A Reflection on Ecomapping with Teachers of Color

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

Abstract

Purpose
As a Filipina educator-researcher from the Midwest and first-time ITOC workshop facilitator, I piloted a method of ecomapping, exploring its use for future studies. The research aimed to identify resources supporting the continuance of Teachers of Color (TOCs) in education.

Perspectives
I draw on a place-based raciolinguistic framework (Pham, 2019), which describes the relationship between race, language, and place as “mutually constitutive processes situated within broader sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts” (Pham, 2021). I also use a healthy racial climate framework (Kohli et al., 2021) to examine how teachers are positioned relationally to their environment. I use these framings to pay particular attention to systemic and social macro- and micro-level analyses of teachers and their contexts.

Method
I explore ecomapping (Hartman, 1978) as a form of countermapping and counterstorytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), where TOCs evaluate the health of their environment and relationships. This way of map-making makes explicit the experiential and place-based values of a community in ways that hegemonic maps cannot, emphasizing the formal and informal supports around an individual or group (Bennett & Grant, 2016; Monreal, 2022). With this method, I wondered how TOCs might critically reflect on their existing relationships and resources.
As a Filipina American researcher/teacher educator and former K-12 TOC, I’ve witnessed the racialized and linguistic harms experienced in schools and aim to work towards healing and transformative action in education with fellow TOCs. I used purposive sampling (Etikan et al., 2016), seeking ITOC members' expertise to determine whether further study of ecomapping would be worthwhile. The data sources include a focus group with 10 TOCs, 5 ecomapping artifacts, survey and verbal reflections about the process, and field notes.

Results
Preliminary findings suggest ecomapping was a tool for: 1) identifying supportive structures for TOCs’ work and well-being, and 2) naming issues of need to better address well-being and racial injustice systemically. Teachers used ecomaps to examine where they felt cared for or saw tensions in their relationships and surrounding structures, discussing needs around community organizing, policy, Indigenous history, and relationship to land (See Appendix A-E). Furthermore, in adjusting the session to foreground teachers' experiences, I found support for my methodology and pedagogical process. The initial instructions involved a heavy theoretical framing, leading to some confusion on how to structure the maps, which detracted from the goals of centering experiential knowledge. I worked with teachers to pivot towards approaches to better support meaning-making. One participant appreciated “reflect[ing] on the research behind the work and the organic way [the facilitator] worked with us and adjusted [their] approach.” I was given the grace to embrace my full humanity as a learner in this space.


Significance
Ecomapping as a tool demonstrated potential for supporting teachers with (re)membering their relational supports while envisioning more humanizing and supportive structures and possibilities in education. Renewing and refining my methodological process with the ITOC community also illuminated the need for bearing witness to experiential knowledge and engaging the “full humanity of researcher(s) and collaborators” (Hannegan-Martinez, 2023).

Author

• Sarah Day Dayon, University of Michigan