The Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis has traditionally published interviews with individuals who have strong connections to our special issue topics. We believe that interviews are important ways to contribute to the conversation surrounding critical issues in social justice. This interview features Dr. Paul Theobald, a scholar who applies historical and philosophical lenses to rural education and what role schools might take in revitalizing community and democracy.

This paper chronicles my reflections as a child of immigrants of color and activist scholar when working with and for (immigrant) communities of color. I examine the importance of humility and to engage in critical self-reflexivity in research. Later I illustrate how I incorporated my own community cultural wealth through my mother’s assistance and support in building rapport with immigrant parents in the research.

This practitioner reflection focuses on the challenges and possibilities of encounter dialogue-music education organizations in Israel/Palestine using musicking (Small, 1995) and dialogical programming to examine, question, and reflect upon the purpose and role of Israeli and Palestinian national days, markers which build individual and collective identity in irreconcilable dissonance with each other. By entering this vulnerable space, we as educators are not exempt from the internal and critical search for understanding of self and community while educational planning and teaching. By exploring “the heart of the educational mission” (Palmer, 2010, p.50) at its foundations of “how do we know what we know” and “by what warrant can we call our knowledge true,” we can collectively uncover through musicking past realities, while also co-creating new locations of possibility (hooks, 1994) in the pursuit of (e)quality of education.

This reflexive essay chronicles the last two years of the author's PhD program and the negotiations of an emerging black female critical scholar in response to the growing tensions between academic obligations and growing racial unrest. Guiding questions of, “what are you going to do? And what are you willing to pay?” were used to think through what it meant to dedicate oneself to critical social justice work and apply that dedication to everyday practices despite perceived limitations.