Our world is literally on fire–whether it’s the climate change fueled fires in California or the police terror fulled fires from the uprising for Black lives–and educators have a special responsibility in this era to help students make sense of the these realities and empower them to help make collective change.

With school starting back, now is a good time to check out this video, hosted by Dr. Lisa Delpit, on “Teaching When The World Is On Fire.”

As part of the 2020 “Reimagining Education: Teaching, Learning, and Leading for a Racially Just Society Summer Institute,” I joined the amazing Dr. Lisa Delpit for a discussion on themes from her newest book, Teaching While the World is on Fire–a book I contributed to with a co-authored chapter with Dr. Wayne Au titled, “How One Elementary School Sparked a Citywide Movement to Make Black Students’ Lives Matter.” Also joining the panel were book contributors, Sarah Ishmael, Author and Doctoral Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jonathan Tunstall, Author and Doctoral Student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It was an honor to get to be in diolagoe with such powerful educators. I have learned so much from Dr. Delpit’s expansive body of work on topics of racial justice and education. Sarah Ishmael and Jonathan Tunstall had wonderful insights about what it means to be an antiracit teacher in this era of COVID 19 and an uprising for Black lives.

As you start back to school this fall, I hope this video helps inspire you to redouble your efforts in combating institutional racism in education, join the Black Lives Matter at School “Year of Purpose” initiative, and teach for Black lives!

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-Jesse Hagopian teaches Ethnic Studies and ELA at Seattle’s Garfield High School and is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine. Jesse is the director of the “Black Education Matters Student Activist Award” the co-editor of the forthcoming book, Black Lives Matter At School: An Uprising For Educational Justice, and co-editor of the book, Teaching for Black Lives.