Our organizing and training efforts are the foundation of SEJ’s work.
Through political education, organizing workshops, and leadership training, we ensure that each new generation of student leaders are well equipped to lead the fight for racial and educational justice.
Our trainings and workshops are taught through an anti-racist lens and focus mainly on:
Institutional Racism
Adultism
Anti-Blackness
Classism
White supremacy and other systems of oppression
At every member meeting, we help young people step into leadership roles and into their voice and power, which is essential in our organization. We equip our members with the language and vocabulary to talk about structural oppression, and how to dismantle it. Every week at our member meetings, young people come together to engage in political education workshops (such as Police in Schools & Alternative Reimaginings, Queer ABCs, and Understanding African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Cultural Appropriation) to learn how to organize to create systemic change, and to improve their leadership skills.
Attend a Member Meeting
Each summer, SEJ hosts a “Summer Intensive” during which 15-20 students are selected amongst applicants to participate in a 4-week summer training. During the intensive, students learn to critically think about their identities, their communities, and their experiences of oppression which they will then translate into organizing skills used to dismantle systems of power. At SEJ, we understand that organizing efforts are best led by those most directly impacted by the issue and so at SEJ, members identify the issues to be addressed and the organizing actions taken to address them.
At SEJ, there are a wide range of opportunities for students to take charge and spearhead efforts for racial and educational justice. While the ways that students lead at SEJ look different, each action has impact and contributes to our forward momentum.
These opportunities can look like leading one of our weekly member meetings, being an intern with SEJ either in the Fall or Spring, joining the SEJ Leadership Team as a paid employee, or creating your own opportunity.
Get Started
We have launched our campaign to remove School Resource Officers (SROs) from New Haven public schools and re-invest this money into supporting students’ mental health by hiring one new therapist in every school. As a part of the campaign work, we have divided the group into three (3) main categories. We have two groups dedicated to research, and one that deals with outreach. The first of our research groups is focusing on organizations across the U.S. that have already had success within this campaign. The second research group is looking into the SRO (student resource officer) models that New Haven Schools have. Lastly, our outreach group is focused on reaching out to young people in New Haven.
SEJ is part of a statewide coalition of over ten Connecticut-based grassroots organizations that are each leading local campaigns to remove police from schools across Connecticut and reinvest in student mental health. Together, the Community First coalition dreams of a police-free Connecticut that prioritizes its students’ safety and health.
SEJ is an anchor organization of the ARTLC, a grassroots coalition dedicated to supporting teachers in Connecticut to become anti-racist educators and to center truth-based BIPOC histories and identities in their curricula.