The Experience of an Antiracist Educator and OFAR Coach 

The Open for Antiracism (OFAR) program has been co-led by CCCOER and the College of the Canyons since 2020. This guest article is by Hossna Sadat Ahadi, an Associate Professor in Counseling at Palomar College.

Hossna Sadat Ahadi introduced systemic racism to educators at the A2MEND conference..

Since its inception, Open for Antiracism (OFAR) has supported faculty across California Community Colleges to transform their curriculum, pedagogy, and praxis by centering antiracism. As a faculty member of OFAR’s inaugural cohort in 2020, and now in the role of a coach, I continue to learn from other faculty colleagues on ways to dismantle racism, inequities, and injustices for students in community college and beyond.   

Joining OFAR four years ago was critical for me to begin reflecting and transforming both my classes and counseling sessions. OFAR is more than just training faculty to become critically conscious of systemic barriers and perpetual inequities—but about eradicating colonial and hegemonic policies and practices in all spaces on our college campuses, beginning with our classroom instruction. What I learned throughout the two-semester program was about advocating for inclusivity and overtly countering practices that perpetuated racism and hegemony. After all, our purpose as educators is to advocate for liberation and social justice for students and communities who have been historically marginalized and minoritized throughout the educational system. 

I have been counseling and teaching Rising Scholars at Palomar College for several years now. My role at the college is to support the reintegration success of formerly incarcerated students. In 2020, as part of my OFAR action plan, I collected both qualitative and quantitative data in my classes, which allowed me to learn about the lived experiences and barriers my students encounter while attending community college. In addition, I became a zero textbook cost instructor and soon realized my student enrollment increased, as many were financial aid or dream act recipients. Alleviating financial barriers is critically important to increase possibilities of students thriving without having to pay high-cost textbooks. I also implemented pronoun usage in my classroom, counseling sessions, and meeting spaces. I realized there were students in my classroom who identified as non-binary and non-conforming and they felt an instant belonging for this practice. I also elevated multi-racial and multi-ethnic scholars in my curriculum and wanted to highlight both racial diversity and representation for students to see their communities as well. I co-created community agreements with my students and established open pedagogy. While community agreements establish a basis of how everyone will interact with one another throughout the course, open pedagogy is a practice that involves students as creators to develop understanding of the antiracism curriculum. 

Being a coach for OFAR has allowed me to learn so much from faculty colleagues throughout California Community Colleges and across a wide range of disciplines. With many conversations, we have been able to research and reflect how certain disciplines and topics in curriculum can include historical understanding of racial inequities, inequalities, and injustices. For example, one professor who teaches music included a lesson about the Chitlin Circuit during the period of Jim Crow segregation. While another engineering professor included a lesson about the building of bridges as it related to racial segregation. Having team meetings allowed us to share and learn various perspectives and ways of incorporating antiracism in our teaching and praxis. When we action social justice in our classrooms, we provide equity and liberation for the next generation to thrive and lead. In the words profoundly stated by Tupac Amaru Shakur, “I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world”. 


About Dr. Hossna Sadat Ahadi

Dr. Hossna Sadat Ahadi (pronouns she/her/ella) is an Associate Professor in Counseling at Palomar College. She obtained her dual bachelor’s degree in history of the near east and political science from UCSD. She earned a master’s degree in education — with emphasis on multicultural counseling and social justice and an educational doctorate in leadership from SDSU. She also received a second doctorate in philosophy in education for social justice from the USD. Dr. Sadat Ahadi is a national and statewide award winner for her work and leadership involving antiracism and decolonization in education. She continues to research, publish, and provide ongoing training regarding antiracism, decolonization, disability justice, and racial equity in education.

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

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OE Global Voices
OEG Voices 078: Significant Impact OER Award Winner Frontiers for Young Minds
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OEG Voices 078: Significant Impact OER Award Winner Frontiers for Young Minds

Put this episode of OE Global Voices on your “Must Listen List” and be prepared for waves of inspiration and awe for Frontiers for Young Minds, an outstanding project that publishes on the order of 250 papers a year on complex areas of science. But more importantly, these papers are written for kids and reviewed by kids in a process that, when you hear it, will make it clear why Frontiers for Young Minds was recognized with a 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Significant Impact category.

Frontiers for Young Minds https://kids.frontiersin.org/

Frontiers for Young Minds believes that the best way to make cutting-edge science discoveries available to younger audiences is to enable young people and scientists to work together to create articles that are both top quality and exciting.

Distinguished scientists are invited to write about their discoveries in a language that is accessible for young readers, and it is then up to the kids themselves – with the help of a science mentor – to provide feedback and explain to the authors how to best improve the articles before publication.

This unique process produces a collection of freely available scientific articles by leading scientists, shaped for younger audiences by the input of their own young peers.

https://kids.frontiersin.org/about/journal/

In this episode we will learn more about the journal and its publishing process, but also dive into an example of how a paper on the science of secrets was drafted by clinical psychologists at Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands), reviewed by kids in the Science Club at Disley Primary School (United Kingdom) mentored by neuroscientist Caroline Lea-Carnall at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and then published in the Frontiers for Young Minds journal as Shhh! What Are Secrets and How Do They Affect Us?

In the podcast recording studio with top row, left to right) Laura Henderson and Hedwig Ens (Frontiers for Young Minds) and bottom row,Caroline Lea-Carnall (University of Manchester), Ildikó Csizmazia and Minita Franzen (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine delves into the inspirational story behind the award-winning project, “Frontiers for Young Minds,” which uniquely involves children in the peer-review process of scientific articles aimed at young readers. Alan engages with key figures including Laura Henderson, head of the program, along with contributors and reviewers Caroline Lea-Carnall, Hedwig Ens, Ildikó Csizmazia, and Minita Franzen. They discuss the project’s origins, its mission to make complex scientific concepts accessible and engaging for kids, and the enriching experience it provides for both young reviewers and established scientists. The conversation highlights the project’s significant impact on science communication and education, celebrating its collaborative spirit and success in fostering a new generation of science enthusiasts.

  • Intro Music, Opening Quotes, and Welcome
  • Meet the Guests: Laura Henderson and Team
  • The Origin Story of Frontiers for Young Minds
  • The Review Process: Kids as Gatekeepers
  • The Impact of the Project on Kids and Scientists
  • Future Plans and Closing Remarks

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 78

 It was very interesting to see their thinking was about the whole idea. There were places where we [thought] this might be an important part to share, but there is not really much research on that so we cannot say anything.

So I just didn’t [add] anything in the article. And then kids were like, “Okay, but can you tell us something about it? Is there research on it?” I liked that feedback.

They also picked up on the positive things — this made us enthusiastic to continue to incorporate their feedback. And we really thought we are contributing and doing something that younger readers also find very important.

Ildikó Csizmazia on responding to the reviewers

One of the great privileges of our work is that we work with the most engaged, the most passionate people, the researchers, the science mentors, the kids themselves. It’s a kind of self-selecting group who come to be part of what we do. And the real common thread is always that passion and that engagement.

So it gives us energy and thank you to everybody who’s been part of our process, the people here on this call today, so Ildikó, Minita, Caroline, but also all of our authors, science mentors, editors, young reviewers who’ve been part of our process over the years.

We’ve worked with about 900 editors and 9,000 plus young reviewers in 65 countries and however many authors, it’s, an incredible number of authors.

Laura Henderson, Frontiers for Young Minds


Our open licensed music for this episode is a track calledScience Summit by Serge Quadrado licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.