Between attacks on trans and immigrant students, the freezing of federal funds for Head Start preschool programs, and the plans being put in place to abolish the Department of Education, Trump’s first weeks in office have succeeded in creating a “new culture of anxiety" in education.

In the face of these events, it’s hard not to feel scared, angry, or paralyzed—or all three. The attacks keep coming; it feels like trying to catch your breath while being hammered by a powerful set of waves.

But if I have to put my money on a side, I’m betting on education.

Across the country, there is widespread support for public schools. Even as Trump won the presidency, voters soundly rejected school voucher initiatives—again. Remember that when engaged in collective action, teachers wield incredible power. Research shows that recent teacher strikes have been effective at lowering class sizes and securing more funds, without harming student learning. Even in Virginia, a state historically hostile to labor unions, teachers’ unions have recently won big gains, such as collective bargaining rights.

We have the power and the people on our side.

But it’s going to be a fight, and we need all hands on deck.

The pact I made with myself is that I can leave teaching and write a newsletter that helps other people do the same as long as I continue to support public education in every way I can. I’m still figuring out what this looks like in our new reality, but I have a few ideas.

Here are some ways I’ve identified to support education from outside of the classroom.

Support Teachers’ Unions

This is an obvious one, but still one worth saying.

Of course, no union is perfect, and there are many crummy teachers’ unions out there. There are real critiques of teachers’ unions. They can obstruct reform efforts and wield what some believe is undue political power. (Research has disproven the common argument that unions protect ineffective teachers.) And regardless of your stance on the issue, research shows that teachers’ unions did slow the reopening of schools during the COVID pandemic.

Yet the benefits of unions are undeniable: not only do teachers earn higher wages in states with collective bargaining, but the increased school funding their efforts achieve yields higher student outcomes.

With the DOE posed to be dismantled (which I discussed in detail in this post), get ready to support a wave of union actions.

Start by educating yourself about your local teachers’ union efforts. Don’t blindly accept every stance. Ask questions. Be curious. Listen to different stakeholders, not just the loudest voices in the room. Understand what they are fighting for and why. And if you don’t agree or see something missing from the discussion, speak up. Together is the only way we’re going to get anywhere.

When the strikes come (and they will), join a picket line. I promise they are a LOT of fun. If you’re able, bring coffee, or better yet, volunteer at a strike school or food distribution hub for students in need.

(Honestly, I’m waiting for a nationwide general strike, which doesn’t actually seem that out of the realm of possibility.)

Say It Loud, Say It Proud

There are a lot of loud voices out there saying that public education is failing and that the solution is privatization and homeschooling.

So we need to be louder.

Educator and organizer Rybin of the proudly socialist By And For Angry Education Workers Substack recommends that in addition to supporting teachers’ unions and strike efforts, people “continue spreading pro-teacher, pro-public education messages, and anti-privatization messages to your personal circles, especially with those who have never worked in schools.”

Remember that, as hiring managers have shown us, people outside of education truly don’t know all teachers do or what really goes on inside classrooms and schools. If you’re a former teacher, share your experiences. If you’re a supporter of teachers, ask questions and listen to those with lived experience, and share their perspectives and insights with others.

The power of these “playground conversations” is real. Integrated Schools, one of my favorite parent organizations, offers a brilliant Awkward Conversations Guide that gives suggestions on how to approach discussions of school integration and equity, and challenge the implicit biases inherent in the failing-schools/good-school-bad-school framework. Their suggestions could easily be adapted to broader conversations around the value of public education.

Dream Big

Counterintuitive as it may sound, I think the most important thing we can do right now is dream.

In a recent In These Times article, writer and scholar Eve L Ewing makes the argument that we need to not just be on the defensive right now; we need to clarify what we’re fighting for.

In her piece, Ewing references Toni Morrison’s famous quote about how racism erodes imagination, leaving people with “a second-rate existence, jammed with second-hand ideas.” Dreaming is not a luxury, she tells us, remixing the quote from Audre Lorde’s famous essay.

Some might say this isn’t the time to ask for more or dream big, that we should be grateful to cling to whatever curricular freedoms and job protections we have.

I say bullshit. So do more than 30 California teachers’ unions.

They are uniting under the We Can’t Wait campaign to put forth a broad and ambitious agenda that aims to improve teaching and learning conditions across the state. Is California the worst place to teach and learn? Absolutely not. But does it have a long way to go before it has a truly equitable and effective education system? Totally.

Now is exactly the time for this kind of big, coordinated action.

Now is the time for imagination—to dream big and build a plan for what we actually want.

Conservatives have actually been great at imagination. The Tea Party gained traction after the election of Obama; its platform sounded ludicrous at the time but has since shaped the mainstream Republican agenda. Mere months ago, Project 2025 sounded dystopian and unrealistic. Now the Trump administration is taking strides to fulfill its vision.

Its authors dared to dream big, and we need to do the same.

We don’t just want smaller class sizes; we want an additional 6 hours per week of teacher release time for planning and grading (which would actually bring us in line with the OECD average for time spent in the classroom).

We don’t just want an end to book banning; we want curricular and pedagogical autonomy like teachers in Finland have.

We don’t just want paid parental leave; we want on-site, school-sponsored childcare programs like those that have been piloted in Texas and Idaho.

We don’t just want to retain Title I funding for low-income schools; we want to dismantle the conditions that create Title I schools in the first place, having caused our schools to become more racially and socioeconomically segregated today than they were before Brown v. Board of Education.

And as Ewing says at the end of her article, “To survive, we have to imagine the education we want for our babies, and fight like hell to make it real.”

So what is your vision for public education? How do you plan to support teachers from outside the classroom? Share in the comments.