The global coronavirus pandemic sheds a blacklight on the need for educational reform. In response to the stay-at-home orders in early March, schools, colleges, and universities across the nation shifted instruction to virtual platforms, thus exposing unequal access to the internet and computers in marginalized communities and school segregation. As federal, state, and local governments, school boards, administrators, and teachers make essential decisions about virtual, hybrid, and in-person learning for the upcoming school year, parents and students face the ethical dilemma of balancing safety with the most effective modes of instruction.

This conversation will engage these questions: How does COVID-19 unveil the racial disparities in our current educational system? How might this crisis moment impact the spirituality and faith of children and youth? What is the faithful response to pandemic learning?

Sponsored by Union Presbyterian Seminary’s Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation and Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership.

About our presenters

Dr. Dorothy Charles
Family Medicine Resident
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria
Peoria, IL

Dorothy Charles is a family medicine resident at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria and a graduate of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Although her formal training is in the basic sciences, she was introduced to topics of social justice through spaces on the Internet like Tumblr and in conversations with friends. As the daughter of Haitian and Filipinx immigrants, she often finds her social justice interests aligning along issues of race, class, and immigration. This has informed her work during her time in medical school: co-founding the medical student activist organization, White Coats for Black Lives, advocating for a single-payer health care as a former member of the Political Advocacy Committee of Students for a National Health Program, and fighting for hospitalized patients’ right to vote by co-founding Presby Votes (now known as Penn Med Votes). She also enjoys educating others about racism in medicine and the effects of structural oppression on health and has presented on these topics at conferences, led teach-ins, and written for both popular and academic publications.

Karen-Marie Yust
Josiah P. and Anne Wilson Rowe Professor of Christian Education
Union Presbyterian Seminary
Richmond, VA
Karen-Marie Yust’s work focuses on nurturing spirituality and encouraging theological reflection intergenerationally and across the lifespan. Her current research explores the effects of digital culture on spirituality, particularly among children, youth, and young adults. She draws from findings in media studies, developmental psychology, and educational theory to describe how online participation shapes personal identity and communal relationships and then reflect theologically on how the Church might respond constructively to the realities of contemporary life. She wonders about new findings in young children’s moral development that suggest infants and toddlers have moral sensibilities that adults can cultivate through encouraging curiosity and expanding social ideals of kinship to encompass better our human diversity.

She is also exploring the changing dynamics of congregational life and asking how these changes offer opportunities to develop new approaches to faith formation and new foci for educational ministries. She is interested in taking Christian education outside traditional programs to other venues, such as online sites and non-religious gathering spaces.

An experienced pastor and Christian educator, she is ordained with dual standing in the United Church of Christ and Disciples traditions.

Carlton Jordan
Institute for Student Achievement Coach

Carlton Jordan has over 20 years’ experience in education. He was a high school English and writing teacher for many years. He served as a coordinator of a ninth-grade English course and was a founding member of an untracked middle school in New Jersey. At the college level, he has taught Africana Studies and EOP writing. He has served as a literacy and leadership coach and has served as a team leader and writer for school quality reviews. Jordan feels his greatest coaching accomplishment has been helping principals create an environment where teachers deliver quality instruction and assign writing across the disciplines.

Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler
Moderator

Associate Professor of Bible
Director, Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation
Union Presbyterian Seminary
Charlotte, NC

Rodney S. Sadler Jr’s teaching experience includes courses in biblical languages, Old and New Testament interpretation, wisdom literature in the Bible, the history and religion of ancient Israel, and African American biblical interpretation. His first authored book, Can A Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible, was published in 2005. He frequently lectures within the church and community on Race in the Bible, African American Biblical Interpretation, the Image of Jesus, Biblical Archaeology, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was the managing editor of the African American Devotional Bible. Dr. Sadler served as a visiting lecturer and interim co-director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC, and was an associate minister in Durham, NC. He is the Director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation on the Charlotte campus.