Creating Kinetic Counterspaces for Wellness: Teacher Educators of Color In it for the Long Run

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Against the Tide: Teachers of Color Navigating Challenging School Contexts

Abstract

This critical race autoethnography explores the relationship between running and collective wellness for teacher educators of Color. Given academia’s oppressive social dynamics for teacher educators with multiply-marginalized identities, this paper examines how they sustain each other in hostile institutional spaces. Findings underscore the significance of running (a) for identity formation/negotiation (b) as analogous to navigating academia, and (c) as a practice of agency and resistance. Building on scholarship on wellness for teacher educators of Color and counterspaces, authors conceptualize kinetic counterspaces – critical, active spaces for collective theorizing, embodied resistance and wellness through movement. Amid the current sociopolitical climate with added stressors and uncertainties for already-marginalized educators, findings highlight the value of kinetic counterspaces for teacher educators of Color.

Authors

• Diane Nevarez, California State University - Stanislaus

• Arturo Nevárez, California State University - Stanislaus

• Daniel Soodjinda, California State University - Stanislaus