Feb 15, 2024, 6:30 PM – 8 PM

In Conversation: Literacy, Dyslexia and Trauma on the occasion of Stéphane Mandelbaum

Join us for a conversation on literacy, dyslexia and trauma, presented on the occasion of the exhibition Stéphane Mandelbaum. The conversation will be moderated by Debbie Meyer, founding member of the Dyslexia (Plus) in Public Schools Task Force, and will feature panelists with a range of expertise, including Carissa Berliner, Rev. Dr. Sanayi-Beckles Canton, Dr. Shameka Stewart, and Korey Wise. The panelists will have a wide-ranging conversation surrounding the state of our national and city literacy rates, and speak on the links that low levels of literacy have to dyslexia, trauma and incarceration.

This conversation is presented in conjunction with an exhibition of drawings by Belgian artist Stephané Mandelbaum, whose dyslexia had a significant impact on his artistic production. Many of Mandelbaum’s drawings incorporate text, sometimes directly related to the images but often enigmatic and apparently unconnected to whatever else might appear nearby. In addition to making his own annotations, Mandelbaum copied writing as if drawing it, replicating the form of letters and characters regardless of whether or not he understood the meaning. Japanese Kanji, Arabic, and Cyrillic all appear in his works in addition to the Latin and Hebrew alphabets with which he was familiar. His drawings often have a patina of menace and even violence, which was tragically borne out by the artist’s assassination by a criminal syndicate in 1986 at age twenty-five. Mandelbaum’s sensational end is a coda to an artistic life lived on the edges of society.

ASL interpreters will be available during this event.

Carissa Berliner

Carissa Berliner has been an educator in the NYCDOE for 20 years. She began her career as a New York City Teaching Fellow in 2004 and went on to teach in elementary school for 14 years in Queens, NY. Carissa taught both general education and special education students in kindergarten through grade 3. She also attended NYC public schools in Queens from K-12.

During her 14 years in the classroom, Carissa discovered major issues with how she was being told to teach reading, as well as gaps in her knowledge and her colleagues. In wanting to find answers to why this felt so wrong, she discovered a passion for literacy instruction and coaching. In 2018 Carissa joined the Universal Literacy Initiative within the NYCDOE as ULiT Reading Coach where she supported P.S. 182 in District 28, Queens. During her 4 years with the Universal Literacy Initiative, she became highly trained in early childhood literacy pedagogy, content, and assessment. She worked to build capacity among staff within several areas, one being administering literacy screeners and using screening data to make instructional decisions. She conducted professional learning experiences and coaching cycles around phonemic awareness and phonics, resulting in improved student outcomes according to the screening data.

Carissa’s most important role is as a mom to a 4^th grader. Carissa and her daughter can be seen on the WNET/WLIW television show Let’s Learn in segments teaching foundational reading. As a reading coach and a mom, in 2020 Carissa began to advocate for changes to reading instruction in grades K-2 on public forums. She participated as a panelist on the webinars Literacy: A Social Justice Issue and Learning to Read is a Civil Right: How We Drive Change.

Carissa is now a part of the District 26 Team as their AIS Coordinator and through that role, continuing efforts towards closing the reading gap.
Rev. Dr. Sanayi-Beckles Canton

Dr. Sanayi Beckles-Canton is the mother of six sons, four of whom are neurodivergent. She currently has a son attending a school in District 5. She has been a parent leader and education activist for more than 10 years, serving families and children throughout New York City.
Debbie Meyer

Debbie Meyer’s lengthy professional career includes fundraising, nonprofit management, and strategic planning. She is a founding member of the Dyslexia (Plus) in Public Schools Task Force, a small group of community leaders working to help students with dyslexia and related language-based disabilities thrive in their neighborhood schools, and now consults for the Dyslexia Alliance for Black Children and the NYCPS and is an adjunct instructor at Iona University. Debbie served on NYC Mayor Eric Adams's Transition Team, and is a board member ASHES Legacy Foundation. In 2018, she was named an A’leila Bundles Community Scholar at Columbia University to look at the intersection of dyslexia and mass incarceration and the role of universities in changing the trajectory of struggling readers. In 2022, she was appointed to the Chancellor’s Literacy Advisory Committee.
Dr. Shameka Stewart

