September 6, 2024 • 14 mins
Welcome to this special bonus episode of our podcast!
Today, we’re diving into an exciting event on the horizon: the upcoming collaborative conference, "Education for Liberation: Requiem and Renaissance". Discussing an exciting collaboration between The Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence and The CREATE Project, Dr. Lawanda Cummings and Dana Salter discuss the purpose and power of joining the Crim Center's Sources Conference with the CREATE Project's Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Institute. This gathering is all about bringing together educators, thought leaders, and community members to explore the vital role of culturally relevant pedagogy in today’s educational landscape.
We'll be discussing what makes this conference unique, the kinds of sessions and workshops you can look forward to, and the impact it aims to make in fostering inclusive and equitable learning environments. Whether you're an educator looking for new strategies, a student interested in the future of learning, or just passionate about education, this episode will give you a sneak peek into what to expect at the conference.
Let’s get started!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent
(00:09):
the views, thoughts and opinions of Georgia State University.
The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only.
The Georgia State University name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its
owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization,
(00:35):
product or service.
Hi everybody, welcome to a bonus episode of the Create Ed podcast.
These bonus episodes are happening in between our regular season and it's an opportunity
for us to talk to friends, colleagues, incredible people whose work, lives, ways of being intersect
(01:00):
with the Create project.
In this episode we are extremely excited to talk to and welcome Dr. Luana Cummings.
Hey everybody, I'm so excited to be here.
Dana, thank you for thinking of me.
Thank you for the fact that we're getting ready to build great possibilities together.
(01:23):
So I'm excited for us to be able to have that conversation today with your listeners.
Yeah, as well.
We're excited to have you.
And so let's kind of get started a little bit about who you are.
Everyone knows us and the Create project, but who are you and how are you connected
to Georgia State?
Yeah, let's start with that.
(01:44):
Oh madness.
I am Dr. Luana Cummings and I got my degree on the Thank You Lordy scholarship.
Praise the Lord.
And I actually graduated from Georgia State like three times.
So I had a master's, a master's and a PhD from this place.
And in community psychology and psychology that department was interesting.
(02:08):
So at some point in my academic career, it was not because of my passion for what it
is that I work on and study, which is going to be us black people in education and the
genius we know there.
It wasn't, it wasn't really the house where I can place those things.
And after some conflict, I actually found myself down here in the College of Education.
(02:31):
And I was getting ready to quit.
I ain't gonna lie.
I was like, I'm done.
Let me get this master's degree and go find me a job.
And I actually was brought into the presence of Dr. Aisa Hillier in this meeting.
And we had a conversation where he revolutionized how I thought about what this process was
about, you know, and helped me attach the struggle to a larger narrative around what
(02:56):
we do to create freedom for our children, freedom for our communities.
And then I was like, not only am I going to get this degree, but I'm about to cut up.
So I ended up down here in the CRIM Center actually, where I now am the director.
Woo woo.
Look at that trajectory.
Yeah, no, like that circle came all the way back around.
And literally I walked in here when I took the job and walked past the wooden table where
(03:21):
I wrote my dissertation.
And it's just, you know, it's been many moons, but so much is the same.
And so I, so now I'm the director of the CRIM Center, the Alonzoa CRIM Center for Urban
Educational Excellence.
I'm here to do the work that our luminaries began, and you know, that's the story, right?
(03:42):
We are recreating the opportunities for the continual work, the continual fight for justice
and education.
Oh, that's a perfect segue because we've been talking about how we all are coming together.
And this purpose of this bonus episode is to reveal, shout out, and let everyone know
(04:04):
that the sources conference is coming back.
The sources conference!
Okay.
Yeah, the sources conference, and we are partnering together.
It's the sources conference and the Create Project CRP Institute.
The CRP Institute is in its third year, Cultural Relevant Pedagogy Institute, and through just
(04:29):
some amazing conversations, we saw an opportunity to collaborate and bring these two conferences
together.
And so Dr. Cummings, when will the sources conference create CRP Institute be?
I want you all to know that I must love this because the conference is going to begin on
(04:50):
my birthday, November the 8th through the 9th.
