Imagine putting the locus of your faith in actual people, not the ones you pretend to know or the ones you envision, but the actual people each with their own big and bold visions and ideas of the world.

That was the mantra running through me as we developed the latest and greatest EduColor Summit 2021. (You can view the keynotes on your own time here). Organizing events like this make me wish more folks had the opportunity and the collective will to give more educators of color and conscience their own microphones. From 11am to 7pm, I found myself listening to students, educators, and parents who, through unfathomable nightmares decided to dream big, and share their visions with us without candy-coating the message.

We have several, structural and cultural reasons why this work matters now more than ever. Not only are we in a perilous time with multiple states coming for educators’ jobs simply for speaking truth to power, but we also have a plethora of other global maladies that could be easily addressed if not for nefarious and well-resourced people across the spectrum profiteering off the chaos. We’ve decided that speaking a better world into existence mattered more than the risk it might bring to our livelihoods.

This was true before COVID and even more so during.

That’s where the “Big Educator Energy” comes in. In the critical conferences that I’ve worked on this summer, there was certainly a level of uncertainty about stepping into even mentioning race. In higher ed, it often looks like e-mails to provosts and college presidents, demotions, tenure denials, and loss of funding. In PK-12, it looks like e-mails to principals, letters to the local conservative paper, and doxxing in front of school boards. Personal opinions turn into inhumane policy.

Some of these folks literally do the canceling they accuse everyone else is doing, and do so with the boost of many major news outlets.

So, when we endeavor on these projects, as I and others have suggested, we must do so boldly and without apology. Pretending that our country doesn’t have institutional and structural atonement for its past human-rights violations including slavery and genocide doesn’t get us healed much like standing on a dirt heap under our rugs doesn’t get our living room cleaned. Our schools’ curricula have generally kept us from addressing said atrocities. Our pedagogies hinder our students from being fully engaged citizens. Our school buildings continue to fall apart, and too many of our children still see our schools as sites of harm instead of headquarters for good.

There’s another wave just beyond the wave of people who want to pretend we can get back to “normal.” It’s not hard to see that second wave, full of autocrats, racists, profiteers, all buoyed by people who’ve bought the maleficent message at their own peril.

That second wave will require an interwoven network of students, parents, teachers, and other community members who believe we can do better, and energy to match. If our energy is big enough, we can snatch a few victories from defeat’s toothy jaws. As many have taught us before, it’s important to dream, then act upon that dream, especially in a living nightmare.