Presentations by Middle School Teachers Fadwa Abbas & Kevin Toledo

Originally from Khartoum, Sudan, Fadwa Abbas has a BA in English from Columbia University with a minor in education at Barnard College, and an MA in Post-Colonial studies from University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom. Fadwa has taught language arts and English in public, independent and international middle and high schools in addition to adult ESL (English as a Second Language). Fadwa is fluent in Arabic. 

Originally from the Bronx, New York, Kevin Toledo has taught for ten years in public elementary and middle schools in New york City. Kevin has an MA in Mathematics Leadership from Bank Street College of Education in New York City, and he currently teaches mathematics and science at United Nations International School in New York City.

Co-investigator with Claude Steele on test performance in African Americans and women, Josh Aronson's research seeks to understand and remediate race and gender gaps in educational achievement and standardized test performance. Aronson is a professor of Applied Psychology at New York University, and he has an MA and a PhD in Social Psychology from Princeton University. Aronson is the author of Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education (Academic Press, 2002), and with Claude Steele "Stereotypes and the Fragility of Human Competence, Motivation, and Self-Concept. In Carol Dweck & E. Elliot (Eds.), Handbook of Competence & Motivation (Guilford 2005).

Niobe Way, author of Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press, 2011), is a professor of Applied Psychology at New York University in New York City, the co-founder with Carol Gilligan and Pedro Noguera of NYU's PACH (Project for the Advancement of our Common Humanity), and the co-director of the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education at NYU. Way's work focuses on social identities, including gender and racial/ethnic identities, and the effects of gender and racial/ethnic stereotypes on adjustment and on friendships.

Lise Eliot is Associate Professor of Neuroscience at The Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science. A Chicago native, she received an A.B. degree from Harvard University, a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and did post-doctoral research at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. Eliot lectures widely on children’s brain and gender development. Eliot is the author of Pink Brain Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).