(Re)Membering the Motherscholar Self: (Re)Storing and (Re)Storying Ancestral Ways Amid Pandemic

• In Event: The Lived Experiences of Motherscholars as Teacher Educators in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

Objectives and theoretical framework
As uncertainties deepen in this moment of global pandemic, we find our identities as mothers, activists, and scholars of education displaced. The false separation of our identities dissolves as our public and private lives merge and are brought into view. Conducting business as usual in these unusual times, however, is violent--particularly for scholars such as ourselves, who experience multiple liminal positions. Women of color have used the power of community to sustain and regenerate their communities in circumstances as challenging and frightful as these, so we look to the ancestral wisdom of our foremothers to (re)member ways of being that usher new realities no longer requiring us to fragment and deny ourselves (Dillard, 2012; Gonzales, 2014).

Modes of inquiry and data sources
The ancestral wisdom of communities of color has been preserved through the sacred methodology of the circle. A non-hierarchical, communal, and relational experience, the circle is created to build and restore a sense of belongingness, to teach, to learn, and to preserve ways of being that sustain communities in good times and in bad (Lavellée, 2009). As a multi-racial group, we have committed to talking through our identities as motherscholars through this frame. To do this, we are meeting in a virtual restorative circle to explore together what it means to (re)member (Dillard, 2012) our foremothers, ourselves, and our children while we navigate the habits inherent to the practices of Western academe in the midst of a pandemic. We meet weekly to discuss how our mothering and scholarship are shifting to honor and preserve our cultural knowledges and intuitions (Delgado-Bernal, 1998). In effect, we are using our time together to grow in ways that bring us closer to our cultures, our children, and our scholarship. We are (re)storing our knowledge and (re)storying ourselves in the form of vignettes and other qualitative artifacts that will help us (re)member how to dismantle the false binaries prescribing what motherscholars can or should be.
Substantiated Conclusion and Scholarly Significance
We use this collective space to reclaim the role of mama earth in the field of education, Mama tierra is also a motherscholar - she is a mother who teaches us how to do things in a good way, how to have “relational accountability” (Wilson, 2008). As the earth retreats to heal herself, we also retreat to our motherscholar space to witness how ancestral tradition lives on in the contemporary. Building on the work of motherscholars (Matias, 2011; Matias & Nishi, 2018) these findings disrupt the notion that educational research should continue regardless of the impact of Covid-19 on our communities, families, and lives. This contributes to the field of education through taking an interdisciplinary approach to reimagine Faculties of Education, and center the wisdom of lived experience and pedagogies of the home (Delgado Bernal, 2002). We also add to the literature on restorative circles - as we restore not only ourselves but our ways of knowing; we come full circle as motherscholars.

Authors

• Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Erica B. Edwards, Wayne State University

• Sandra M. Gonzales, Wayne State University

• Sarah A. Robert, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Christina P. DeNicolo, Wayne State University