Adjunct Teaching Faculty
MSEd, Baruch College, City University of New York

“Schools can be sites of democratic practice and healthy community.  Schools can be partners with families in childrearing, places where every child is known.  Schools can resist forces that oppress people and weaken the social fabric.  Or not.  Schools can also crush the spirits of people, ignore the needs of kids and their communities, and perpetuate injustice, generation after generation.  Whether a school works for or against people is very much in the hands of the leaders and teachers who guide the day-to-day life of the place.  I am privileged to work at UVEI with future teachers and school leaders at a time when our society needs every educator to orient our practice in the direction of justice.  The collaborative, democratic nature of working at UVEI is itself such a pathway.  Every year at UVEI, I look forward to all that I will learn and to the problems we will solve together.”

 

Biography

Elijah Hawkes, MSEd, is the Director of School Leadership Programs and a faculty member in the Teacher, School Leadership, and Masters of Education Programs. He is a contributing editor with the University of Chicago Press “Schools: Studies in Education,” a Schools Committee Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Vermont Humanities Council. 

Elijah Hawkes is a former principal of Randolph Union High School and Middle School in Randolph, Vermont, where he served for ten years and supported the development of the Project Based Learning Lab, offering courses designed to engage students in real-world challenges. In addition to his work leading Randolph Union, Elijah was a founding principal of the James Baldwin School in New York City, one of the “successful public schools” serving “communities of color” in the city (The Nation, 2016). 

Research & Practice Interests

Elijah’s practice interests include democratic governance, restorative practice, and dialogue-for-learning in public schools. 

Books

• Hawkes, T. Elijah. (2022) Woke is Not Enough: School Reform for Leaders with Justice in Mind. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Hawkes, T. Elijah. (2020) School for the Age of Upheaval: Classrooms That Get Personal, Get Political, and Get to Work. Rowman & Littlefield.

Presentations and Panels

• Workshop Series: “Traditional Discipline Meets Restorative Practice,” VT Higher Ed Collaborative, Mar-May 2023; Jan-Mar 2024.
• Presenter: “Serious Belonging: Advisory Systems that Sustain School Community,” Rowland Foundation Annual Conference, 2023.
• Presenter: “White Educators and Racial Justice Reform,” Great Schools Partnership, School Reform in Action Conference, March 2023.
• Presenter: “Equity Work in Education,” Education Preparation Inquiry Collaborative Annual Conference, May 2023.
• Presenter: “Extremism, Democracy and Schools,” Rowland Foundation Annual Conference, 2021, 2022.
• Panelist, Polarization & Extremism Innovation Lab, webinar for Washington DC school community, January, 2020.
• Panelist, Southern Poverty Law Center “Sounds Like Hate” Podcast Panel Discussion, September, 2020.
• Featured guest, VPR Vermont Edition, “How Schools Identify Students In Crisis,” February, 2018.
• Presenter: “Educators Symposium: School Reforms that Honor Adolescent Needs and Strivings,” American Psychoanalytic Association (APsAA) Annual Meeting, NYC, February, 2018.
• Presenter: “Discussion Group: Educators & Analysts Working Together: Cutting the Silence: Self-Harm, Self-Expression, and Schools,” APsAA Annual Meeting, NYC, February, 2018.
• Featured guest, VPR Vermont Edition “As Problems Grow, Schools Deal with How Social Media, Troubled Homes Affect Teens,” November, 2017.
• Presenter: “Personal Learning for the Common Good” Workshop, Rowland Foundation Annual Conference, October, 2017, Burlington Vermont. 
• Organizer: “Personal Learning for the Common Good” Conference, December 2016, Randolph, VT.

Publications

• Hawkes, T. E. (2021) School Safety Starts in the Classroom. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. 1-9.
• Hawkes, T. Elijah. (2021, December 1) Opinion: Seven Agreements for Common Ground in Schools. VT Digger.
• Hawkes, T. Elijah. “Summer Violence and Educator Silence.” Learning for Justice, 19 July 2018, 
• Delpit, L. (Ed.). (2019). Teaching When the World is on Fire. New York: The New Press. (Elijah wrote the chapter “School Justice: Teaching Politically Fraught Topics”)
• Hawkes, T Elijah. “Permission to Walk Out: They Didn’t Ask, I Didn’t Give It.” Learning for Justice, 20 March 2018.
• Hawkes, T. E. (2018, February 15). Opinion: As ex-student kills 17 in Florida, a Vermont principal asks if educators can help avert school shootings. The Hechinger Report.
• Hawkes, T. E. (2018, May 25). When children shoot children: A Vermont principal’s observations. Burlington Free Press.  
• Hawkes, T. E. (2018, September 25). Teachers in service of what? VT Digger. 
• Hawkes, T Elijah. “Heavy Topics, Strong Classrooms.” Learning for Justice, 11 Oct 2017, 
• Hawkes, T Elijah. “Youth Voice and the Quiet Work of Teachers.” Learning for Justice, 25 April 2018.
• Hawkes, T. E. (2017). Circles and Parallels: Democratic Governance in a Small School. Schools: Studies in Education, 14(2).
• Butler-Wall, A., Cosier, K., Harper, R. L. S., Sapp, J. L., Sokolower, J., & Tempel, M. B. (2016). Rethinking sexism, gender, and sexuality. First edition. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: A Rethinking Schools Publication.
• Hawkes, T. E. (2013). Miracles and Monstrosities: John Dewey and the Fate of Progressive Education. Schools: Studies in Education, 10(1).
• Hawkes, T. E. (2009). Schools in a Time of Cholera. Schools: Studies in Education, 6(2).
• Hawkes, T. E. (2009). Exile Has Its Place: A High School Principal Reflects on School Discipline. Rethinking Schools.