students connect historical knowledge with real-world civic engagement. A project he is especially proud of is his final AP Government project, in which his students join forces with the AP Statistic students to formulate policy proposals or predict electoral outcomes. Beyond the classroom, Paul has been an active leader in the education community; serving as President of the Hopewell Valley Education Association from 2015 to 2018 and as a member of the Upper Moreland School District's Board of Education from 2017 to 2021, including a term as Board President in 2020. Outside of work, Paul enjoys traveling and creating lasting memories with his wife and their two young daughters.

Dr. Rosetta Treece has been an educator for 20 years. During her time in public school education, she has served as a high school English Teacher, Vice Principal, Principal, and Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. Dr. Treece is the Superintendent of Schools for Hopewell Valley Regional School District. Dr. Treece graduated Magna Cum Laude from the College of New Jersey earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Secondary Education. She holds a master’s degree in Educational Administration and earned her Doctorate Degree in Educational Leadership from Rowan University. Her doctoral thesis was on how to promote emotional intelligence in adolescents. Dr. Treece is an Advanced Nurtured Heart Trainer and a Peer Leader. She is an Attitudes in Reverse (A.I.R.) therapy dog handler and a mental health champion. She is committed to preparing teachers, support staff, and school leaders to create learning environments that are culturally responsive and that cultivate resiliency in young adults.