Freedom to Learn From/for Ourselves: A Critical Racial Affinity Space for Educators of Color

• In Event: 34.045 - Healing Isn't a Metaphor: Centering Healing as Resistance Within Critical Racial Affinity Group Spaces

Abstract

While scholars have called on educators to engage in culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2014) and trauma-informed approaches (Carello & Butler, 2015) to support K-12 students, schools often fail to consider the same pedagogical approaches when supporting teachers of Color in their own learning (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016). Considering that educators navigate an “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” facilitated through interconnecting systems of oppression everyday (hooks, 2013, p. 1),
the very notion of “professionalism” and “professional” development (PD) is often shaped by respectability politics (Higginbotham, 1993) that reinforce these logics within education. Martinez, Valdez and Cariaga (2016) argue that contemporary approaches to professional development (PD) maintain and perpetuate the colonial project of dehumanization. Critical Educators of Color (CEoC) in particular are not desensitized to the ways in which the education system has historically and continues to racially sort, pathologize and harm marginalized people, including themselves (Author, 2016). However, teachers are evaluated by their ability to conform, produce and leave their trauma at the door once they enter schools.

This three year ethnographic case study describes how a California CRAG group situated within a multiracial grassroots social justice teacher organization explicitly centered the voices, needs, and Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) of CEoC through holistic, critical and radical healing (Ginwright, 2015) approaches. Three of the members were co-facilitators and core organizers within the organization and the other 9 members sought out the group and applied online.

This study examines how CEoC fostered a more holistic approach to critical praxis through healing centered engagement (Ginwright, 2018). Group members reported on the significance of having access to a community of CEoC to collectively heal with, learn from and build with as they navigated the challenges of working through oppressive teaching conditions and ultimately, a racist society. Members’ intersectional identities and experiences with various forms of oppression as marginalized people highlighted their need for a space to challenge, problematize, and grapple with issues that they felt unsafe doing at their respective workplaces. Findings from this study reveal how and why this CRAG served as a “sacred space” to engage in radical vulnerability and transformative collective care which contributed to their personal and professional growth and wellbeing.

Author

• Farima Patricia Pour-Khorshid, University of San Francisco