
Cierra Kaler-Jones
Communities for Just Schools Fund Director of StorytellingCierra Kaler-Jones, Ph.D. is the first-ever Executive Director of Rethinking Schools. She is on the Zinn Education Project leadership team and serves on the Steering Committee for Black Lives Matter at School. Cierra is an educator, dancer, writer, professor, researcher, and narrative strategist. As an educator for over 12 years, she continues to teach dance and supports youth organizers in Washington, D.C. as the co-facilitator of the Seeding Disruption Remix youth fellowship program. She also runs a program called Black Girls S.O.A.R. (Scholarship, Organizing, Arts, and Resistance), which trains and supports Black girls in using arts-based research to fuel social change. Her research can be found in Middle School Journal,The Urban Review, Girlhood Studies, Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity, and Frontiers in Education. She’s given over 500 invited talks, keynotes, and workshops at convenings such as TEDxFoggyBottom, SXSW and SXSW EDU, Council for Exceptional Children, the Women’s Convention, and more. Dr. Kaler-Jones is an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University and George Mason University. In 2022, Kaler-Jones was named to Black Enterprise’s 40 Under 40 list for her education and storytelling work.
- Creating a Curriculum with Black Girls in Mind – Hechinger Report
- Critical Race Theory Opens Up New Opportunities for Student Learning | Yes! Magazine
- We Need to Teach the Truth about Systemic Racism, Say Educators | NEA Today
- The Push for Police-Free Schools Continues Amid Debate | School Library Journal
- Storytelling to Bridge Divides | TEDxFoggy Bottom
- When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing | Medium
- It’s Time to Fully Invest in Schools and Community Organizing | Philanthropy News Digest
- Police-free Schools are Critical to Reproductive Freedom | NewsOne
- Through the Lens of Those We Love: Uplifting Oral Histories and Finding Common Threads | Rethinking Schools