Failure and Hummingbird Medicine

• In Event: Reclaiming Radical Healing: Exploring the Promise and Tensions of Youth Healing Through Activism and Youth Participatory Action Research

Abstract

We often hear about the trauma that students bring with them into the classroom from the outside world. We research it, we speculate about it, and we navigate addressing it as it comes up in the classroom. But we rarely hear about the trauma that originates from narrow notions of learning inside the classroom or academic spaces. In this paper we explore “failure” and its importance to heal some of the harm that can often be cultivated in academic spaces.

Authors

• Beatriz Salazar, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Elizabeth Mendoza, HEAL Collective

• Adria Padilla-Chavez, University of Colorado - Boulder