Across The US
Our Work Across The US
Idea’s Focus Across The US
IDEA works at a broad level across the United States by creating learning opportunities and engaging in aligned campaigns that seek to transform the narrative, practice, and policy of public education ever more strongly towards justice and racial equity. One of the core assumptions of IDEA’s work is a belief in the power of building critical local-national connections to raise up and support both local efforts in communities as well as the ongoing broad-based movement for education justice, racial equity, and sovereignty.
Our ongoing work to collaborate across the United States includes:
Learning Visits
An opportunity for educators, young people, and community leaders to experience powerful schools and programs across the US and bring the learning back to their community.
Oregon Racial Justice Institute (RJI)
RJI is a program taking place between January 2022 and June 2023 to support and achieve culturally and racially affirming environments for educators serving Oregon’s Pre-K to 12 School Systems.
Antiracism Courses
A space for educators who are ready to take their good intentions and grow their capacity to show up – in and out of the classroom, in words and actions – from an antiracist lens.
Aligned Campaigns
Efforts to change the narrative, inform policies that impact students, families, educators, and communities, and otherwise coordinate with partners to reinvent public education.
Learning Visits
What Are Learning Visits?
Learning Visits provide an opportunity for educators, young people, and community leaders to see powerful schools and programs with their own eyes and bring back the learning to their community. Each of the sites has valuable practices and stories to share about what is working and what has been learned through challenges and efforts over time.
“I didn’t think I would find original inspiration after 20 years of being a teacher. I thank you for this experience to find more to bring back to my work.” – NYC Learning Visit participant
Members of Nuestra Escuela, from Puerto Rico, on a Learning Visit to New York City
IDEA organizes both open visits available to individuals and groups, and custom designed visits in which we work with potential participants to create a visit experience tailored specifically to their community as professional development, youth development, or alongside ongoing organizing and change efforts.
Goals of Learning Visits
- Showcase powerful learning by highlighting schools and programs outside of schools that demonstrate democratic education in action.
- Provide inspiration and new ideas for educators, youth, policy-makers, parents, and community leaders.
- Support local change efforts by including a cross-section of key community members on visits.
What to expect on a Learning Visit
Learning Visits bring together the best of educational site visits and hands-on workshops into one experience. Visits typically include groups and individuals of 20-30 participants visiting three to four sites over two and a half days. Here’s what to expect:
- Three to four fully arranged site visits over the course of 2 and a half days
- Time to observe and engage in dialogue with adult and youth leaders on site
- Opportunities to reflect and discuss the visits with visit participants
- Full facilitation including pre and post visit communication and documentation
- Local transportation, blocks of discounted hotel rooms, and several meals provided
- Focused attention on race and equity in educational justice
Custom Designed Visits
Is your school, district, organization, or group looking for new ideas and inspiration to guide your change efforts or initiate new programs and practices? IDEA can work with you to design a Learning Visit that is specifically focused on your particular needs and goals.
How it works
You tell us your goals, needs, and interests, and we work with you to design a visit for groups between 10 and 30 people that can help you move your work forward. We’ll discuss timeline, locations, types of sites to visit, and logistics. After deciding on a visit plan, IDEA arranges the site visits, provides information before the trip, facilitates the experience, and shares back documentation of the visit post-event. We can also work with you and your organization over time to make sense of the visit, reflect with the full community back home, and implement ideas and change plans.
“Working with IDEA to design and facilitate a NYC Learning Visit for our site was a great experience. We were thrilled with the process, final product, and ease of the working relationship. Their organizers were able to take our ideas and wishes for what our participants would experience and suggest schools to visit that helped us imagine what was possible at our own schools. They helped to facilitate connections with educators that can serve as resources moving forward. They nailed the logistics of leading a large group of students and teachers through the streets and subways of New York. And, the reflection activities they led helped us integrate the learning into our own context so we arrived home with tangible next steps for making positive school change. We would definitely recommend collaborating with IDEA. ”– Lindsey Cox, Project Manager, Partnership for Change
What an IDEA-designed visit includes:
- Arranging site visits
- Sending information and visit packets to participants prior to the visit
- Facilitating the visit from beginning to end, including leading discussions and reflection sessions throughout the experience
- Providing several meals during the visit and arranging blocks of discounted rooms at a hotel
- Arranging or providing local transportation during the visit
- Sharing documentation including pictures and reflections from visit conversations.
