Joy and Justice in Schools
Our Approach
We support schools and organizations to center the joy, justice, and authenticity of all young people and adults within their communities, and to center the needs and brilliance of those most often pushed to the margins in their visions for change. We seek to engage a deep sense of belonging through structural change, targeted universalism*, and practices that support bridging across diverse identities, experiences, and beliefs.
Having brave, courageous, and generative dialogues is foundational to our sustained efforts. Building the skills to communicate across differences and find connection, especially when it feels challenging, is at the core of our work. We use research-based, relational, values-centered, and experiential approaches to collectively investigate and take action in relation to the needs, assets, and dreams of your community.
In schools, we seek to build a true sense of agency for both students and educators, and to center student voices, strengthen intergenerational relationships and build collective action between students, educators, and leaders.
In a context where political and ideological fragmentation runs the risk of separating us from each other and our humanity, we find bridging and deepening understanding across differences to be essential in cultivating belonging*. This requires a multilayered and sustained approach, and so we are committed to being available to you and partnering with you over time as the work evolves.
*Our work is deeply informed by the work of the Social Justice Education Program at UMass Amherst and the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley.
“Joy is the practice of loving self and humanity; caring for and helping humanity and earth; recognizing truth, beauty, aesthetics, art, and wonder; and working to solve social problems of the world” (Muhammad, 2023, p. 77)
Services
Equity Teams
Addressing inequities in schools requires that adults and young people work together to explore, assess, and transform school culture. This kind of equity work supports each participant to learn and reflect on their own role in maintaining the current school culture; considers academic and policy issues that contribute to inequity; examines the issues that contribute to a sense of belonging and exclusion in the school; and fosters the skills and commitment needed to build joyful, relational, inclusive, and academically rigorous learning spaces. CES provides a highly skilled and racially diverse co-facilitation team to walk your equity team through this important, complex, and intersectional work.
Student-Centered Work-Intergroup Dialogues
This program seeks to integrate social justice and equity focused philosophy and practice into district schools and classrooms through the research-based practice of Intergroup Dialogue.
Intergroup Dialogues are a series of small group, co-facilitated, carefully structured experiences that encourage relational dialogue rather than debate while exploring social group identity, conflict, community, and equity.
Coaching / Mentoring for Leadership Teams
We believe that equity work can emerge from any part of an organization. That being said, we see great value in providing leadership bodies with support to ensure that equity work is more than a year-long initiative that stops before any deep change takes root.
Coaching and professional development with Leadership teams integrate a variety of practices customized to meet the needs and contexts of each team and community. This includes technical assistance for implementing clear curricula and pedagogical practices that affirm identity and belonging in schools.
Customized Professional Development
We offer a range of tailored professional development, team and individualized coaching, and technical assistance related to equity, teaching, and district and building leadership. These are designed for educators seeking to enhance their knowledge, perspective, and skills, and we can bring those development experiences on site to your location or offer them virtually. We recommend beginning district-wide or school-wide equity work with building a relational foundation and then exploring historical legacies of oppression that are impacting our schools today. This work then builds into experiences, practices, and sustained equitable changes specific to your community.
Bridging to Belonging
In our Bridging to Belonging work, we explore tensions across social differences and ideologies that are present in our schools and communities and share concrete tools and skills that can support all students and educators to feel a sense of agency and confidence to bridge those differences in a way that centers both learning and care.
Equity and Inclusion Assessments
Over the years, we have found that adults and young people have very different experiences of school climate and experiences. Unfortunately, the ways that members of a school community experience academics, policies, hallway interactions, getting to and from school, lunch, sports and other extra-curriculars, and more has a lot to do with identity. We have had a great deal of success with a listening-based and relational process for learning more about school culture. These sessions support all members of the school community to share their experiences and provide the opportunity for leaders to tend to concerns and challenges that get in the way of student belonging, emotional well-being, and academic excellence.
Examples of Past Projects
Our Joy and Justice team has supported thousands of educators and numerous school districts and organizations across Massachusetts and beyond.
D.R.E.A.M. Team
CES has now worked with multiple school districts to implement the Diversity, Respect, Equity, Action & Multiculturalism (D.R.E.A.M.) Team approach.
The work includes an equity-focused training for School Committees; listening sessions with community members, educators, students, and leaders that support the districts to hear from the school community as guides for their work; working with all educators and district leadership on using storytelling as a tool to build trust, connection, and relational skills for equity work; learning about the history of racism so that we can better understand the impacts of implicit bias and microaggressions; working with schools to center student voices and build educator capacity to foster healthy identity development and spaces of student belonging; building an equity team that included students, family, school committee members, educators, and administrators and engaging in the hard work of developing a shared vision of equity in order to design a sustainable pathway for change together.
Bridging and Belonging Training and Coaching
The CES team has worked with school districts through a comprehensive support plan that included training school board members, leadership teams, educator and staff teams, and students, and exploring the work of bridging to belonging in deeply polarizing times.
