Teach for America’s 2018 PACE summit buzzed with the energy of young teachers from eastern North Carolina who moved through workshops on topics ranging from healing through arts and storytelling to design anthropology. The conference in Raleigh on Saturday centered on the theme, “Coalition-building toward Educational Equity.”

Reach NC Voices led one of the summit’s sessions. As an engagement tool, Reach NC Voices is a project that hopes to draw as many diverse perspectives as possible on pertinent policy issues, including those of teachers and administrators on topics like school funding and racial equity.

“Our goal is really to listen and learn and identify the things that you all think are important,” said Molly Osborne, a public policy analyst at EducationNC who led the session. 

Below are some clips from Osborne’s talk about Reach NC Voices.

How does Reach NC Voices fit into EducationNC?:

How does Reach NC Voices work?:

What is the goal of Reach NC Voices?:

Guest Erica Everett, a teacher at Moore Square Magnet Middle School, closed the session by sharing resources for teachers who want to stay in the loop on education policy:

To learn more about Reach NC Voices, follow the initiative or share your feedback on Twitter @ReachNCVoices.

Yasmin Bendaas

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Yasmin Bendaas is a Science writer.  A North Carolina native, she received her master’s degree in Science & Medical Journalism at UNC Chapel Hill, where she was a Park Fellow. She received her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 2013 from Wake Forest University, where she double-minored in journalism and Middle East and South Asia studies. As an undergraduate student, Bendaas gained insight into public health when she interned at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, a statewide grantmaker focused on rural health, including access to primary care, diabetes, community-centered prevention, and mental health and substance abuse. 

As a journalist, Bendaas has been funded twice by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for fieldwork in Algeria — first to cover a disappearing indigenous tattoo tradition, and again to look at how climate change affects rural sheepherding practices.