Pricing:
We will work with you to determine a cost rate that makes sense for your school, organization, or community. Total costs include lodging, meals, ground transportation, and facilitator travel expenses.
“The NYC Learning Visit was a highlight of my 33 year teaching career. I give it an A+.”– Participant in visit designed for South Burlington High School, VT
Examples of Current and Past IDEA Designed Visits
- Nellie Mae Education Foundation’s Amplifying Student Voice & Leadership cohort – 2016-2021: We coordinated visits for this cohort of community-based youth organizations to see student-centered learning in action and bring ideas back to their communities and schools.
- Sisters School District and Heart of Oregon – visit to Oregon: A visit for the district to learn about project-based learning and portfolio assessment as they build a new public alternative school.
- South Burlington High School – visit to New York City: This high school in Vermont asked us to design a visit to see schools practicing student-centered and proficiency-based learning to spur improvement efforts. Participants included the principal, school board members, teachers, parents, and students.
- Partnership for Change – visit to New York City: A school transformation project in two districts of northern Vermont asked us to design a visit to New York to see student centered learning and to help them build community power for action.
Contact us to discuss visit design for your group: info@democraticeducation.org
Learning Visit participants on a visit in NYC
Antiracism Courses
Why Now? IDEA’s Vision & the Need for Antiracism in Education
IDEA’s antiracism courses, first launched in December 2019, are planned with the support of a multiracial group of educators who play a vital role in shaping and informing all of our course offerings. Our work over the years towards antiracism and dismantling white supremacy has included workshops and learning experiences in and with multi-racial communities as well as learning and affinity groups for BIPOC and white people.
Current courses focus especially on white educators, reflecting the reality that in the U.S. 80% of educators are white. In recent years we have seen a sharp uptick of progressive white educators who have begun talking about racism, using antiracist language, and acknowledging their own whiteness. And still, many white people are at a loss when it comes to adapting their own actions, when it comes to living out the changes that they want to be a part of. The courses we offer are for white educators who have been doing their own personal work of examining their place in white supremacist society, and are looking to deepen their learning and take action to disrupt white supremacy through connection with and accountability to other white educators.
Apply Here for the Spring 2024 Course
“Reflecting on this course, I have to say that the biggest impact it had on me is that I feel now more than ever that I have the language, theoretical, and other foundational knowledge needed to have more productive, impactful, and organized action-oriented conversations around antiracism and disrupting white supremacy. The diversity of speakers who came to the course, as well as the readings that we did (grounded in two texts and all of supplementary readings as well), have really helped me feel confident in having these conversations in my school buildings and with the organizations that I support and work with. [I feel more capable of] making sure that we are dissecting our work from an intentional lens of disrupting white supremacy and not letting present practices continue if they do uphold white-supremacy culture; of making sure that we are also being very intentional about putting students and families in the center of our work as their day-to-day and education is directly impacted by these racist and white supremacist systems. I cannot recommend this course highly enough for other educators, whether in K-12 or beyond. It was really a great opportunity for learning.
– Brittany Johnstone, course participant and School Psychologist in Baltimore, Maryland
Operating Assumptions
These courses do not serve as introductions to antiracism. There are certain realities that are not up for debate, and explaining them will not be the focus of our courses:
- We, in the United States, are living in a white supremacist society
- Racism is systemic
- Institutions of education operate within a racist and white supremacist framework
“I’m continually appreciative of the curriculum, pace, readings, books, and the space for the work that we’re doing. I am incredibly appreciative for the thought and reflection that the facilitators have put into this. That really intentional time… this is an exceptionally run course with incredible resources, and I don’t say that lightly at all. I’m incredibly appreciative for that. It’s really profoundly life changing.”