Responding to Incidents of Racism and AntiSemitism
The CES team has worked in both district and school leadership teams, to help them to respond to incidents of antisemitism and racism within the schools and community. Placing listening at the forefront of projects, the CES team can then help districts and schools to identify issues and work on a path forward during deep division.
A District Hate and Bias Response Team
The team developed a program for school districts that convenes administrators and staff for a Hate and Bias Response Team which works with students to assess school climate and culture, develop a clear bias response protocol that is shared with staff and faculty, students, and caregivers, and makes recommendations for training and coaching throughout each school that can create more safety and belonging for all. This builds strong networks of support and accountability and knowlege about what to do to take care of the community when a crisis around identity-based hate or bias occurs; and is providing coaching and technical assistance to building and district leaders as needed.
Suggested Resources for Social Justice in Education
We work to focus on challenges/tough problems that are important to teachers. We strive to bring you transformational, research-based practices and perspectives and up-to-date information, continually adding to these useful resource links.
Click on the categories to the right to view the linked resources in each category.
Social Justice Education Resources
- Abolitionist Teaching Network: This website provides articles, podcasts, webinars, conference events, and other resources on racial justice and abolitionist education in K-12 schools. The organization’s mission “is to develop and support those in the struggle for educational liberation by utilizing the intellectual work and direct action of Abolitionists in many forms.”
- 228 Accelerator (free resource library): This website provides frameworks, courses, and resources for transformative and equitable design in schools. Their free resources include podcasts, videos, articles, and resource links on the topics of racial hierarchy, gender hierarchy, class hierarchy, christian hegemony, and heteronormativity.
- Alliance for Resource Equity: This website provides outlines, resources, and toolkits for 10 dimensions of educational equity: school funding, teaching quality & diversity, school leadership quality & diversity, empowering, rigorous content, instructional time & attention, positive & inviting school climate, student supports & intervention, high-quality early learning, learning-ready facilities, and diverse classrooms & schools.
- AMAZE: This website provides videos, toolkits, lesson plans, and other resources for educators and caregivers to support affirming and inclusive learning and conversations about gender, sexuality, and sex education with young people.
- Black Lives Matter at Schools: This website provides guiding principles, curricular materials, and other resources to support teaching of truthful histories, racial justice, and Black liberation in schools.
- Common Beliefs about Teaching and Learning and Questions to Consider: 13 Common beliefs about students and teaching that get in the way of equitable learning environments for students with background analysis and questions to consider (from Teaching Tolerance/Learning for Justice)
- Cult of Pedagogy: This website provides blog posts, podcasts, and videos for PK-12 educators and leaders on the topics of instruction, classroom management, technology, and equity. These resources include deep exploration into pedagogical theory, PD, practices, hot topics, collaboration, and story-sharing.
- Engaging Schools: This website provides publications, blogs, programs, and other resources for educators on equity-centered classrooms.
- Essential Partners: This website provides resources and workshops on strengthening relationships and belonging in communities through dialogue practices. Essential Partners supports schools, organizations, and communities to engage in dialogue across difference and build lasting supportive networks across various values, identities, and perspectives.
- Facing History and Ourselves: This website provides social justice PD, materials, and lesson plans through historical resources for the middle and high school levels. The mission of the organization is to use “lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.”
- GLSEN: This website provides current research, articles, LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, program and event opportunities, and other resources to support and affirm LGBTQ youth in K-12 schools.
- KQED Mindshift: This website provides podcasts and articles on education through the perspectives of educators, caregivers, and students. Their pieces explore topics such as “the role of technology, discoveries about the brain, racial and gender bias in education, social and emotional learning, inequities, mental health and many other issues that affect students,” sharing knowledge and resources on pedagogies and curricula.
- Learning for Justice: This website provides a vast array of resources for social justice at the PK-12 level, including social justice learning standards, articles, podcasts, lesson plans, leadership resources, self-guided and webinar PD, and more!
- Nellie Mae Education Foundation: This website provides blogs, events, and grant funding opportunities for advancing racial equity in public education.
- Pa’lante Transformative Justice: This website provides examples of and resources on restorative and transformative justice practices with youth. Pa’lante shares videos and training on their own framing and projects in Holyoke Massachusetts.
- Shane Safir – Resources (Street Data & The Listening Leader): This website provides worksheets and protocols for school leaders and educators to apply deep listening, reflective, and relational qualitative research practices in their school communities. These resources are based on the frameworks, pedagogies, and practices outlined in Shane Safir’s (2017) The Listening Leader and Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan’s (2021) Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation.
- Truth for Teachers: This website provides articles, podcasts, and courses for K-12 educators and leaders, exploring topics of educational equity, pedagogy, curricula, and educator well-being.
- Teacher Collaborative: This website provides teacher created podcasts, blogs, and opportunities for co-learning and education between Massachusetts educators. The Teacher Collaborative supports educators to connect, learn, innovate, and lead in reimagining and transforming education for more equitable and thriving student communities.
- UC Berkeley Othering & Belonging Institute: This website provides videos, articles, and resources on the latest research, policy, and ideas around the topics of othering and belonging. These resources cover a wide range of topics connected to inequity, power, and justice within society.
