This weekend, the Teacher-Powered coaching team gathered for our annual retreat in Pasadena. Coaches from across the country come together to collectively advance the technical assistance arm of Teacher-Powered Schools. I showed up anxious about the big work on our shoulders against the backdrop of Minnesota, where many of our colleagues and community call home.

It can feel like there’s too much in the world to be able to focus on big organizational tasks and questions. Yet, I can’t help but to see our work as nested in a larger struggle for pluralism and democracy. Schools are central to nurturing the critical and active participants this moment calls for.

Schools practice democracy. They are places where students are nurtured to meaningfully contribute to and lead their communities. Our coaching team is in school buildings living these values every day. Our capacity to create more participatory and inclusive school systems is possible and, by extension, a more participatory and inclusive society.

This weekend, we leaned into our collective work the same way teacher-powered schools do—by anchoring in community, vision, and in daring to imagine something different—when it feels like it can’t be done. We have so much work ahead of us. May we continue to cultivate the antidote to oppressive systems and lean into the power of the collective.