About us

Dr. Lawton-Sticklor and Dr. Berg Powers have both straddled the worlds of youth education and higher ed, and are particularly interested in amplifying youth and practitioner voices, community-based research, and the role of youth in social change. Cascading crises face our children and classrooms, each day throwing newly hellish challenges at those committed to supporting children and youth in developing as whole healthy humans. While apocalypse jokes may be rampant on social media, with plagues and wild fires and fascist violence providing ample fodder, the Greek root word, αποκαλυπτω, means “to reveal, or uncover.” What does it mean to have the courage to look at what is being uncovered and commit to meeting it head on?

As mothers of young children during the pandemic also working with teens and K-12 classroom teachers, we’ve both had a unique vantage point through which to observe the dimensions of impact across populations. Both of us taught pre-service teachers from home while managing remote schooling for their own children and have observed some of the unique ways that mothering and teaching have exposed gendered expectations of caring during these challenging years. We know these expectations are compounded for educators of color, disabled educators, LGBTQIA educators, and others who have had to filter through disparate impacts of the pandemic, racial injustice, attacks on LGBTQIA rights, reproductive autonomy, and climate catastrophe, all while showing up to do our best in supporting kids experiencing the same. For young people, we recognize the ways in which their coming of age is marred by an uncertainty far beyond that even of us as Millenials. 

We also know that the very educational tools that we need in this moment- critical pedagogy, culturally and linguistically sustaining practices, transformative justice, and social emotional education- are all under attack. We know that defending those tools is necessary and insufficient. The precipice we stand on demands visionary leadership, and we know that leadership will not come from those who cannot even see the crisis for what it is. As Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley often says, “the people closest to the pain should be closest the power.” It will take all of us to make that true, and what we can offer is lifting up the solutions of the educators, students, and parents closest to the pain to help paint a vision of what is possible to not just survive these apocalyptic times, but transform to thrive.

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Nastasia Lawton-Sticklor is an educator, climate justice activist, nonviolent direct action practitioner and trainer, photographer, and parent to two youngsters, aged 6 and 9. Nastasia spends her time organizing with the No Coal No Gas campaign in New England, supporting youth-centered organizations through board membership and volunteering, and local political advocacy. She is a national convener for the Council for an Uncertain Human Future.
Nastasia is a fellow at the Climate Disobedience Center with a research interest in restorative transitions from fossil fuels and a transformative justice approach to climate activism. She approaches this work with the belief that climate justice can only be reached through decolonizing and dismantling White supremacy and capitalism and that our resistance to these systems lies in our solidarity and interconnectedness.

Nastasia’s previous work at the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University involved cultivating spaces that uplift youth voices through qualitative research using storytelling, multimedia arts, and photography to explore social injustices and create pathways for change. Her teaching practice both in classroom and community spaces focuses on interrogating traditional pedagogies and exploring ways to build antiracist and liberatory teaching practices that are grounded in multigenerational collaboration and relationship building. She has co-authored multiple articles with educators and youth exploring and advocating for learning spaces that prioritize social justice and multigenerational knowledge. Nastasia holds a Masters’ in Teaching from Clark University and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Simmons University. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Restorative Justice at Vermont Law School.