Reimagining Sense-of-Home in Classroom Contexts

• In Event: Home and Kinship for College Students

Abstract

Our post-COVID return to campus has been a welcome but challenging adjustment. As teacher educators, we have had to (re)envision how we curate spaces for our students on campus and help them (re)imagine how they might do this for their students in their classrooms. This led to us exploring how the concept of “home” can inform these efforts. In this working paper, we draw from our interdisciplinary roots and experiences to examine our conceptual understandings of home exploring how we practice those understandings in our teaching. Whether home is ultimately a positive experience to be emulated or a negative experience to be countered (or something in between), the significance of this work lies in its power to generate new understandings of how to create and maintain classroom and school communities that sustain teachers and students and help them thrive.

Authors

• Andrew Garbisch, Meredith College

• Monica McKinney, Meredith College