Dreaming From my Abuela's Arms: Pedagogies of Love

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum as Ceremony: Storying Memory, Resistance, and Liberatory Futures

Abstract

This autoethnographic study explores how ancestral, familial, and embodied wisdom, rooted in the pedagogies of my abuela, can inform transformative educational practices. Drawing from personal narratives and theoretical frameworks on love, care, and radical pedagogy, I examine how everyday acts of cariño shape our understanding of what it means to teach and learn. By centering pedagogies of love as legitimate and vital, this work challenges deficit-based, dehumanizing schooling practices and calls educators to reimagine classrooms as spaces of deep-rooted care, relationality, and hope. Ultimately, this text asks: What might education look like if grounded in the radical love modeled by our abuelas?

Author

• Daniela Reyes Puente, Purdue University