Yes.
These are the kind of parties that I'm trying to be a part of.
And so we are so excited.
It really was in a conversation where we found that there's like-mindedness around this work.
And I'm just honored because Dana has been a part of the Crane Center.
(05:11):
She's done this work before.
And I'm going to tell you all, I was throwing some energy into a dark hole or not knowing.
And so I was so excited to be able to sit in the midst of people who know how to do
it, work and do it well, and to contribute our energies because we can change the world
when we are working collaboratively.
(05:31):
We know that that's a strange thing sometimes around these parts.
But we can do it.
So I'm super excited.
We're excited too because, yes, full disclosure podcast audience.
Yes, I was a part of the Crane Center for several years as an associate director.
And so the sources conference was part of the work we were doing with Brian Williams,
(05:54):
who was the director before.
Everyone knows each other.
And so why not when you have knowledge, sharing with others to support them.
Such an education perspective.
Rising water lifts all ships.
We keep saying it.
So we're excited to support and collaborate together on this sources, CRP Institute and
(06:17):
the theme very much connects to our earlier part of the conversation, which is about standing
on the shoulders of such a long history of people who have been doing this work, both
at the Crimsoner in Atlanta in the South, across the nation, across the globe, and people
(06:38):
who are doing this work every day in classrooms, in homes, in communities, in their religious
spaces, in their spaces of mindfulness, in their karate dojos, in their art spaces, doing
this work.
So the thing with this conference is education for liberation, the infamous education colon,
(07:02):
requiem and renaissance.
And so Dr. Cummings, can you kind of dig into that theme just a little bit?
Why is this?
What is this theme and why is this great for all of our children, all of our community
to be here?
I'm going to tell you, we really are finding ourselves in an interesting season.
(07:23):
I mean, we've been here before politically, where there's revisionistic behaviors that
are happening.
There's all this stuff that's going on in a political realm that is impacting what can
happen in regards to education and access for our children, for our teachers, for administrators.
So it's an interesting space that we kind of are finding ourselves, where we have to
(07:48):
start thinking about the system as not necessarily the nurturing place that it may have been
built out to be.
My dad always says, these systems operate the way that they were built to operate.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that it is for your good or for freedom or for liberation.
(08:10):
But it's built to accomplish a particular task.
Now, that doesn't mean that that's what we want, right?
And I think that we have such a rich legacy in the South and in the communities of color
that we serve, where we understood that the system wasn't necessarily built for us.
So we have built alternative ways of being, alternative ways to build excellence.
(08:34):
I'm always thinking about the Philadelphia Freedom Schools.
I'm thinking about all of the work that I saw Aisa, Dr. Bob Aisa do, where it was really
focused on how do we find the people who have revolutionized what education can be by incorporating
the culture and the lives of our children.
(08:55):
And so we're just in this phase in the center where we're just like, education has always
been a pathway for freedom.
But we had to be deliberate about what we were going to feed our children.
You know what I'm saying?
If you always feed them hot fries, you can't be mad about what comes on on the outside.
There is a natural, kind of healthy way in which we feed our children so that we can
(09:19):
prepare them to be the people that are going to move on through the future.
So for us in this conference, we want to look at this legacy.
I think the center has this interesting place in between what we can be in the future and
all of this legacy work that has occurred.
So being in a position to be able to look at the work that we've done in the past to
(09:40):
do great work in education for justice and liberation for our kids.
And then we're looking at how we're going to go into the future and how we're going
to deal with what's going on in the past.
How do we help people be empowered to be the new innovators for the years to come?
Because we can't stay where we at.
Like I mean, I get scared when I start looking at some of the policies, the things that are
(10:04):
coming down the pipe.
But I'm always reminded that we've been here before.
We survived and we rose again.
But it meant that we had to be innovative.
We had to think about what was freedom and liberation going to be for us.
How do we define that?
Really stated.
And it's a great intersection with the CRP Institute that the CREA project has been doing
(10:26):
for three years because drawing on the work, we especially ground our work in the work
of Dr. Lassen's Billings, Goldie Muhammad, a range of scholars.
