"I'm Glad It's Us": Reflections From Women of Color on a Teacher Professional Development Experience

• In Event: Advancing Critical Pedagogy and Praxis Across Educational Settings

Abstract

Objectives
This chapter explores the reflexive practices, curricular design, and pedagogical decision-making of a PD experience for history/social science teachers designed by four women of color, the authors. With intention, a deep sense of responsibility, and a desire to embody our critical stances, we reviewed materials curated in prior iterations of the PD experience, interrogated the lenses and assumptions of these experiences, and made modifications to be authentic to our experiences as women of color history teachers committed to social justice and shared liberation.

Theoretical Perspectives
Maroon intellectual communities (Finley, 2020) are rooted in the desire to be in coalition with, and build communities around, scholars engaged in critical resistance work. The practice of marronage is stealing away collectively to think about and build otherwise worlds. The erotic is a consideration of how women’s reliance on feelings as a guide has been systemically distrusted (Lorde, 2007). These theoretical frames ground the ways that we drew from our knowledge and interactions, and provided an analytic frame by which we further digested our collective experience.

Methods
We write this as an exercise in both storytelling and dialogue to reflect on our experiences and processes, share takeaways, and offer implications for curriculum and pedagogy when it is designed and facilitated by women of color. We weave both storytelling and dialogue throughout this chapter to model reciprocity within interactions and to showcase the messiness of learning.

Data sources
We edited a pastiche dialogue to synthesize our oral and written reflections over several conversations on different mediums. After compiling our pastiche, we returned to our dialogue to reflect with each other and co-construct themes. Through values coding (Saldaña, 2013) and our subsequent sister circles (Neal-Barnett et al., 2011), we collaboratively made meaning of our process leading up to, during, and following our time as PD co-facilitators. We were intentional to conduct each stage of analysis collectively, rather than dividing each portion which allowed us to center our mutualism.

Results
We realize that our early conversations established a trusting space where we all collectively recognized our commitment to one another and the radical work we planned to do, which allowed us to collectively engage in epistemological refusal. Flowing from those spaces of refusal emerged a radical sense of mutualism with one another. The relationships between us and the trust that we had in one another facilitated the questions that we were able to ask of the materials that we reviewed when we were planning the curriculum for the PD program. Who is being centered?

Scholarly Significance
These ways of knowing and being resulted in a shared sense of power throughout our facilitation. This level of vulnerability allowed all of us to be in a place where we were ready to receive feedback from our collaborators and, also, the teacher participants who we facilitated. We have realized that our collaboration was powerful not only in terms of the impact that it had on our personal and professional lives and orientations, but also how it contributed to powerful experiences for the teacher participants.

Authors

• Van Anh Tran, San Jose State University

• Kristen Jackson, Stanford University

• Nikita Patel, New York City Department of Education

• Lauren Beal, California State University - Fresno