AntiRacist Teaching and Parenting 101
Presented by PEACE Out Loud
With Instructors Ira X Armstrong and Cara Kelsey
Register NowThere is no perfect roadmap to being a teacher, parent, or caregiver, especially not as an anti-racist in a society that was built on slave capitalism, colonialism, and rape patriarchy.
In order to build an anti-racist child raising framework, we have to consciously create systems and practices in our homes, classrooms, and lives that allow us to lean into our purpose and connect with our children in deep and meaningful ways.
Through ancestor invitation, community mapping, ages and stages intervention, relationship strategies, family building tools, and classroom building, we will create a basic template from which we can build more satisfying presence and relationship with the children and youth in our lives.
As we build the new world free of these forms of domination, we also need new tools to create relationships that transcend oppression. In a world where adult supremacy is one of the most basic forms of oppression, how do we liberate ourselves and our children while also being safety nets who set real limits in a world that is full of distractions designed to divide adults and children from each other? How do we build true relationship, and create a foundation for a childhood, adolescence, and adulthood where we will have the skills to engender in our children the principles from which they can live and thrive?
Step by step. Bit by bit. And no one can do it alone.
This Course is For You If:
You are ready to develop a practice that notices and starts to heal generational trauma caused by being born into a system that none of us alive created and that some of us seem to benefit from while others are demoralized and killed by it. But here's the thing. Benefitting from a system that destroys is an addiction, not a life-giving process. To practice harm reduction, we must be willing to unlearn this way of false benefit in order to create true solidarity and beloved community. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
In this eight-week course, we will lay a foundation for a land practice, ancestor connection and invitation, learning about ages and stages, developing de-escalation, communication, and breath practices, learning how to create an environment of consent, care, and community building.
As adults, we will never know all the answers. In fact, we aren't supposed to. But we will create a practice of building relationship and repair that will sustain us even in the times when we don’t know what to do or how to do it. And we will have access to a group of like-minded parents, teachers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and caregivers in a facilitated community with some of the most caring Co-parents and teachers you will ever meet.
Meet Your Teachers
Ira X Armstrong (they/he)
is a Coach, Witch Doctor, Freedom Fighter, Social Entrepreneur and Educator.
BA in Educational Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, Ira has been a teacher of peace, performance arts and freedom for over 30 years, is an infrastructure specialist who helps create outdoor education settings as well as shut down bridges, freeways, and government buildings to stop the machine from running over the people, as needed.
Ira consults with political campaigns as well as with ally and accomplice organizations in technology, finance and education in order to create safe spaces for trans, queer, Black and poor folks.
They are a founder at PEACE Out Loud, a queer, Black, Brown and poor people led Social Permaculture enterprise in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they are dedicated to Self Determination, Outdoor and Freedom Education, and building Consent Culture.
Ira is also part of a coalition of folks building to end rape culture in the next 30 years.
Cara Kelsey (they/them)
Instructor Cara Kelsey, is a trans non-binary queer and kinky sex and relationship Coach with a focus on non-monogamy and creative relationship models. They have been doing this work in their own life for 15 years and helping others do so for 10. They have a background working in harm reduction with both sex education and drug use, and honors the philosophy that this work embodies, which is meeting people where they are at.
What's Included in This Course
- Every course participant will learn how to build a land and people acknowledgement practice
- Every course participant will learn how to build relationships with their ancestors and will be able to scaffold those relationships into powerful connections with themselves and their children
- Ages and Stages based child development knowledge and skills from educators and activists in the Black liberation and Landback movements
- A practice community of other anti-racist adults who are as deeply committed to doing the work as you are
- Skills, practice, and support as you build your anti-racist child rearing skills and process generational trauma through the lens of liberation philosophy and body-based healing and forgiveness practices.
- Each course participant will also receive access to study group and office hours with the instructors and other activist parents, facilitators, and educators
In a country founded on the myth of white supremacy, an economic system founded on slave capitalism and a marketing system based on rape patriarchy, we have to go against the tide, on purpose. Otherwise we will be replicating those systems, even if we are good people who don't want to or mean to.
Course Schedule
What Days of the Week is the Class?
Wednesdays
Lesson 10:30-11:30AM PST
Study Group 11:45AM-12:30PM PST
Tuesdays
Alternate Study Groups/Office Hours
Evenings (beginning March 7th) 6-7pm and 7-8pm (ends 10 minutes before the hour) PST
Course Begins Wednesday, March 8th and runs through May 10th.
There will be no class sessions on March 29th or April 5th due to local public school spring breaks.
Pricing Options
One Time Payment
This gives you access to the exclusive community and 8 week course and study sessions.
Bring a Friend Pricing
You may use this option to bring a personal friend, or if you are in a financial position to "pay it forward," you may use this option to create a space for someone who may not be able to afford the call. Include in your payment notes the name and email address of your friend, or "Donate" if you are donating a spot.
Discount Pricing
You may use the discounted pricing link if you have financial need. This is on an honor system with no application process or proof required. When you submit your payment, please share one sentence in the notes about why you qualify. This helps us ensure the program is working as intended.
We encourage you to consider any privilege you hold (race, gender, class, etc) and your earning potential - not just your current financial situation - when selecting discounted pricing.
Paying the full amount if you can helps to subsidize those who can’t afford to.
Need a Payment Plan?
Have questions or need a scholarship or other payment plan?
Email: [email protected]
What is PEACE Out Loud?
Peace, Education, Arts & Creation for Everyone.
Peace Out Loud is based in South Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, California and is a neighborhood social permaculture project of building self-determined community through youth programs and adult coaching programs. As educators, we are committed to creating the conditions for all families to comfortably grow into being their full selves. As social permaculturists, we identify the needs in our community and co-create programs in response to those needs. Our team is composed of Black, Brown, queer, trans and poor people with a passion for care, social justice and playfulness!
Peace Out Loud was started by Ira X Armstrong, an activist, educator, organizer and social permaculturist. They are the child of a Black revolutionary/former Black Panther father and a white abolitionist Unitarian Universalist Mother. Ira has worked as an educational anthropologist and activist with over 20 years of experience as an educator. They have taught and begun music, dance, garden, coaching, and musical theater programs in Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley and Los Angeles unified school districts, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, churches, the YMCA and street parties up and down the 101 and back.
Peace Out Loud is for obliterating all forms of oppression. Our courses are not for those who are queerphobic, transphobic, homophobic, fatphobic, abelist, unless you are here because you are seeking to unpack and undo those forms of oppression. We do not believe that one form of oppression can be undone while oppressing other groups. We are for complex and nuanced conversations around challenging and often emotionally charged areas of life. You are responsible for taking care of yourself as you engage in this work and in these group dynamics and discussions.
