Critical Professional Development Toward Healing, Empowerment, Love, Liberation, and Action

• In Event: Reimagine to Reclaim: Shifting Teaching and Organizing to Center Healing Justice for Communities of Color

Abstract

While teachers of color have the highest turnover rate in the profession (Ingersoll & May, 2011; Sealey-Ruiz & Lewis, 2011) studies have also pointed to them being more likely to stay because of their commitment to marginalized communities (Dickar, 2008; Kokka, 2016; Villegas & Irvine, 2010). Other studies have pointed to teachers of Color who work to disrupt the ways schooling exacerbates inequality and harm (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2012; Achinstein, Ogawa, Sexton, & Freitas, 2010; Martinez, Valdez & Cariaga, 2015) and feel “too angry to leave” (Quartz & TEP Research Group, 2003). Teachers of Color committed to social justice have also experienced racially hostile school climates as former students and as practitioners (Kohli, 2008; Kohli, 2016; Pour-Khorshid, 2016). This study offers an explicitly political reconceptualization of support through Critical Professional Development (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015) and Healing Justice (Ginwright, 2016) frameworks to heal from “oppression as a form of social and collective trauma” and rebuilding a “healthy collective identity and sense of belonging that promotes meaning and purpose for teachers and students” (Ginwright, p. 8).

This two year ethnographic case study (Yin, 2003) describes how a California critical affinity group situated within a multiracial grassroots social justice teacher organization explicitly centered the voices, needs, and Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) of educators of color through holistic, critical and radical healing approaches. Three of the members were co-faciliators and core organizers within the organization and the other 9 members sought out the group and applied online. I employed participant observation (Patton, 2002), audio-recorded 2-2 ½ hour monthly meetings, as well as 1-1½ hour interviews, twice with each member. I also relied on testimonios (Author, 2016) as an additional focal method. I utilized grounded theory analysis and inductive approaches (Straus & Corbin, 1998) to engage in a systematic process of discovery of important categories and themes from the data guided by the overarching research questions:
What do teachers of color gain from participating in affinity spaces within grassroots collectives? And, what is the nature of the learning that is part of these participants’ experience?

Over the course of two years, H.E.L.L.A. members reported on the importance of having a community of critical colleagues of color to collectively heal with, learn from and build with as they navigated the challenges of social justice praxis within oppressive teaching conditions and ultimately, a racist society. They all spoke to the ways in which H.E.L.L.A. served as a sacred space to engage in vulnerability and to work on their own internalized racial trauma as they engaged in critical dialogue, testimonios, and healing centered activities. Their intersectional identities and experiences also highlighted their need for a space to challenge, problematize, and grapple with issues that they felt unsafe doing at their respective workplaces. This model intentionally disrupted mainstream purposes of professional development by creating a space led by educators of Color committed to repurposing education as a tool for liberation.

Author

• Farima Pour-Khorshid, University of California - Santa Cruz