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Educators, teachers, students, parents and children's advocates from around the country met Saturday, May 11, at the Law School for a conference titled "Dreams Deferred: A Closer Look at School Discipline."

Co-sponsored by the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern Law's Bluhm Legal Clinic, the conference will took place from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Law School.

The conference examined how discipline is handled in schools at a time when schools are suspending and expelling record numbers of students and often criminalizing typical youth behavior.

Conference participants included Pedro Noguera, professor, Harvard University's Graduate School of Education (speaking on "Finding Safety Where We Least Expect It"); Frank Tobin, former teacher at the Nancy B. Jefferson School at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center; Judith Browne, civil rights attorney with The Advancement Project, Washington D.C.; Russell Skiba, faculty researcher, Indiana Education Policy Center; and Jennifer Morales, first elected Latina member of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors.

Laura Washington, former editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter and columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times, and Linda Lenz, editor and publisher of Catalyst Magazine, will moderate two panels discussions on school discipline and its issues.

Several conference participants were contributing authors to a recently published anthology of essays, "Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment in Our Schools" (New Press, $17.95). Bernardine Dohrn, director of the Children and Family Justice Center, is a co-editor of the book.

In addition to the Children and Family Justice Center , the conference's sponsors include the Center for Youth and Society at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Leadership for Quality Education; Generation Y at the Southwest Youth Collaborative; Young Chicago Authors; Writing Teachers Collective; Guild Complex and Chicago School Leadership Cooperative.

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