Nurturing Hope, Vision, and Solidarity While Navigating Trump 2.0
Teachers must brace for repressive measures inspired by Trump’s attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Sarah Inama teaches history at a middle school in Idaho. In January her principal informed her that two posters on her walls were “controversial” and needed to come down. One says, “EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE,” illustrated by hands in different skin tones. The other says, “In this room everyone is WELCOME, IMPORTANT, ACCEPTED, RESPECTED, ENCOURAGED, VALUED, EQUAL,” each word a different color. Inama removed the signs but then reconsidered. She rehung the posters and emailed her principal to let him know. Inama and district officials are now in a standoff, with Inama refusing to take them down and the principal declaring that she has until the end of the school year to do so. Meanwhile, hundreds of people, half of whom are teachers across the district, have contacted her to express their support.
I feel for Sarah—and for teachers everywhere. I came to education through the Civil Rights Movement in the Sixties and taught in Harlem and East Harlem for ten years. Like Sarah, I had a poster on my wall. The message: “I AM SO GLAD THAT YOU ARE HERE. YOU HELP ME KNOW HOW BEAUTIFUL MY WORLD IS.”
For many of us, teaching is more than a job. It’s a calling. We are called to cherish, celebrate, and nurture our students: every one of them! We are called to help them grow into intelligent and compassionate citizens, dedicated to building a world based on democracy and justice.
In Demoralized: Why Teachers Leave the Profession They Love and How They Can Stay (Harvard Education Press 2018), Doris A. Santoro makes the case that many great teachers leave the profession not because of burnout but because of deep unease over the disconnect between their “moral center” and the policies, mandates, norms and conditions under which they work. They leave because they are not able to do what they believe a good teacher should do.
Of course, the policies and working conditions that demoralize teachers didn’t begin with Trump 2.0. The neoliberal “reforms” under Presidents Bush and Obama degraded the teaching profession to teaching for the test. The Great Recession of 2008 led to funding cuts from which the public schools haven’t recovered. The COVID pandemic was devastating for families, students, and educators. Now, instead of providing the leadership and resources to address these challenges, Trump and Musk are destroying the U.S. Department of Education, which administers Title I and other programs that help our most vulnerable students. As timid administrators bend to Trump’s attacks on DEI I fear that stories like Sarah’s will become all too common—and drive more good teachers from the profession.
Before proposing a path forward for educators in these fraught times. I want to acknowledge a bright spot. Last November I attended the SEL Exchange, the annual conference of CASEL (The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning). The conference drew some 2,000 people from 47 states and 37 countries. I felt heartened to see this movement thriving.
I was an early adopter, so to speak, bringing SEL to schools well before it was called that. In the 1980’s, with President Reagan escalating the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, I left teaching to volunteer with Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR), a fledgling national organization founded by educators concerned about the danger of nuclear war and seeking to educate young people in the ways of peace. Under my leadership for the next 36 years, the organization, now called Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, became a national leader in partnering with schools to implement research-based programs in peacemaking, justice-seeking, conflict resolution, SEL, and racial equity.
I retired as executive director at the end of 2018 and soon after began work on Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education (Harvard Education Press 2023). The American Library Association (ALA) named Teach for Climate Justice as “A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2024.”
Like growing numbers of people, I am alarmed and frightened by President Trump’s reactionary, authoritarian, and unconstitutional grab for power unfolding before our eyes. On a personal level, I fear for my daughters, whose work in the world is dedicated to love and justice, and for my grandchildren, ages one, five, and seven, to whom my book is dedicated. Resisting the devastation and suffering that Trump’s policies will bring and overcoming the longtime dominance of our politics by fossil fuel interests, which are leading the world to disaster, will require smart, passionate, and organized efforts from all quarters by people who value democracy, justice, human dignity, and a habitable planet. The role of educators is pivotal to the success of these efforts.
How can educators begin to meet this moment? I have three suggestions and two invitations.
A Path Forward
Three Suggestions
Create a community of hope in your school, district, and/or community.
Play both defense and offense. Resist the attacks and depredations as best you can but don’t let Trump 2.0 set your agenda. Envision a world of climate justice for your students and take steps toward that vision every day.
Recognize that educators have much more power than we think we do. Through deep organizing, we must build the solidarity needed to tap that power and demand the freedom and the resources needed to give our students the education they deserve. We need to channel demoralization into joyful action for change!
A Call to Action
Please consider organizing a climate justice study group in your school, school district, or community!
Study groups are a time-tested strategy for movement building. Our Teach for Climate Justice Project (T4CJ) will soon be launching an initiative aimed at supporting educators to develop climate justice study groups as the foundation for a movement to bring climate justice education to millions of children and young people across the United States.
We plan to focus on two books, first Teach for Climate Justice, then No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane F. McAlevey (Oxford University Press, 2016). Through organizing and facilitating a climate justice study group, you engage your colleagues to build a community of support for your climate justice teaching, to wrestle with an inspiring vision for the future, and to discover how to generate the power we need to bring that vision to life in our classrooms. What’s there not to like!
Stay tuned! We’ll soon be announcing the launch of our study group contact us and receive monthly communications, please click here.
