(Re)Claiming Wellness and Self-Care

• In Event: "We Were Bound Before We Were Shackled": (Re)Membering Our Lives in Ghana, West Africa

Abstract

Objectives
We reflect on Black healing practices as a critical aspect of teacher education, professional development and student experience. Drawing on our experiences in Ghana, West Africa engaging in and observing healing and wellness centered practices, we understand the implications for our respective areas of influence in U.S. education: higher education, educational philanthropy and Black teacher professional development.

Theoretical Perspective
We offer frames focused on healing from the inside out. Specifically, we understand the importance of embodied and somatic (Menakem, 2021) practices as key elements of this type of healing. We also understand the need to shift our individual and collective perspectives in order to create the transformation we want to see (Ginwright, 2022). Finally, we draw on Dr. Cynthia B. Dillard’s work which highlights community connection and healing as integral to Black teachers’ liberatory work (Dillard, 2006; 2018; 2022).

Methods
Data for this study comes from fieldnotes and reflections while observing and engaging in practices led by Ghanaian educators in a PK-8 school setting in Cape Coast Ghana and community spaces in Cape Coast and Accra.

We utilize Black Feminist Autoethnography to understand this data. As Layla Brown notes, this approach “forces us not only to situate oppressed peoples, in my case, peoples of African descent in the United States and Venezuela’s experiences but to attempt to theorize and operationalize those observations in the service of liberation” (Brown, L.D., 2019, p. 124). Collecting and analyzing data through this method necessitated a reckoning with historical and cultural trauma and a clear understanding of harm and healing through a Black women’s diasporic feminist lens. In reflecting on past trauma and focusing on present healing, the presenters name their truths they have often been taught to silence, deny, or even forget, while embracing more cultural ways of healing and reclaiming indigenous spirituality.

Results and Scholarly Significance
Our findings include: 1) Spaces to (Re)member included opportunities to feel what emerges physically and emotionally as educators make meaning of new knowledge regarding racial harm and healing; 2) (Re)connecting includes being present to the people you are with in a current experience, while locating yourself relative to legacies that span centuries; 3) Opportunities to (Re)claim allow us to distill what we’ve learned &/or been healed from in order to move more intentionally toward liberation; and 4) (Re)visioning ensures that cultural and community context shape teaching methods and the student educational experience.

Authors

• Tiffany Hollis
  Presenting Author

• Angela Jones
  Presenting Author

• Micia Mosely, Black Teacher Project
  Presenting Author