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Inquiry Series
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Current Year 24 - 25 School Year
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- September: From where are we drawing hope to sustain the antiracist work ahead of us
- Fall: How does your community practice hope and grief in collectivity?
- November: How does your community practice hope and grief in collectivity?
- December: How do we imagine the world we’re working towards seven generations in the future?
- January: How do we build a school culture and design curriculum that engages critical hope?
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Current Year 24 - 25 School Year
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- Advocacy
As a reminder, we are developing discussion resources for our 2024-2025 Inquiry Series on a quarterly basis. The text for this fall is the eighth chapter of Let This Radicalize You, by Kelly E. Hayes and Mariame Kaba, “Hope and Grief Can Coexist.” We encourage groups to spend the fall developing a practice of care to buoy the folks you are struggling alongside.
If this is your first year with BARWE, consider using our Inquiry Series 3 material. Alternatively, host an orientation meeting using our September material before moving on to the current month.
Don't forget to give us feedback!
Overview: For November, please explore our previous reading and discussion questions from October more deeply.
Conversations about grief, care, and hope can invoke difficult conversations with strong emotions. We are sharing some exercises and resources that can help groups (both in-person and virtual!) leave conversations in the room, and find release from the heavy feelings we’ve carried, both individually and together.
It can be helpful to practice stillness to close your meeting this month. Consider a guided breathing exercise to experience together. You may also choose to use some music for guided and mindful movement that includes stretching and standing postures.
Our intention is that your group moves ahead in our series this year with a practice of care, and a deeper connection as you consider how to be radically hopeful and take action within your community. We would also like to highlight a few organizations doing work to help folks process grief in community. The Threshold Choir is a group where each chapter is firmly rooted in its local community while also being an important part of our shared community as an international organization. They envision a world where all at life’s thresholds may be honored with compassion shared through song.
Salt Trails Philly can be found on Instagram and Facebook. They are making pathways into the future that include grief by honoring our personal and collective grief through gatherings, rituals and art.
One more local organization working in this realm is Uplift. Uplift Center for Grieving Children was established in 1995 as part of the Bereavement Program at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Recognizing the growing need for high-quality and free grief services in Philadelphia, the program was incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2000. Over the past 25 years, Uplift has grown from offering a handful of support groups to providing a suite of grief and mental health support services. As the demand for grief and mental health support has surged both locally and nationally over the last several years, Uplift seeks to meet the rising urgency for high-quality services while reducing barriers to access fostered by historic and systemic inequalities.
Throwback Resource:
This year we will be looking back at resources from past inquiry series that we think may be particularly useful to you at this time. This month we are highlighting, Facilitating Anti-Racism: Conflict and Safety, by CARED (Calgary Anti-Racism Education), which was an additional reading provided in the October 2021 Inquiry. With the upcoming presidential election and the one year anniversary of the beginning war on Gaza and now Lebanon, ordinary discussions can quickly turn to discussions about race that not only feel uncomfortable, but may seem unsafe. This article helps readers establish safety for all in these conversations, whether they are with your students or within your inquiry group.
Facilitation Reference Guide:
Feedback Form:
We have made edits to our feedback form, with the hopes that you find it faster and more straightforward to fill out. Please have one person in your group take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went. It is very helpful to hear from you, and helps build our connection to you!
Thank you all for your feedback so far, please keep it coming!
Pass The Hat:
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
At the end of each monthly discussion, pass a hat (or a box) and collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
Over this three month cycle, we are encouraging you to donate to the organizations spotlighted in chapter eight of Let This Radicalize You. This month we suggest you donate to Assata’s Daughters. “Assata’s Daughters (AD) is a queer Black woman-led and youth-focused organization rooted in the Black Radical Tradition. AD organizes young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, and revolutionary services.Through our programs we aim to Deepen, Escalate, and Sustain the movement for Black Liberation, and Disrupt the status quo.”
If this is your first year with BARWE, consider using our Inquiry Series 3 material. Alternatively, host an orientation meeting using our September material before moving on to the current month.
Don't forget to give us feedback!
Overview: For November, please explore our previous reading and discussion questions from October more deeply.
Conversations about grief, care, and hope can invoke difficult conversations with strong emotions. We are sharing some exercises and resources that can help groups (both in-person and virtual!) leave conversations in the room, and find release from the heavy feelings we’ve carried, both individually and together.
It can be helpful to practice stillness to close your meeting this month. Consider a guided breathing exercise to experience together. You may also choose to use some music for guided and mindful movement that includes stretching and standing postures.
Our intention is that your group moves ahead in our series this year with a practice of care, and a deeper connection as you consider how to be radically hopeful and take action within your community. We would also like to highlight a few organizations doing work to help folks process grief in community. The Threshold Choir is a group where each chapter is firmly rooted in its local community while also being an important part of our shared community as an international organization. They envision a world where all at life’s thresholds may be honored with compassion shared through song.
Salt Trails Philly can be found on Instagram and Facebook. They are making pathways into the future that include grief by honoring our personal and collective grief through gatherings, rituals and art.
One more local organization working in this realm is Uplift. Uplift Center for Grieving Children was established in 1995 as part of the Bereavement Program at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Recognizing the growing need for high-quality and free grief services in Philadelphia, the program was incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2000. Over the past 25 years, Uplift has grown from offering a handful of support groups to providing a suite of grief and mental health support services. As the demand for grief and mental health support has surged both locally and nationally over the last several years, Uplift seeks to meet the rising urgency for high-quality services while reducing barriers to access fostered by historic and systemic inequalities.
Throwback Resource:
This year we will be looking back at resources from past inquiry series that we think may be particularly useful to you at this time. This month we are highlighting, Facilitating Anti-Racism: Conflict and Safety, by CARED (Calgary Anti-Racism Education), which was an additional reading provided in the October 2021 Inquiry. With the upcoming presidential election and the one year anniversary of the beginning war on Gaza and now Lebanon, ordinary discussions can quickly turn to discussions about race that not only feel uncomfortable, but may seem unsafe. This article helps readers establish safety for all in these conversations, whether they are with your students or within your inquiry group.
Facilitation Reference Guide:
- Set a day and time for your group to meet - Make sure to send reminders. If you’re meeting in person, snacks are always a good idea!
- Send this month’s journal prompt to your group. Look through the additional readings to see if there is another reading that might be better suited to your group and its interests.
- Prepare yourself to facilitate by reading through our Norms and Discussion Protocol.
Feedback Form:
We have made edits to our feedback form, with the hopes that you find it faster and more straightforward to fill out. Please have one person in your group take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went. It is very helpful to hear from you, and helps build our connection to you!
Thank you all for your feedback so far, please keep it coming!
Pass The Hat:
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
At the end of each monthly discussion, pass a hat (or a box) and collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
Over this three month cycle, we are encouraging you to donate to the organizations spotlighted in chapter eight of Let This Radicalize You. This month we suggest you donate to Assata’s Daughters. “Assata’s Daughters (AD) is a queer Black woman-led and youth-focused organization rooted in the Black Radical Tradition. AD organizes young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, and revolutionary services.Through our programs we aim to Deepen, Escalate, and Sustain the movement for Black Liberation, and Disrupt the status quo.”