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About this newsletter

Schools are more than just a place where kids go to learn. They provide childcare for working parents. They provide meals for children that might otherwise go hungry. They provide vital services and screening for children with disabilities or other health needs. Schools are the primary social world for young people—where they develop friendships and learn about who they are and how they fit in the world.

But schools are also places where children of color are heavily policed and subjected to racial violence—both physical and psychological. Too often, schools are places that reproduce, rather than challenge, existing inequalities. They are places where children are tested and sorted.

Schools are also workplaces. As social justice union activists have taught us, the working conditions in our schools are also the learning conditions for our children. We are all in this together. And right now we are facing threats to our schools on a scale that we haven’t seen. Naomi Klein has described the process by which broader disasters (like a pandemic) become an opportunity for those in power to destroy and privatize the social services and safety nets we rely on as “the shock doctrine”. For our schools, I believe this is a shock doctrine moment.

I am a public school parent, an education student preparing to teach high school English, and a social justice activist. I write from a perspective informed by these experiences and commitments. I try to take complicated issues and make them clearer. I am deeply invested in the human stories behind the headlines—the experiences and voices of those directly affected by policies. And I think we always need to ask whose interests are being served, and whose aren’t, when trying to make sense of debates around schools and education (and everything else!).

This newsletter is an experiment and work-in-progress. I hope that you will subscribe and read—and also that you will share your thoughts and ideas with me. I would love to hear how these questions are impacting your schools and communities and what you would most like to understand or read about. I hope to find ways to provide a platform for the voices of parents, teachers, and students and to share experiences across localities.

Thanks to all of you taking this journey with me.

Jen Roesch

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Keeping a justice lens on education issues during the pandemic

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Socialist, Writer, Mother, Teacher — Fighting for a World Worth Living In