Giving Compass' Take:

• E4E is a teacher-led organization that spans six chapters across the country to provide a space for teachers to have a voice in addressing issues that directly affect their students. 

• E4E helps teachers run advocacy campaigns about education issues. How can philanthropists support these types of grassroots organizations? 

• Read about why investing in grassroots organizing is not that risky. 

Within her “micro-community” of preschoolers, Nina Leuzzi, a 10-year veteran teacher in Boston, builds the kind of inclusive school climate with the potential to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. Outside the classroom, Nina works alongside other E4E teachers so that addressing discipline disparities and improving school climate is prioritized in Boston and across the country.

E4E is a teacher-led organization of nearly 30,000 educators based in six chapters across the nation dedicated to ensuring that teachers have a leading voice in the policies that affect their students and profession. E4E teachers identify issues that impact their schools and create solutions to these challenges. E4E then works with teachers to develop and run advocacy campaigns to implement those solutions. Recently, E4E teachers have ramped up their work in ending disparities in school discipline through both local and federal advocacy.

The kids who I have coming in with adverse childhood experiences are unable to access learning in the same way other kids can. It’s become clear to me that the urgency in creating trauma-informed schools is incredibly necessary.

This led Nina to join the E4E-Boston Teacher Policy Team in 2017, where she worked on a team of teachers to the develop recommendations in their policy paper Schools That Heal: Creating Trauma-Informed School Communities.

Read the full article on keeping students in class at America Forward