Lessons in Liberation #3: Abolition in our PreK-12 Classrooms

“Lessons in Liberation” is a collection brought together by the Education for Liberation Network and Critical Resistance to create bridges between abolition and education and to highlight existing organizing efforts. This collection, including the accompanying forthcoming website and discussion guide, offers educators, parents, and young people entry points to build critical and intentional connections to the growing movement for the abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex, particularly in PreK-12 learning contexts.

Panelists include: ​​

Holly Hardin is a white, queer, rural Southerner making her current home in Durham, NC as a middle grades public school educator. She currently teaches math and science to 7th & 8th graders in a multi-grade level, project-based classroom. Her organizing work in schools has focused on issues of immigrant and racial justice & she is proud of her work with Free Minds, Free People (including this summer's virtual conference) and monthly with the Zinn Education Project's Black Freedom Struggle classes. She is also committed to ongoing movement building and liberation work in community through her political home, Southerners on New Ground (SONG).

Akiea “Ki” Gross (they/them) is an abolitionist early educator, consultant, cultural organizer and creative entrepreneur currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten, a global, abolitionist early learning ecosystem supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-Black and LGBTQIA+ liberation.

Dr. Bettina L. Love is an award-winning author and the Athletic Association Endowed Professor at the University of Georgia. Her writing, research, teaching, and educational advocacy work meet at the intersection of education, abolition, and Black joy. In 2020, Dr. Love co-founded the Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN). She is the author of the book We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom (2019).

osceola ward is a descendant of people that dreamed of freedom. Originally from East Palo Alto, CA, he is committed to being a keeper of ancestral memory. Working with and learning from youth in contexts as disparate as the backcountry, middle school classrooms, holding cells and community gardens, he is now pursuing a doctoral degree in education. His research interests include Black grieving practices, histories of Black migration, and the role of memory in movements for transformative change in education.

[mywrittenvoice]

This was EXCELLENT!!! I will be rewatching this.