Critical Urban Education Speaker Series Hosts Dr. Rosa L. Rivera-McCutchen

The Critical Urban Education Speaker Series hosted an event featuring Dr. Rosa L. Rivera-McCutchen on October 21, 2021. In her new book Radical Care: Leading for Justice in Urban Schools, Dr. Rivera-McCutchen argues that care, as typically described and enacted, is not sufficient for leading schools, particularly those serving Black and Latinx children. Instead, school leaders need to embrace radical care. During her talk, Dr. Rivera-McCutchen outlined the five components of radical care—adopting an antiracist stance, cultivating authentic relationships, believing in students’ and teachers’ capacity for excellence, leveraging power strategically, and embracing a spirit of radical hope—while sharing vignettes from her personal experiences and research that exemplify each of the components. Calling for educators to thoughtfully challenge existing structures that reproduce inequality, Radical Care offers a much-needed framework that will guide practice with a sense of urgency and a spirit of hope.

This event was free and open to the public. ASL interpretation and live transcription were provided.

The Critical Urban Education (CUE) Speaker Series is a bi-annual event bringing leading national scholars to Montclair State University. CUE provides a forum to develop attendees’ racial and political analysis through a series of lectures and workshops focused on social and cultural issues influencing urban schools and communities.

The CUE Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the Dean’s Office of the College of Education and Human Services, a Teacher Quality Pipeline USDOE Grant, the Department of Teaching and Learning, the Center of Pedagogy, and the Montclair State University Network for Educational Renewal.