But looking at situating this work in the culture of our students in our classroom,
their communities, their regions, where they come from, their histories.
(10:49):
So being, you know, having great expertise and taking the time to understand the work.
Just situating in a context that's one part, but you also have to be a solid practitioner
who's done that work themselves.
And so that is where we see that overlap and intersection.
(11:13):
So at this conference, we will have guest speakers who are both talking about the culture,
the context, and the expertise and practices, the knowing, the ways of teaching in the classroom
and building that in, bridging those knowledges and ways of being doing like you were talking
about.
(11:33):
So get ready.
Next week, the week of September 9, 2018, we are opening, saved the dates.
Registrations, the website will be going up.
We're very, very excited.
Space is limited.
We're going to be at the gorgeous College of Law here at Georgia State University.
(11:53):
So space is limited.
So as soon as registration goes up, get your spot.
We will have speakers who are graduate students, speakers from the community, speaker who are
teachers.
We're working on having children come.
All are welcome to be a part of this education for liberation conversation, Requiem and Renaissance.
What has happened, knowing and standing on that?
(12:15):
And where are we going?
How do we do this and where are we going, standing on the path and looking and actively
designing our futures?
Did I say that right?
You said it fantastic.
I totally can tell you're an English major.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Shout out to RU.
Rutgers University.
(12:35):
We'll do that.
But yes, that's it, y'all.
We just wanted to give you a little taste.
We're excited to be collaborating.
And I do want to end with this anecdote.
We talk about the past and the present and the future.
Dr. Cummings, where did you first present?
(12:57):
My very first presentation in my academic career was at a sources conference.
So this is my heart because we know that so many times when we talk about kind of research
enterprise, it becomes something that is not natural to our particular culture or background.
I was a first-year graduate student.
(13:20):
And it was the first time I presented.
And I remember I felt like I was presenting among family and among community.
So I'm just excited.
Sources is coming back that we're collaborating, that we're going to create the spaces of
nurturance so that innovation can live and we can rest assured that the world will be
(13:40):
a better place because we came together.
Come on.
Come on out, everybody.
We cannot wait to see you November 8th and 9th.
Early happy birthday, Dr. Cummings.
2024, Georgia State University College of Law registration opens next week, the week of September
9th, 2024.
(14:02):
Stay tuned, register, come out, connect, enjoy.
We'll see you in November.
Bye.
Bye, everyone.
Bye, everyone.
Bye, everyone.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent
(00:09):
the views, thoughts and opinions of Georgia State University.
The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only.
The Georgia State University name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its
owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization,
(00:35):
product or service.
Hi everybody, welcome to a bonus episode of the Create Ed podcast.
These bonus episodes are happening in between our regular season and it's an opportunity
for us to talk to friends, colleagues, incredible people whose work, lives, ways of being intersect
(01:00):
with the Create project.
In this episode we are extremely excited to talk to and welcome Dr. Luana Cummings.
Hey everybody, I'm so excited to be here.
Dana, thank you for thinking of me.
Thank you for the fact that we're getting ready to build great possibilities together.
(01:23):
So I'm excited for us to be able to have that conversation today with your listeners.
Yeah, as well.
We're excited to have you.
And so let's kind of get started a little bit about who you are.
Everyone knows us and the Create project, but who are you and how are you connected
to Georgia State?
Yeah, let's start with that.
(01:44):
Oh madness.
I am Dr. Luana Cummings and I got my degree on the Thank You Lordy scholarship.
Praise the Lord.
And I actually graduated from Georgia State like three times.
So I had a master's, a master's and a PhD from this place.
And in community psychology and psychology that department was interesting.
(02:08):
So at some point in my academic career, it was not because of my passion for what it
is that I work on and study, which is going to be us black people in education and the
genius we know there.
It wasn't, it wasn't really the house where I can place those things.
And after some conflict, I actually found myself down here in the College of Education.
(02:31):
And I was getting ready to quit.
I ain't gonna lie.
I was like, I'm done.
Let me get this master's degree and go find me a job.
