Placemaking for Racial Justice: A Counterspace for (Re)storying Collective Healing and Growth

• In Event: Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice: Purposeful Counterspace to Heal and Grow

Abstract

Purpose
Maestro Aceves (Yolohuitzcalotl) (2012) stated that authentic learning happens through remembering. Similarly, a Toltec proverb says that the path to wisdom lies in dialoguing with our hearts, thoughts, intuitions, and spirit. Drawing from these teachings, we examined the space created by the Institute for Teachers of Color (ITOC). Leveraging our perspectives as an Indigenous Latina practitioner-scholar-activist, a female South Asian Muslim educator, and a female Asian American teacher educator, we sought to break down the isolation experienced by Teachers of Color (TOC) in higher education (Gwayi-Chore et al., 2021) by opposing white supremacist values (Okun & Jones, 2019). By embracing ways of being from Indigenous and marginalized cultures, our paper explores the power of (re)storying our (re)membrance of communal healing (Dillard, 2012; San Pedro, 2014).

Perspective
We approached our investigation from three unique perspectives. Author 1 used Conocimiento (Anzadúla, 2013) to process her educational grief and begin the slow work toward healing, hope, and joy by (dis)membering her emotions and memories and creatively putting the pieces back together. Framing Author 2's work is the idea of authenticity, specifically David Brunskill's (2014) four components. Using awareness, unbiased processing, behavior/action, relationality, and (re)member authentic identity. Author 3 examined how we teach and learn with our places (Ho, 2020) using the Person-Process-Place Framework(Author, in press), which describes six processes through which place is practiced (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015), which helped her reflect on how place was practiced within the ITOC setting and its participants.

Methods and Data Sources
We employed Collaborative Autoethnography, (CAE) through a social justice and critical perspective. This process supported us to collectively analysis our identities within the context of ITOC through through autoethnographic vignettes (Chang et al., 2016; López-Gopar et al., 2024). As well as to analyzed artifacts, which consisted of written reflections, drawings, and photographs created at ITOC.

Results
Through our inter-analysis, three central themes emerged from us: (re)discovering and (re)storying how ITOC, a decolonial professional development, fostered an environment for social change.
Theme 1: (Re)educating ourselves and sharing in communal grief.
• Day 1: We used counterstorytelling to oppose systemic racism and forced "professional" personas in the education system.
Theme 2: (Re)joice on cultural and self-knowing, healing, and growth
• Day 2: We began slowly thinking and working through what parts of us needed healing. We used our bodies, minds, and spirits to embody healing through communal dance and well-being sessions. We acknowledged various ways of knowing, doing, and being in academia and education.
Theme 3: (Re)membering why we are here and leadership development
• We were empowered to consider our sphere of influence and acknowledge the work we must do to nurture our hope and remain joyful.

Scholarly Significance
Our findings advocate for more places like ITOC to remedy inequities in education. Through (re)membrance, we were able to (re)set and (re)claim our sovereignty to embody our inherent wisdom in this healing-centered community space (Corntassel, 2009). We can move education toward justice, healing, and hope by slowing down, which can help us (re)gain balance and (re)pair the educational trauma experienced by TOC.

Authors

• Yvette M. Regalado, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Nahid Husain-Habib, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Waynele Emi Yu, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa