“We Just Don’t Have the Time”: Gesturing Towards Temporal Autonomy through an Intergenerational Learning Community

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining the Holders of Knowledge: Teachers and Youth as (Co)llaborators and (Co)creators in the Pursuit of Educational Justice and Renewal

Abstract

This study explores how an intergenerational learning community illuminated and disrupted temporal oppression in a public school in an urban district. During the spring of 2023, a group of six adults and six youth met weekly to discuss their school community and imagine how it might be transformed. The study revealed how the neoliberal prioritization of urgency and efficiency, coupled with the policing of student behavior through the weaponization of “futurity,” prevent young people from enacting their agency and authentically collaborating with adults to make changes in school. We found that by collectively designing expansive rather than time-bound goals and prioritizing relational and embodied practices, we were able to listen to each other in ways that allowed for real change.

Author

• Lucy A. Robins, Graduate Center - CUNY