And I actually was brought into the presence of Dr. Aisa Hillier in this meeting.
And we had a conversation where he revolutionized how I thought about what this process was
about, you know, and helped me attach the struggle to a larger narrative around what
(02:56):
we do to create freedom for our children, freedom for our communities.
And then I was like, not only am I going to get this degree, but I'm about to cut up.
So I ended up down here in the CRIM Center actually, where I now am the director.
Woo woo.
Look at that trajectory.
Yeah, no, like that circle came all the way back around.
And literally I walked in here when I took the job and walked past the wooden table where
(03:21):
I wrote my dissertation.
And it's just, you know, it's been many moons, but so much is the same.
And so I, so now I'm the director of the CRIM Center, the Alonzoa CRIM Center for Urban
Educational Excellence.
I'm here to do the work that our luminaries began, and you know, that's the story, right?
(03:42):
We are recreating the opportunities for the continual work, the continual fight for justice
and education.
Oh, that's a perfect segue because we've been talking about how we all are coming together.
And this purpose of this bonus episode is to reveal, shout out, and let everyone know
(04:04):
that the sources conference is coming back.
The sources conference!
Okay.
Yeah, the sources conference, and we are partnering together.
It's the sources conference and the Create Project CRP Institute.
The CRP Institute is in its third year, Cultural Relevant Pedagogy Institute, and through just
(04:29):
some amazing conversations, we saw an opportunity to collaborate and bring these two conferences
together.
And so Dr. Cummings, when will the sources conference create CRP Institute be?
I want you all to know that I must love this because the conference is going to begin on
(04:50):
my birthday, November the 8th through the 9th.
Yes.
These are the kind of parties that I'm trying to be a part of.
And so we are so excited.
It really was in a conversation where we found that there's like-mindedness around this work.
And I'm just honored because Dana has been a part of the Crane Center.
(05:11):
She's done this work before.
And I'm going to tell you all, I was throwing some energy into a dark hole or not knowing.
And so I was so excited to be able to sit in the midst of people who know how to do
it, work and do it well, and to contribute our energies because we can change the world
when we are working collaboratively.
(05:31):
We know that that's a strange thing sometimes around these parts.
But we can do it.
So I'm super excited.
We're excited too because, yes, full disclosure podcast audience.
Yes, I was a part of the Crane Center for several years as an associate director.
And so the sources conference was part of the work we were doing with Brian Williams,
(05:54):
who was the director before.
Everyone knows each other.
And so why not when you have knowledge, sharing with others to support them.
Such an education perspective.
Rising water lifts all ships.
We keep saying it.
So we're excited to support and collaborate together on this sources, CRP Institute and
(06:17):
the theme very much connects to our earlier part of the conversation, which is about standing
on the shoulders of such a long history of people who have been doing this work, both
at the Crimsoner in Atlanta in the South, across the nation, across the globe, and people
(06:38):
who are doing this work every day in classrooms, in homes, in communities, in their religious
spaces, in their spaces of mindfulness, in their karate dojos, in their art spaces, doing
this work.
So the thing with this conference is education for liberation, the infamous education colon,
(07:02):
requiem and renaissance.
And so Dr. Cummings, can you kind of dig into that theme just a little bit?
Why is this?
What is this theme and why is this great for all of our children, all of our community
to be here?
I'm going to tell you, we really are finding ourselves in an interesting season.
(07:23):
I mean, we've been here before politically, where there's revisionistic behaviors that
are happening.
There's all this stuff that's going on in a political realm that is impacting what can
happen in regards to education and access for our children, for our teachers, for administrators.
So it's an interesting space that we kind of are finding ourselves, where we have to
(07:48):
start thinking about the system as not necessarily the nurturing place that it may have been
built out to be.
My dad always says, these systems operate the way that they were built to operate.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that it is for your good or for freedom or for liberation.
(08:10):
But it's built to accomplish a particular task.
Now, that doesn't mean that that's what we want, right?
And I think that we have such a rich legacy in the South and in the communities of color
that we serve, where we understood that the system wasn't necessarily built for us.
