Not for the first time, schools are taking center stage in heated local and national debates, as educators at all levels face challenges to curricula, materials, and pedagogies. From classrooms to school board meetings, stakeholders are grappling with how decisions are made, whose voices are included, and what counts as research or knowledge. These conflicts highlight fundamental questions about the purposes of education and the roles of educators, as well as what it means to engage in civic participation and discourse.

Clashing understandings of freedom, democracy, and justice are tangled up with our roles as educators–and with the challenges we are facing in schools. In her book Releasing the Imagination, Maxine Greene describes democracy as “a community that is always in the making,” that is “[m]arked by an emerging solidarity, a sharing of certain beliefs, and a dialogue about others” (1995, p.39). Our challenge continues to be centered on spaces where communities feel fractured and are not engaging in meaningful dialogue. Yet in Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks reminds us, “We cannot be easily discouraged. We cannot despair when there is conflict. Our solidarity must be affirmed by shared belief in a spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent, and rejoices in collective dedication to truth” (1994, p.33).

For our 2022 conference, we accepted proposals that help us grapple with what it means to prepare educators to shape these conversations in their classrooms, districts, and communities. How can we work in concert with P12 colleagues, policy makers, and other educational advocates? How can we build solidarity, to help prepare and support educators as they engage in the complex work of community building, teaching, and learning? What roles can educator preparation programs play in helping to promote and support an informed citizenry? And, perhaps most important, how can we help move educational discourse towards healing-centered, caring, innovative, and collaborative practices?