National Education Association staffers hosted a webinar this week titled “Preparing for a Second Trump Administration,” in which they advised teachers how to combat the incoming president’s policy agenda and advance pro-illegal immigration and pro-social justice rhetoric.
The webinar, which was held on Zoom and recorded by advocacy group Parents Defending Education, opened with a “land acknowledgment” delivered by keffiyeh-wearing Caitlin Ehlers, the board director of the Student Washington Education Association.
“We begin by acknowledging that we meet on the traditional lands of many indigenous people, land upon which participants of this call live and work,” Ehlers said, before discussing president-elect Donald Trump. “Our president-elect is threatening to annex Kalaallit Nunaat, AKA, Greenland, and his coalition is directly responsible for land grabs and eco-savage from the Great Plains to the Amazon. To make sense of this moment, each of us has to know where we are. Whose land are you on? Where do you stand in settler-colonialism? And what are you gonna do about it?”
Officials covered a number of other issues, including Trump’s stance on illegal immigration.
Aspiring educators should tap into union resources and build connections with immigrant groups in their communities to figure out what they can “do within the school space to try and make [children of illegal immigrants] feel less afraid” of immigration enforcement, said Jennifer Berkshire, who works as an adjunct professor at Boston College and a journalist. Schools can also increase the number of counselors “advising and reassuring” students on immigration enforcement, Berkshire added.
Berkshire also claimed conservative school boards and state education departments may receive “talking points” from the Trump administration on the topic of critical race theory, but she argued many people actually believe the fight against the progressive pedagogy is a “circus” and is meant to “privatize and dismantle schools.”
Also during the call, the chair of NEA’s sexual orientation and gender identity committee and a board director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that she was “concerned” about Trump’s win, and added that the ACLU has plans in place to protect abortion, immigrants’ rights, racial justice, transgender rights, and voting rights. She also pledged to offer resources to teachers who want to hold protests at their schools.
“I’m here to tell you the pride flag’s going to be in my classroom. I don’t care what anyone says. The pride flag’s going to be there. So is the trans flag. So is the Black Lives Matter flag. They’re going to be in my room,” she said.
The NEA is the largest teachers’ union in the nation and prides itself on funding progressive initiatives in schools. One of the group’s most recent controversies occurred last year in July, when the organization voted on two anti-Israel initiatives at its “Representative Assembly.” The first called for the NEA’s official position on the war in Gaza to be that Israel is conducting a “genocide,” while the second said that opposing Israel’s existence is not antisemitic.