CEPress organized its first online community discussions or ‘V-Gatherings’ in response to the isolation of the early pandemic years. These gatherings began in April 2020 with a general discussion of two questions: 1) in what ways are you adapting your teaching to the current situation? and 2) in what ways might we recreate education in light of the current disruptions?

From there, the conversations have continued to develop in many directions. As we discovered, the video conferencing format allows members of the critical exploration community who live far from our office in Cambridge, Massachusetts to participate regularly. We have therefore been able to think through the implications of the strange times we were living in from many diverse geographic perspectives while also sharing our deep commitments to inspiring and attending to children’s deep thinking and learning through the practice we share. Members can find transcripts of the early V-Gatherings in the member portal under the heading ‘Conversations.’

Today, our focus has broadened and includes collecting and organizing materials in our office space and gathering in person from time to time with different members of our community. We also continue to host our V-Gatherings online. We began our 2025-26 season in September with a conversation with Cindy Ballenger, a founding member of the Brookline Teacher Research Seminar, who has just published a new collection of pieces entitled Teaching Is Inquiry: Observation and Reflection as the Heart of Practice (Teachers College Press, 2025).

CEPress members also helped to support and have continued to build on the energy that was generated at the “CE Futures” meetings in the summer of 2023. Since then, we have been working more closely with a larger group of CEC folk to organize a variety of gatherings, which have allowed us to stay in community and to support each other’s thinking. The most recent of these occurred in June 2025 at First Church, Cambridge, our organization’s Harvard Square home.