 So, I think for me, when I think about social justice education, I always tell my students that it really comes down to three things, right, you know, in terms of how we think about the task or the outcomes of the work. The one is that everybody here needs to embrace the notion that they too are an educator. And what I mean by that is that we have to disrupt this norm. There's only one expert in the room, right. Our students, and particularly the students that we serve through our classroom, they're students who have been historically underrepresented, underserved by higher education. So, they tend to occupy the margins in different ways. So, they often have been made to feel that they have no wisdom to impart in the classroom. And I think we have shifted that terrain a lot. And, you know, they too are educators. They too are organic intellectuals. They too bring a wisdom that without which I don't think we can even have or begin a conversation around social justice. And so, that acknowledgement to me is really important, that we're all educators in the room. The second one is that we're all also, we have to insist on becoming historians, right. None of this work around injustice happened overnight, right. There's a long legacy, a long history that informs it. So, I always say that how did we get here, right. So, insisting on history as an important component of the work we do. So, we have to be historians. And the third thing because we work in the College of Education is this notion of becoming translators. And what I mean by that is that, you know, oftentimes we delve into this beautiful theorizing around social justice. And then we have a hard time bringing it back home, right. Bringing it back to the very communities that we so wanted to serve through this work that we started thinking about, that they were at the heart of driving us into this field. So, we have to find ways in which we can engage and see our communities and our families also as organic intellectuals. But building a sort of framework that allows us to translate some of this work back home. You know, another mentor of mine, Dr. Sonia Nieto, she talks about the importance of in social justice education that you have high expectations for students and rigorous demands. But you have to provide them the support in order to be successful. And that support is material, it's emotional, you know, it's honoring the strengths that they bring to the space. Right, justices has to be, it lives in our flesh, right. It lives in the kind of the way we draw from those things, right. And we also, because it draws from the flesh, we also draw from the ancestral wisdom from our families, from our communities, from young people, from the futures we have not yet seen as the possibility of what could be. You know, I always start my classes like, I may not have all the answers. In fact, I don't have very few, if any, right. But I am committed as a critical educator to struggling alongside you to figuring out what those answers are, right. It's less about an outcome than about a process, right. I'm less concerned, can students, you know, learn all this content. Because again, if I'm committed to these students, then the classroom for me goes beyond the 10 weeks. And our students are beautiful. I mean, our students, you know, our students keep us on our toes. And I think one of the things that we've always said a lot that we feel that we work with some of the most beautiful students ever. Like, I think Western has an incredible student community here, a rich community that is driving questions and asking things that, and we should be learning from them. We should be taking the cue around what our curriculum should be, how it should be shifting based on the questions that young people are asking. For some students, the knowledge in our classrooms is about life and death, right. And we know this probably all too well, right. And I think, you know, I think these are these moments where, you know, what then becomes a task of the critical educator. And there are times where it's just like, we're going to put content aside. We have to think about process, because this is the work, right. And those are challenging moments when you're working in a quarter system that has the lineated, very markers, and you have to think about this, right. But I think, again, this commitment to justice work as educators, it is about being really attuned to what's happening in your students' lives. And that is as important to your work and to your craft as it is about making sure they've read all the content of a book. Some of the ways that we have, well, I'll just say appropriated social justice. It takes away the meaning. And often in institutions, we can kind of take away the things that might cause us to be wrestling with one another and grappling. And shifting and changing ourselves. So I would love for us all to have some common understandings about what social justice is. And be able to take the actions, not just personally, and not just collectively within our departments or our colleges, but also structurally, and then outside of the structures of our institution. And I think that we have a strong belief that this work isn't an outcome, it's a process. And we're in process, so our colleagues, our students, our administrators, our universities, our communities are all in process too. So there's going to be points that we have, that we're going to come together around certain issues, but our long-term goals might not always be the same. But we can stand and walk with each other. If we have that framework of justice-oriented work from that deep, meaningful place, then we can do more work with one another. And I think we would have, and if that comes from a place of love, even though these things are going to be hard, justice work is not easy. You know, it's not, I mean, it kind of looks easy when we do it, because we have a loving relationship with one another, and we walk this work together in a good way, and we do our best. But it's hard, and you know, there's tears and pain and heartbreak. And we have to be willing to go, as you said, on those painful paths with one another. And I think that piece has to be, I think, driven home as educators. I think we oftentimes feel that if we're not the embodiment of all these sort of marginalities that we can't do the work, and I think it's not a question of if, it's a question of how. And I think as teachers, we're always sort of thinking about, but it does require that that deep set of love is a love, first and foremost, to unpack these things for ourselves, and that we are not, you know, separate from the study because we got, we have doctorates, right? That we have to think about our work fundamentally as a really intimate personal work, as that we do this. Yeah, and then what does that look like for faculty and staff in our university? That means that we don't get to assume we know what it's like to be undocumented, or to be at those intersections of multiple identities, and we don't get to just read about it, and then think we know. We need to listen. We get asked this a lot, like, how do you make it work? How do you drive? And it's like, you know, it's about love. It's about hope. It's about, it's about an investment that goes beyond the classroom. And we know that some of this is what I mentioned, and it's also being honest about the costs, that it is more labor. And let's be honest about that, right? It's just not just going to be a clock-in-clock-out kind of thing, right? Well, it has to be shared labor. And it has to be shared labor. And I think, and I think, and so part of the reconfiguration to sustain the work also has to be, at some point, an institutional infrastructure that could hold that, because we know that that's a hard thing to do when all of this work is invisible, right? But I just think one of the things that just was so powerful, I think Kristen is, to me, is the embodiment of love in the classroom, the embodiment of what's possible, about us being able to think that the classroom can truly be a place of joy and healing. And she walks at every day, even though our own lives are really complex and we carry a lot of pain, because we are not separate from the study that we were talking about. This is our lives. Kristen came in to really shift and made me believe that I, too, could be an educator in this way. I have seen Kristen, through her pedagogy, literally save so many students' lives on this campus. And I think, for me, I've learned that, one, that I'm hella never alone, that we get to do this together. But also I've learned that we can do teaching for social justice on our own terms, that we can do it in a way that honors who we are, that honors our communities, and that really can be a fun and joyful process. I get emotional in large part because it's such a joy and a beauty to walk alongside you and to learn these things. So I've just been in awe of your teaching and who you are and how you walk this work. To me, the everyday appreciation of students in those spaces is what's most important. And I see, every single day, you being rewarded or awarded by students, by the ways in which they engage. And then they continue to have transformed their own lives and creating the conditions for transformation and empowerment in the lives of the students that they go on to work with or in their community organizing. What I've seen happen since Dr. Vela's came to this campus has been truly transformative and revolutionary. To be honored as your sister has been one of the greatest gifts. Teaching for me is all about love. It's all about love. So co-teaching was all about love. And not love in the touchy-feely hug and all that, but love is a profound social movement that loving someone truly, loving each other truly, from a bell hooks kind of perspective, which is with respect and responsibility and commitment and open and honest communication, care, affection, all those things, then we can get places with each other. And I wonder, what can we do together in these 10 weeks that will last long after the books are closed and canvases shut down? What will students take into their lives that is transformative?