“yellow sky blue people” by theworldcafe is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

How it works: All preservice and in-service teachers are invited to dialogue on the ways we build communities of support to sustain our justice-centered teaching. Our goal is to read and discuss shared texts in our own communities (i.e., in our local teacher education classrooms), and then to post about these discussions and texts. The following week, we invite you to respond to these initial posts, and to dialogue with educators in different contexts as you explore ways of building and sustaining justice-oriented teaching and learning.

Dates for the Spring 2023 dialogue:

The English Language Arts Teacher Educators Commission on Social Justice (ELATE-SJ) Spring 2023 dialogue will begin the week of February 20 (reading/posting week); and continue throughout the week of February 27 (responding week). This dialogue provides an opportunity for preservice and in-service teachers from across the United States and international contexts to engage in shared readings, post their thoughts on/analysis of those readings, and then review and respond to one another’s posts. The topic for this dialogue is building communities of support to sustain justice-centered teaching.

We have selected two shared texts for this dialogue, and encourage you to find and discuss a local text or resource.

SHARED TEXTS:

• Pollock, M., Kendall, R., Reece, E., Lopez, D., & Yoshisato, M. (2022). Keeping the Freedom to Include: Teachers Navigating “Pushback” and Marshalling “Backup” to Keep Inclusion on the Agenda. Journal for Leadership, Equity, and Research, 8(1).

• The Argument’s podcast on book banning (published Sept. 7, 2022) entitled Why We Don’t Agree on High School Required Reading

LOCAL TEXT(S):

We also invite you to explore and discuss a website or resource from a local organization IN YOUR AREA doing justice-centered educational work (e.g., Project South for teachers in Atlanta, GA; Californians for Justice for teachers in Long Beach, CA). Please feel free to reference or share details about this local work as we discuss ways of supporting and sustaining equity-oriented teaching.
 

We invite you to use the following questions to guide discussion and aid participants when writing their posts to share. (Please feel free to adapt these to fit your local context.)

Questions for the Spring 2023 dialogue

1. What were your major take-aways from the text set? What highlights, questions, wonderings, or connections do you have? What stories from your experience came up when reviewing these texts?
2. What pushback to justice-centered teaching is happening in your local area or at your school site? What topics, books, or ideas in your local area or school site are being challenged (if any)? 
3. If there is pushback happening, how are people navigating these challenges to enact critical, anti-racist teaching? Are you seeing the forms of backup discussed by Pollock and colleagues (2022) happening? If yes, please describe. If not, why do you think these are not happening? 
4. Describe a local organization that is doing justice-centered advocacy/activism in your area. What resources, events, or materials from this organization might be helpful to you in your current or future teaching?

 

To share posts and respond on the justice.education website, please click on this link. Use the password shared by your professor to enter the dialogue space.