On Becoming a Public Intellectual: Reprofessionalizing Teaching, One Relationship at a Time

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Developing Teacher Leaders

Abstract

This paper addresses the urgent need for schools of education to prepare future teachers for the re-investment in public education and the re-professionalization of teaching. Employing the analytic lenses of human geography, geography of encounters, and critical cosmopolitan education, this paper describes a collaborative project between community organizers and university students. Through events like public dialogues, performance poetry and urban gardening, the project highlights relational and material restorative justice and encourages students to unpack the complexities of how publics are formed and good is defined. The paper argues that the human experience of place and civic engagement is an important element in the development of a teacher-self that identifies with the civic and social responsibilities of the profession of teaching.

Author

• Lisa M. Perhamus, Grand Valley State University