The chapters in this issue are a clarion call for the science of learning and development to create productive, sustainable, and care-centered partnerships across academic fields that extend into partnerships with local communities. While applauding the wisdom of this communitarian aspiration, this commentary cautions that forming productive…

Co-authors Lee and Peters collaborated across 2019-2021 on a community-engaged project with Carclew's ExpressWay Arts. They ask, when your creative practice is premised on relationship building, belonging and care, how do you step away from projects responsibly, meaningfully and carefully? This article explores how establishing rituals of closure…

In January 2021 the author read "Hey, Kiddo" by Jarrett Krosoczka. The author connected on so many levels with this graphic novel memoir, and knew that it would speak to their students, as well. Krosoczka not only wrote "Hey, Kiddo," but he illustrated it, as well. The author states they knew the healing impact a book could…

There is no "magic potion" or vaccine to prevent youth from using alcohol or other drugs. Adolescent substance abuse prevention programs have been largely ineffective because the messaging is taken for granted. Efforts based on theories of growth and development patterns, and are inclusive of strategies beyond the classroom and home,…

Cross-sector collaborations can generate the resources and political will necessary to tackle urgent, complex issues. Because these partnerships involve local leaders, they are typically responsive to their surrounding communities, addressing local concerns, and capitalizing upon local assets. These strengths-oriented, locally driven…

Data-informed instructional methods offer tremendous promise for increasing the effectiveness of teaching, learning, and schooling. Yet-to-be-developed data science approaches have the potential to dramatically advance instruction for every student and to enhance learning for people of all ages. Next steps that emerged from a recent National…

This chapter describes how the author became an academic political educator and community organizer, with both worlds always working with, against, and for each other.

This article describes how Extension educators built on traditional community organizing approaches by engaging an advisory board and utilizing new technologies to co-create a video series supplement to "Recovery After Disaster: Family Financial Toolkit." The intent was to assist disaster professionals and survivors in making informed…

The community engagement professional (CEP) plays a critical role in engaging faculty, staff, and students with communities. In order to do this in the most effective way, this essay advocates for CEPs to become familiar with the Cooperative Extension system and develop competency for engaging Extension personnel, even when those personnel are not…

Influenced by Third World Liberation social movements in the United States and abroad, this article applies a serve-the-people concept to service-learning in education. Rooted in pedagogies more traditionally associated with ethnic studies and community organizing, and informed by sociocultural and critical frameworks in education, this article…

Courses: This semester-long project is suited for courses on persuasion, diversity, social media, communication and technology, social advocacy, service-learning, or social justice. Objective: This assignment challenges students to research, design, launch, maintain, and assess an anti-hate social media campaign.

This article describes how one local teachers' union branch has developed an active and imaginative campaign as it has challenged both national education policy and also the very specific attacks on schools in the community. By connecting local and national issues, and by linking struggles on pay and pensions to wider questions of policy, the…

One of the central tenets of the neoliberal world view is that there is no alternative to market-based societies with their focus on competition, individualism, and the abandonment of social safety nets and environmental protections. This vision has become the new common sense. As neoliberal policies and practices have spread across the planet,…

Iin urban communities across the nation, a broad range of partners have committed to reinventing educational time together to ensure equitable access to rich learning opportunities for all young people. Across the nation, education partners are using their creativity, commitment, and unique resources to create new school and system designs that…

Twenty-one students were homeless. One student had asked a cafeteria worker on a Friday afternoon for leftover food to take home for the weekend. Those were among the facts that high school English teacher Ann Haugland heard at a professional development event in her Boone, Iowa, Community School District. "I couldn't sleep that night,"…