Light the Fire, Light the Way: Love Letter to Educational Leaders

• In Event: Dare Everything: Love Letters to Educational Leaders During an Era of 47

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes

The current administration (47th) has engaged in structural violence (Farmer 2004), targeting the nation's most vulnerable communities. In our Love Letters (Reyes, Carreon, Nava 2025a, b, c), we argue the daily “barrage of social, cultural, institutional and financial assaults…may leave you feeling overwhelmed, distracted and dejected.” This administration has intensified efforts to secure resources, building infrastructure to enact repression while creating a culture of fear. They utilize the language of “protection” at the border from immigrants who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” As educators and cultural workers (Freire 2018), our response is informed by collectivizing, deep thought, and responding grounded in love and clarity. We must be prepared to build on the freedom struggles of our ancestors and light the fire, light the way forward for seven generations (LaDuke 1999). These letters were written to spark critical reflection and action amongst school leaders and educators.

Theoretical Framework
This presentation draws on critical pedagogy (Freire 1970), critical literacy (Macedo 2018), and indigenous approaches to relationality. As Macedo & Araujo Freire (2005) remind us of the centrality of education, “[I]nstead of dismantling public education further, we should make it a national public priority. We also contend that the safeguarding of U.S. democracy rests much more on the creation of an educated, smart citizenry than on the creation of smart bombs.” These frameworks center humanization, life, liberation, and alternative epistemologies of knowing and doing, and relating to and with the earth and natural world.

Methods & Data Sources
This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA; Fairclough, 2013) in four stages: (1) focusing on social wrong ; (2) identifying obstacles to addressing the social wrong; (3) examining how the current order maintains oppression; and (4) exploring ways to arrive at justice. This approach illuminates how language, ideology, and power operate in context, guiding actionable strategies for transformative change. I weave together CDA with Reyes’ (2024) PRAXISioner scholar model, reflecting how methods can empower us to question entrenched norms, disrupt authoritarian tendencies, and respond with urgency, offering tools advancing equity and transformative praxis.
Data Sources
As anticolonial and justice-committed educators, we treat the 47th administration's current attacks and further eradication and rollback of the social wage (Prashad, 2005) as concrete forms of data. Data sources encompass ongoing news and political events, think tank documents such as Project 2025, social media communications, and various community efforts to resist violence directed at them.

Results/Conclusions
The publication of the Love Letters and subsequent podcast has generated urgency in the face of escalating attacks. As a response, the PRAXISioner scholar framework (Reyes, 2024) provides a way forward for school leaders and educators committed to transformative ends by asking us to “envision a tomorrow absent of the systems of oppression” that are present today.

Scholarly Significance
The significance of the letter(s) lies in the precision in language and vision put forth by the authors for the letters. We must move forward courageously, speaking our truths by visibilizing the interconnectedness of the attacks on marginalized communities.

Author

• Pedro E. Nava, Santa Clara University