Author: Noelia Rivera-Calderón LAW '19

Partners in the Movement: Reflections on Movement Lawyering

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As a former middle school teacher, what brought me to Temple Law as a student was a not-fully-defined goal of partnering with youth to address education injustice through policy change. At the time I didn’t have the language of “movement lawyering” to describe my goal, but was fortunate to end up at the movement lawyering organization Advancement Project as an attorney on the education justice team. In this role I partnered with youth organizers across the country to provide legal and policy support for their education justice campaigns. We took on school policing, strengthened Sanctuary Schools policies, and built campaigns for school mental health from the ground up. I am honored to continue partnering on some of this work now. Returning to Temple as faculty, I was excited to see so much interest in movement lawyering among the student body. I also often receive questions (and sometimes field misconceptions) about what exactly movement lawyering is, questions that inspired me to write this piece based on my experience. To clear up a few things at the …

Learning to Dream Bigger

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When I made the difficult decision to leave a career as a middle school teacher to go to law school, I did it to chase what I thought of as big dreams. I had become increasingly frustrated by the limited reach that I had in my classroom, feeling powerless to address the many barriers my students faced outside the classroom. I was tired of teachers and students being treated like political footballs and as manifestations of different ideas rather than as individuals with different experiences and needs. I felt that to have a larger impact, to stop feeling powerless, I would need to work in some combination of law, politics, and policy. As I decided to submit an application to Temple, guided in large part by my interest in the Law and Public Policy Program, I remember thinking that “maybe someday, maybe somehow I’ll work in legislation in City Hall. Maybe someday—maybe years from now—I can make it that far.” I was able to check that off my list while still a student in my …