Preparing Teachers in Community, for Community

• In Event: Toward Answerability in Our Work With and Study of Families and Communities of Color

Abstract

Purpose
We are a group consisting of faculty at a small university based teacher education program and members of its Committee of Community Advisors (CCA) who have been collaborating to help MAT program faculty and teacher candidates to center critical social justice and community in their work. We have sought something different from what we have often experienced in previous work labeled community engagement– a relationship that moved beyond token representation or the extraction of stories and lived experiences of Black and Brown people (Ishimaru et al., 2018). In this paper we document our conversations, tensions, questions, and visions of future collaborations for the purpose of growing the teachers our children need.

Theoretical Framework
We draw on the insights of scholars of critical praxis (Freire, 1970; Kubota & Miller, 2017) and critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), analyzing how systems of oppression have us enacting entrenched ways of relating to one another in us vs. them terms (community vs. higher education). We use storytelling and a reimagined form of interest convergence as strategies in our efforts to disrupt systems and institutional habits that prevent us from engaging in the work and the relationships we wish to sustain.

Methods & Data Sources
Data includes documentation of our activities across over four years of collaboration. This includes student work from five cohorts and their reflections on various engagements with CCA members, proposals for grant funding, meeting notes, descriptions of co-designed assignments, and faculty and CCA members’ reflections on our past initiatives and the work ahead.

Findings & Significance
At the heart of our project is a shared commitment to preparing beginning teachers who understand the central place of communities of Color and BIPOC-led community based organizations in the education of children–teachers who are ready to build their own community partnerships that will help them better serve their students. To this end, candidates had opportunities to be mentored by CCA members, presented their work to members for feedback, visited them at their community based organizations, volunteered in co-designed projects, and witnessed (mostly White) faculty and CCA members (all BIPOC) modeling/navigating relationships throughout their time in the program. Our candidates of Color also have monthly opportunities to meet with CCA members in the Educators of Color group.

We have tried throughout to resist codifying our approach into a “how-to manual” for community engagement, or placing conventional boundaries on our relationships. Instead, we strive to continually explore deeper and more expansive collaborations for educating beginning teachers together. By sharing about what answerability looks like for us –and not claiming our stories are answers– we hope to contribute to the much needed conversation that this symposium offers the space to discuss.

Authors

• Caryn C. Park, Antioch University - Seattle
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Oppenheim, Antioch University - Seattle
  Presenting Author

• Seing Douangdala
  Presenting Author

• Kyla Crawford
  Presenting Author