CAACE 2025 Conference | March 13-15, 2025

CAACE aims to provide leadership in advancing the concept of lifelong learning and to conduct, promote, and sponsor professional development.

Keynote Speaker

Ryan Parker brings a mix of talents including 20+ years in education, a hip-hop artist/poet, author, husband, father, brother, mama’s boy, chocolate chip cookie lover, and was named as the 2020 Peace Hero of Connecticut and 2022 CT Community Kindness Hero. Ryan’s career in teaching has been dedicated to challenging United States education norms, reimagining what school looks, sounds, and feels like through a justice lens, and applying that reimagination to his pedagogy while influencing and supporting other educators in doing the same. As Manchester’s Race & Equity Coordinator who presents regularly at education conferences and various schools and universities abroad, Ryan’s work focuses on race in education, the power of hip-hop pedagogy, and the necessity of centering Black and Brown youth amplifying their lived experiences, voices, and brilliance! As the 2019-2023 Poet Laureate of Manchester, CT, and the coach of the Manchester-based youth spoken word poetry slam team PaperVoices, Parker's work as a poet, educator, and activist extends outside of the walls of a school building.

To learn more about Ryan go to: www.RyanTParker.org | www.ProjectHappyvism.com