Stories of Resistance and Community

As we process our experiences of Operation Metro Surge, the continuation of injustice, and what it means for our communities, we want to create a space for people to share their stories. Telling stories is an important way to document history and can be helpful in processing our experiences. 

Stories submitted to this collection do not have to be about Operation Metro Surge, they can be about any example of resistance or community. However, we recognize that Operation Metro Surge was a major event in our collective experience this past year and birthed this idea. Many organizations are doing similar projects right now and did so after the murder of George Floyd (another major collective event in our community). We want to make sure our adult education community participates in this movement of documentation.

Lesson Plans

ATLAS and #IamABE partnered to create new lessons on this topic through the Teaching for Justice project. You can find the collection called Symbols of Resistance here. There are leveled lesson plans from Beginning Literacy to GED. These lessons can be a great springboard for you to use with learners to submit their final product.

• Beginning

• Intermediate

• Advanced/GED

Possible general prompts:

• Describe a time when you or your community came together to resist an injustice (something that was hurting your community).

• Describe a time when you saw your neighbors helping each other.

• Share a memory from what happened to you or your family during Operation Metro Surge.

Submit Your Writing

Anyone associated with adult education...learners, volunteers, teachers, staff, etc.

Send in a Google Doc, Word, or pasted in an email to tfjstories@gmail.com by November 15, 2026. 

Include: 

• your name (or you can give only a first name, or simply write Anonymous), 

• your adult education program, 

• and teacher’s name (if you have one).

As you feel comfortable, please also include 

• the city you live in, 

• your age, 

• and what country you are from.

What we will accept:

Written submissions should not exceed 500 words and can be prose or poetry. The submission can even be as short as a sentence.

Please don’t worry about “perfect” English. Write in your voice, use words from your language(s).

Video submissions should not exceed 3 min, ideally MP4 format.

Artwork submissions can be pictures or pdf scans of the artwork emailed.

NOTE: We are open to submissions in languages other than English. (We would be grateful for teacher or program assistance with languages we are not familiar with for vetting and editing.)

Please be aware that all submissions will be posted on our website and/or YouTube channel. By nature of submitting, you are agreeing to release your writing/video/artwork and whatever name you list as OK to associate with your work.

Collection

We will curate the collection to be housed on the ATLAS website/YouTube Channel. We hope to also have a printed version in time for distribution at the Language & Literacy Institute in January 2027. We’ll keep you updated! We also hope that then the stories can be used for additional adult education literacy activities. We love to promote using authentic and students’ texts in the classroom!