Educators Storying Our Lives as We Move Toward Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

• In Event: Teacher and Teacher Educators: Roles and Turning Points

Abstract

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) that “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism” (Paris, 2012, p. 95) represents a paradigm shift in education. We add to a burgeoning field documenting how educators might engage with CSP by utilizing narrative methods and analysis to understand the rich “lived stories” of teachers’ lives (Clandinin, 2006, p. 44) that compel them toward CSP. We share a team of eight educators’ narratives, noting similar sentiments that brought us--collectively--to the work of CSP, including: (1) a desire to resist colonizing and deficit framings of students, (2) ways we drew from our own marginalized experiences in school, and (3) confronting our own privilege and participation in cultures of power.

Authors

• Becca Woodard, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Andrea Vaughan, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Kara Michelle Taylor, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Evan Taylor, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Daniel Rocha, Chicago Public Schools

• Emily Machado, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Paul Hartman, Illinois State University

• Rick Coppola, University of Illinois at Chicago