A milestone: I delivered my first solo presentation at the Eastern Sociological Society conference in Boston, MA, whose theme this year was, “My Day Job: Politics and Pedagogy in Academia.” Like I told the participants in the paper session, I felt that as a second-year PhD student, this was a major triumph, even if I passed out and never got to my presentation.

My talk was entitled, “Re-Humanizing Non-Profit Adult Education: Challenging Paternalism in Transition-Minded Pedagogy and Envisioning Theoretical and Programmatic Alternatives.” Paper Session 190, you are my moon landing!

While I wasn’t able to make it, the NYCORE (New York Collective of Radical Educators) conference also took place this weekend. Nick Michelli and Tina Jacobowitz presented our work on education policy, its influence over teacher education and partner schools across the country, and how we as democratic educators can make change in a workshop entitled, “Understanding and Influencing Education Policy.” We sought to say:

“We will argue that as educators, we all must be speaking for the children.  If not us, who?”

Though I missed the talk itself, the message rings across the country, especially in considering the increasing loyalty to charter schools and abandonment of teachers as just another expendable employee in a tightening education market. Powerful and important work.