Welcome to Critical Educators for Social Justice (CESJ)!

Hello and Happy Fall CESJ Family,
 
 We are writing to express our deepest excitement for this academic year in serving as your 2024-2025 co-chairs. We’d also like to invite you to serve and build with us as we unpack what it truly means to engage remedy and repair in our school systems in moving toward a just education. While we are honored and thrilled to be in community with you this year, our hearts are heavy with the daily reality that our local, national, and global policies serve to perpetuate ongoing violence at home and abroad. Before we move forward, we are led to take time and space to recognize the ongoing genocides in Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. To be explicit, we express our firm opposition to the genocide in Gaza in the context of settler-colonial occupation in Palestine. Our hearts are with these communities and everyone affected by these horrific acts of oppression and erasure. It has become extremely challenging for us all to watch these world events and continue working with a “business as usual” attitude. We hope that you’ve found personal ways to heal and address any emotional wounds caused by the state of the world. We also want to recognize the systemic oppression that plagues our nation, causing division and persecution to many of the communities in which we are of service. We could not do the work without the willing participation of these communities to collaborate with us in sharing their stories.

 In this vein, and aligned with the mission of CESJ to create and nourish a community of critical educators to do the necessary work of pushing back against the status quo, we welcome your feedback on how we might develop strategies for collective healing in the wake of a complicit national government to the multiple ongoing genocides, and everlasting oppressive systems that tend to overtake our historically marginalized communities. We ask for your support as we center critical research and scholarship, and invest in and mentor graduate and early-career scholars.

 With this, we have some exciting things planned this year. If you were able to attend our annual business meeting at this past 2024 conference, you may remember us talking about the need to engage more of our members overall. In the spirit of transparency, we have one of the largest (if not the largest AERA SIG) but our membership engagement throughout the year rarely reflects anything close to the number of members we actually have. So, here, we have listed a few ways you might consider engaging CESJ for the 2024-2025 academic year, leading up to the Annual conference taking place in Denver, CO.
 
Virtual Community Events (writing workshop, healing workshop, and career development workshop)
Volunteer to be a member of a CESJ Award Committee
Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee, email chair Megan Ruby at mlruby2021@gmail.com by December 5th if interested
Scholar-Activist Award, email co-chairs Shamaine Bertrand (bertrans@tcnj.edu) or Jasmin Patron-Vargas (patronvargas_j@tamu.edu) by December 5th if interested
Revolutionary Mentor Award, email chair Fatima Brunson (Fatimab06@gmail.com) by December 5th if interested
CESJ Business Meeting held at AERA 2025 in Denver.
CESJ Social Outing in Denver.

All information regarding events leading up to the conference will be shared in our monthly newsletter. If you are curious about how to engage a more long-standing commitment to CESJ, please reach out to us directly to inquire about opening board positions and volunteer opportunities. Finally, we are grateful to be of service to you all and look forward to being in community with you throughout this academic year. We hope to see you at this upcoming 2025 AERA annual meeting conference in Denver, CO.

Wishing you ease, grace, and wellness,

Your 2024-2025 CESJ Co-chairs
Fatima Brunson (she/her)
Megan Ruby (they/them)

Updated Summer 2023