– Sarah Norsworthy, course participant and 4th Grade Teacher in Portland, Maine
Information on Current, Past, and Upcoming Courses
IDEA’s Spring 2024: Antiracism Course for White Educators – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
IDEA’s Fall 2023: Antiracism Course for White Educators – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
IDEA’s Spring 2023: Antiracism Course for White Educators – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
IDEA’s Fall 2022: Antiracism Course for White Educators – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
IDEA’s Spring 2022: Antiracism Course for White Educators (closed) – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
IDEA’s Fall 2021: Antiracism Course for White Educators (closed) – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
IDEA’s Spring 2021: Antiracism Course for White Educators (closed) – A 12-session discussion and action-based course for white educators.
In 2020 IDEA held antiracism courses for white educators in the spring, summer, and fall. We are planning a similar roll out of course offerings in 2021, and hold space for any emergent opportunities to support learning in diverse and dynamic settings.
If you are interested in learning more about or participating in any upcoming antiracism courses with IDEA, please contact us at info@democraticeducation.org.
Some Resources that Inform IDEA Antiracism Courses
IDEA’s antiracism coursework includes and stands on the shoulders of many activists, thinkers, ancestors, and leaders who have been pushing for racial justice, equity, and sovereignty including Bettina Love, Resmaa Menakem, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adrienne maree brown, Ijeoma Oluo, James Baldwin, Tawana Petty, Sandy Grande, Ibram Kendi, Vincent Harding, Tema Okun, Kenneth Jones, Bob Moses, Norma Wong, and Justo Méndez Arámburu.
Oregon Racial Justice Institute
Oregon Racial Justice Institute
The Racial Justice Institute is a program that took place between January 2022 and June 2023 to support and achieve culturally and racially affirming environments for educators serving Oregon’s Pre-K to 12 School Systems. This included developing and facilitating a collaborative, educational environment for racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse educators and that provided leadership to support culturally and sustaining pedagogical approaches and racial justice in school communities.
Network Sessions
The Racial Justice Institute included regular facilitated virtual learning sessions that included learnings from the fields, opportunities for personal story sharing, and connecting with other educators across the state who are also impacted by inequities. Sessions included keynote speakers from a national network of leaders.
All educators across the Pre-K to 12 school system could register for Network Sessions, with the knowledge that the experiences and safety of racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse educators were designed to be centered in the sessions.
Fellowship
The RJI Fellowship was an 18-month program for racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse educators across the Pre K-12 school system in Oregon offering monthly sessions where 30 educators could consistently come together, build community and relationships, and support each other to do work in their local communities.
Fellows engaged in deep racial justice learning and facilitated the engagement of their racial justice learning, leadership, and project development in school communities. Fellows participated in:
- Collaborative, place-based projects to create more racially affirming educational spaces across the Pre-K to 12 School System in Oregon
- Monthly day-long sessions with inspirational leaders, educators, healers, and social movement change makers to learn from in community with other fellows
The Oregon Racial Justice Institute was designed and facilitated by IDEA, in partnership with the Educator Advancement Council (EAC): a council charged to support Oregon in achieving high-quality and culturally-responsive public educators in every classroom, based on the principle that educators know what they need.
Click Here for Facilitator and Speaker Bios
Aligned Campaigns
Partnership and Collaboration Across the Landscape
IDEA has strong relationships with education justice networks across the United States, including the Journey for Justice Alliance, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, and the Partnership for the Future of Learning, among others. As part of these networks, IDEA participates in coordinating and implementing broad-based campaigns, including the Journey for Justice #WeChoose Equity campaign, the Death by a Thousand Cuts report and campaign on racism and school closures, and the Partnership for the Future of Learning’s ongoing narrative campaign to change the story about public education towards a focus on racial equity, community-led schools, and culturally-responsive education.
Current campaigns include supporting the development of a Journey for Justice Southern Region to mobilize action across the southern US, and acting as a key local partner for the Freedom Riders’ 60th Anniversary later this year.