LeighAnn Matthews, NJTESOL/NJBE, New Jersey, USA

We created our Statement of Solidarity against Anti-Black Racism. NJTESOL/ NJBE stands both as a part of and in firm solidarity with the Black community in the wake of the ongoing acts of police brutality against unarmed Black citizens in the United States. In June of 2020, we released this statement in wake of the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Members of the Executive Board realized that still action was needed. Simply sharing a statement would not suffice. We had to do real personal reflection and challenge our own beliefs to create change in systemic and personal racism. A subcommittee was created to confront anti-Black racism. The subcommittee has been meeting regularly to determine ways that we can best engage in individual and collective reflection and action within the Executive Board and our broader NJTESOL/NJBE community. We have been following a process of selecting readings/media, sharing these with the Executive Board, and collectively writing questions and comments based on these resources. These questions and comments are then used to record monthly NJTESOL/NJBE Critical Conversations which we share with the NJTESOL/NJBE community in our Weekly Voices newsletter and on our Youtube Channel. As an organization, NJTESOL/NJBE believes we have a responsibility to reflect on our ideas and beliefs regarding anti-Black racism. We seek to model a process of change that begins with ourselves and moves to actionable items that impact our schools, communities, and institutions.

NJTESOL/NJBE encourages you to join us in this self-reflective work that leads to concrete action. We aim to promote greater awareness and discussion of how anti-Black racism manifests itself in language instruction. We call on educators to identify discriminatory ideas and practices rooted in anti-Black racism, both personally and professionally, and commit to taking steps to dismantle them.

In addition to the formation of a subcommittee focusing on confronting anti-Black racism, we also started a second subcommittee with a focus on parents’ rights. This subcommittee meets regularly with our executive board parent/community action representative to discuss how to amplify parent voices in school communities and provide families with information that will empower them as a parent of an immigrant child. We also appointed a parent representative to our executive board this Fall. This is crucial to amplify parent voice and perspective not only within the subcommittee but within our larger advocacy work as well. Topics of focus for the subcommittee include rights in public education, rights to enroll, eligibility for school services, as well as language services and accommodations. We are hoping to create content such as a video that can be translated and shared with school districts to provide families during parent advisory committee meetings, back-to-school nights, or other relevant events.

We hope that by sharing the new initiatives of NJTESOL/NJBE that you may be inspired to engage in similar work within your TESOL affiliate organizations. We would also love to hear from you if you already, so please reach out!

If you are interested in collaborating with NJTESOL/NJBE feel free to connect on social media or contact us.

Youtube Channel: NJTESOL-NJBE

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Twitter: @NJTESOL_NJBE

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Biodata:

LeighAnn Matthews is the liaison for NJTESOL/NJBE. She is a K-12 ESL Instructional Coach in Bridgewater, New Jersey, USA.