School's Out: Motherscholaring as Co-Constructing Spaces to Learn

• In Event: Interrogating How We Teach Now: Parentscholars Co-Constructing Knowledge Alongside Our Children

Abstract

In the first presentation, School’s out: Motherscholaring as co-constructing spaces to learn, Author 1 (white motherscholar) will discuss homeschooling experiences with her two Black mixed-race sons (12, 9) with a photostory (Sutton-Brown, 2015) of their experiences over the course of a year (2021-2022) where they co-created spaces of learning. The author will describe spontaneous lessons such as “The noticing project,” (photography, geography, social studies, ethics) where, for example, the boys photographed a fallen “Keep out” sign at the edge of farmland in the Black Belt (plantation lands in over 600 counties from VA to TX) near our home. As a result, we had an impromptu historical and legal discussion about land ownership, colonialism, human enslavement, and plantation-based economics. Another example of our co-creation of knowledge was my twelve-year-old son’s inquiry project about statues. We took a field trip to Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA and both boys took photographs of Robert E. Lee monument in his final days before he was removed and Jefferson Davis’s monument missing from the empty plinth. World as classroom included four #Blacklivesmatter protestors who taught us about the legal and social conflicts represented in the graffiti messages across the blockades that fenced Lee in place and the boys also noted the yells (supportive and hateful) of people passing by in their cars as we stood there learning about the past and present conflict of this space. As the boys took pictures and learned about social oppression and activism, one BLM teacher affirmed, “You are Black history.” Both the noticing project and the conflict over monuments yielded lessons about settler colonialism and the realities of (the afterlife of) slavery. Together, as teachers and learners in world as classroom, we explored history, literacy, art, and geography through genuine inquiry (conversations, artifact collection, photography, interviews). This experience increased our critical literacy skills by engaging with diverse news media outlets and resources to take up the question- what is “truth” and who decides? Drawing from critical theorists (McKittrick, 2006; Patel, 2016; Wynter, 2003), the author offers several propositions for teachers, curriculum specialists, and researchers relative to the way that we do (not) acknowledge the social construction of spaces in how we approach teaching and learning in schools.

Author

• Joy Howard, Western Carolina University
  Presenting Author