For Teachers by Teachers: Reflections from Teacher Leaders of Color Staying Rooted in EduDesign Communities

• In Event: Roots, Thorns and Shoots: Cultivating Teacher Perspectives to Reimagine Teaching for Collective Liberation

Abstract

Professional development (PD) is crucial for the growth of PreK-12 teachers. However, traditional PDs often focus on technical skills, are apolitical, and are non-teacher led (Giroux, 2002; Kohli, 2019; Kohli et al., 2021). This creates thorns that make it challenging for teachers to remain rooted in teaching. For teachers of Color (ToC) with commitments to transformative teaching and learning, PDs that foster justice-oriented leadership skills, address sociopolitical educational issues, and center multidimensional identities, are needed.

Our poster highlights our experiences as ToC co-leading EduDesign, a form of critical professional development program (CPD) (Kohli et al., 2015) for teachers in the Pacific Northwest. We share reflections from collaborating with one another to co-plan and co-facilitate CPD for justice-oriented ToC. We highlight how positioning ourselves as experts of our own learning allowed us to 1) feel supported by a community of teachers of Color (roots), 2) process and navigate racialized challenges in our work contexts (thorns), and 3) sustain hope for liberatory educational futures (shoots) (hooks, 1994; Kelley, 2002; Rodriguez-JenKins et al, 2023).

CPD is a theoretical framework that positions teachers as “politically aware individuals who have a stake in teaching and transforming society” (Kohli et al., 2015, p. 9). Following the tenets of dialogical action (Freire, 1970), CPD helps “provoke cooperative dialogue, build unity, provide shared leadership, and meet the critical needs of teachers” (Kohli et al., 2015, p.11). Since EduDesign is a teacher-led PD rooted in justice-oriented frameworks, CPD is a lens through which we position ourselves and work.

To reflect on our collective work in EduDesign, we used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) (Hernandez et al., 2017). CAE is "autoethnography that engages two or more autoethnographers in a research team to pool their lived experiences on a selected sociocultural phenomena” (p. 251). CAE helped us center ourselves as researchers and participants of our group study, as well as make connections across our experiences.

Guided by reflective questions we curated ourselves, we engaged in 1 whole group and 4 small group discussions that were self-recorded and later transcribed. Data also included activities we engaged in as teacher-leaders from the 2022-2025 BIPOC EduDesign cohorts, such as art, letters to ourselves, educator journey maps, dream school imaginings, facilitation plans, and padlets.

Preliminary findings included how we as teacher-leaders of EduDesign:

1. ROOTS - Learned how to facilitate space(s) for community building with ToC.
2. THORNS - Alleviated teacher burnout through relational check ins during co-planning sessions
3. SHOOTS - Developed justice-oriented leadership in and outside of schools and districts.

EduDesign helped us to remain rooted within the education field, and became a homeplace (hooks, 2015) to feel rooted in. Furthermore, EduDesign promoted growth (shoots) in our leadership and agency to become agents of change in our schools and communities. As ToC continue to be pushed out of the classroom (Achinstein et al., 2010; Hernández-Johnson et al., 2023), our positive experiences co-leading EduDesign showcase the need for districts and university programs to increase opportunities for ToC to co-design their own justice-oriented CPD.

Authors

• Andrea Carreno Cortez, University of Washington

• Janaki Nagarajan

• Maria-Elena Velasquez, Lake Washington School District

• Kaity Cassio Faye, Seattle Public Schools

• Mark Juaton, Seattle Public Schools

• Khadijah Ladd, Seattle Public Schools

• Courtney Wiley, Highline Public Schools