- UC Berkeley YPAR Hub: This website is a hub of resources on Youth Participatory Action Research. It provides examples of youth research and action for social change, as well as tools to begin youth-centered research and action projects within one’s own school or youth organization.
The Othering and Belonging Institute
The Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley advances groundbreaking approaches to transforming structural marginalization and inequality. We use many of their concepts in our work at CES.
DESE Equity Resources
- Culturally Responsive Teaching & Leading: This webpage shares information on how to define and apply culturally responsive practices at both educator and leadership levels. This includes videos, rubrics, facilitation guides, school district profiles, and other resources.
- Culturally Responsive Classroom Look-Fors: Observable teacher and student actions aligned to seven (7) focus elements from the Model Classroom Teacher Rubric DESE sees as most relevant to culturally responsive practice.
- LEA Equity Activity Guide: Online learning tool includes activities with video and other resources for district and school staff to deepen their understanding of bias and implement measures to counteract it. The guide also provides resources to increase staff cultural competency, both in the classroom and system-wide, in order to positively affect outcomes and ensure equity for all students.
- MA Equity Strategies: This webpage provides numerous links to resources, guidelines, models, and programs related to equity work in Massachusetts public schools.
- M.A.S.S. REDI Strategy: This document shares the M.A.S.S. Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (M.A.S.S. REDI) which “is an organization-wide, long-term strategy of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (M.A.S.S.) designed to ensure that every school in Massachusetts learns to model the anti-racist, inclusive practice required for every adult and student to learn and thrive.”
- Safe Schools: This website shares information about the Safe Schools Program for LGBTQ students, which provides training and technical assistance relating to bullying, understanding sexual orientation and gender identity, and improving school climate.
- Social Emotional Learning: This website is an introduction to Social and Emotional Learning in Massachusetts Public Schools. DESE commonly uses the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL’s), definition of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): SEL is the process of developing students’ and adults’ social and emotional competencies-the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that individuals need to make successful choices.
Joy and Justice Team
Safire DeJong Ed.D.
Safire is a mama, auntie, daughter, practitioner, and scholar. She is co-editor of Readings for Diversity and Social Justice and holds a Doctorate of Education in Social Justice Education from UMass Amherst. Her research focuses on young people’s experiences with status and power in schools and communities. At CES, Safire works with a team of talented and experienced co-facilitators (the Joy & Justice team!) to provide equity-focused consulting and professional development for PK-12 schools. She has 20 years of experience facilitating social justice work, intergroup dialogues, and training skilled facilitators. These experiences have enabled her to develop a broad set of tools and skills that can support groups to find the most generative possibilities for liberatory futures, together.
Position: Joy & Justice in Schools Program, Co-Director
Email: sdejong@collaborative.org
Phone: (413) 586-4900 x5929
Mariah Lapiroff M.A.T., Ed.S.
Mariah is from Berkeley, CA, and grew up in a Chinese and Jewish family with teachers for parents. She continually feels deeply influenced by and connected to her home, cultures, and community. Mariah is a social justice facilitator committed to culturally sustaining, equitable, and transformational practices. She has experience working as a high school teacher, as well as an educator at elementary and university levels. She holds an M.A.T. in Latin & Classical Humanities and an Ed.S. in Social Justice Education from UMass Amherst. She facilitates sessions on the topics of social identities, self-awareness, oppression and liberation, intergroup dialogue, and relational education approaches that foster student agency and belonging in joyful caring school communities. Mariah firmly believes that social justice work in schools must happen through intergenerational partnerships that center the voices, experiences and dreams of young people at the margins.
Position: Joy, Justice & Equity Specialist
Email: mlapiroff@collaborative.org
Sabine Denise Jacques M.Ed.
Sabine Denise Jacques is a First Generation Haitian-American social justice facilitator, theater practitioner, actor, and Fulbright Scholar. She holds a BA in African-American Studies, a Multicultural Theater certificate, and her Masters in International Education with a certificate in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In her role as a SJE consultant, Sabine facilitates experiences where school community members, students, and building leaders learn to have brave and generative dialogue about oppression in a way that leads to more connection. Sabine is passionate about arts activism within Black & Brown communities, believes in the power of storytelling and its ability to provide space for vulnerability, healing, & joy.
Position: Joy, Justice & Equity Specialist
Email: sjacques@collaborative.org
Tom Chang M.Ed.
Tom Chang is a dedicated leadership coach, teacher educator, and community organizer. He is the board chair of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership and co-director of the Joy and Justice in Schools program at the Collaborative for Educational Services. With a deep commitment to co-facilitation, Tom and his colleagues have worked closely with over 20 schools districts and organizations to center the needs and brilliance of young people. He draws on 3 years of experience as a social justice and equity specialist and 15 years as an elementary school teacher working to cultivate environments where all community members feel a genuine sense of belonging. In an increasingly divided world, Tom emphasizes the power of bridging and recognizing our shared humanity as a path to collectively taking better care of ourselves and each other.
Position: Joy & Justice in Schools Program, Co-Director
Email: tchang@collaborative.org