Dr. Shameka Stewart is an Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the Juvenile Forensic Speech-LanguagePathologist(r). Dr. Stewart is also a special education advocate trained by the Wright's Law training center. She has a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders, and a Juris Doctorate of Law. Dr. Stewart’s clinical and scholarly work specializes in Juvenile Forensics, Law Enforcement Interaction with youth with CD, child language disorders and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Her primary research focuses on the Confluence and Impact of cognitive and communication disorders on the school-to-confinement pipeline, status offenses, involvement with the criminal justice system, law enforcement interaction, and criminal recidivism in youth placed at-risk for delinquency and crime (especially Black and Brown youth from under-resourced areas). Dr. Stewart is also a clinically certified and licensed speech-language pathologist and is licensed to practice in Maryland, Washington, D.C, and multiple other states. Through her work, Dr. Stewart has created cutting edge social justice and juvenile justice specialty courses for graduate CSD students, nationally known training programs for law enforcement and legal counsel, and national and international CE workshops and training for licensed SLP clinicians, students, and families of children with special need.
Korey Wise

Korey Wise
When police began collecting suspects in the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, Korey Wise's friend, 15-year-old Yusef Salaam, was brought in for questioning. In a show of support, Korey decided to accompany him. This turned out to be a grave mistake, however, as the police ended up pulling him into the interrogation room as well.
At 16, Korey was the oldest of the boys who would eventually become known as the "Central Park Five." And because of his age, he was legally allowed to be questioned by detectives without the supervision of a parent or guardian. Combine this with the fact that Korey struggled with hearing issues and a learning disability, and the teen was especially vulnerable to the pressures of the detectives' allegedly aggressive questioning.
By the end of his interrogation, Korey had given both a written and a videotaped confession. The details in his statements didn't match the details of the actual crime, and Korey would later say that the police, led by head of the Manhattan D.A.'s sex crimes unit Linda Fairstein, coerced him into submitting a false confession.
Despite the lack of solid evidence, all five boys were ultimately found guilty of various charges of rape and assault in the Central Park Jogger case. But unlike the other four teens, who were tried as minors and sentenced to five to 10 years in a youth correctional facility (where they could be held until they turned 21), Korey was sentenced to five to 15 years — all of which were to be spent in an adult prison.
The teenager was initially sent to Rikers Island, the infamous New York City jail. And as is shown in the fourth and final episode of When They See Us, it was a rough time for him: Just a kid thrust into a group of adult criminals, Korey was subject to great violence and abuse during his time there and in other federal prisons. He also spent several long periods of his incarceration locked away in solitary confinement.
Eventually, Korey met murderer and serial rapist Matias Reyes in prison, and Matias confessed to be to being the actual, lone perpetrator of the Central Park Jogger rape. A DNA test (along with Matias's knowledge of the details of the crime) confirmed his guilt, and in 2002, Korey was released from prison. By that time, he had served 12 years.
Today, Korey still lives in New York City, where he works as a public speaker and criminal justice activist. In 2015, he donated $190,000 to the University of Colorado's chapter of the Innocence Project, which then changed its name to the Korey Wise Innocence Project at Colorado Law in his honor.

https://innocenceproject.org/cases/korey-wise/

Major support for Stéphane Mandelbaum is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation, Alice and Tom Tisch, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Generous funding is provided by Christie's, Kathy and Dick Fuld, Jill and Peter Kraus, the Director's Circle of The Drawing Center, and an anonymous giver. Additional support is provided by Iris Zurawin Marden, and Harry Tappan Heher and Jean-Edouard van Praet d'Amerloo.