So we have built alternative ways of being, alternative ways to build excellence.
(08:34):
I'm always thinking about the Philadelphia Freedom Schools.
I'm thinking about all of the work that I saw Aisa, Dr. Bob Aisa do, where it was really
focused on how do we find the people who have revolutionized what education can be by incorporating
the culture and the lives of our children.
(08:55):
And so we're just in this phase in the center where we're just like, education has always
been a pathway for freedom.
But we had to be deliberate about what we were going to feed our children.
You know what I'm saying?
If you always feed them hot fries, you can't be mad about what comes on on the outside.
There is a natural, kind of healthy way in which we feed our children so that we can
(09:19):
prepare them to be the people that are going to move on through the future.
So for us in this conference, we want to look at this legacy.
I think the center has this interesting place in between what we can be in the future and
all of this legacy work that has occurred.
So being in a position to be able to look at the work that we've done in the past to
(09:40):
do great work in education for justice and liberation for our kids.
And then we're looking at how we're going to go into the future and how we're going
to deal with what's going on in the past.
How do we help people be empowered to be the new innovators for the years to come?
Because we can't stay where we at.
Like I mean, I get scared when I start looking at some of the policies, the things that are
(10:04):
coming down the pipe.
But I'm always reminded that we've been here before.
We survived and we rose again.
But it meant that we had to be innovative.
We had to think about what was freedom and liberation going to be for us.
How do we define that?
Really stated.
And it's a great intersection with the CRP Institute that the CREA project has been doing
(10:26):
for three years because drawing on the work, we especially ground our work in the work
of Dr. Lassen's Billings, Goldie Muhammad, a range of scholars.
But looking at situating this work in the culture of our students in our classroom,
their communities, their regions, where they come from, their histories.
(10:49):
So being, you know, having great expertise and taking the time to understand the work.
Just situating in a context that's one part, but you also have to be a solid practitioner
who's done that work themselves.
And so that is where we see that overlap and intersection.
(11:13):
So at this conference, we will have guest speakers who are both talking about the culture,
the context, and the expertise and practices, the knowing, the ways of teaching in the classroom
and building that in, bridging those knowledges and ways of being doing like you were talking
about.
(11:33):
So get ready.
Next week, the week of September 9, 2018, we are opening, saved the dates.
Registrations, the website will be going up.
We're very, very excited.
Space is limited.
We're going to be at the gorgeous College of Law here at Georgia State University.
(11:53):
So space is limited.
So as soon as registration goes up, get your spot.
We will have speakers who are graduate students, speakers from the community, speaker who are
teachers.
We're working on having children come.
All are welcome to be a part of this education for liberation conversation, Requiem and Renaissance.
What has happened, knowing and standing on that?
(12:15):
And where are we going?
How do we do this and where are we going, standing on the path and looking and actively
designing our futures?
Did I say that right?
You said it fantastic.
I totally can tell you're an English major.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Shout out to RU.
Rutgers University.
(12:35):
We'll do that.
But yes, that's it, y'all.
We just wanted to give you a little taste.
We're excited to be collaborating.
And I do want to end with this anecdote.
We talk about the past and the present and the future.
Dr. Cummings, where did you first present?
(12:57):
My very first presentation in my academic career was at a sources conference.
So this is my heart because we know that so many times when we talk about kind of research
enterprise, it becomes something that is not natural to our particular culture or background.
I was a first-year graduate student.
(13:20):
And it was the first time I presented.
And I remember I felt like I was presenting among family and among community.
So I'm just excited.
Sources is coming back that we're collaborating, that we're going to create the spaces of
nurturance so that innovation can live and we can rest assured that the world will be
(13:40):
a better place because we came together.
Come on.
Come on out, everybody.
We cannot wait to see you November 8th and 9th.
Early happy birthday, Dr. Cummings.
2024, Georgia State University College of Law registration opens next week, the week of September
9th, 2024.
(14:02):
Stay tuned, register, come out, connect, enjoy.
We'll see you in November.
Bye.
Bye, everyone.
Bye, everyone.
Bye, everyone.
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