The Art of Transformation

• In Event: You're Invited: Black Women Educators (Re)Membering Ghana and the Complex Realities of Building Community

Abstract

In our pre-departure activities, though we were a bunch of faces on Zoom boxes to each other, we shared a West African adinkra symbol that spoke to our personality. When I chose Sesa Wo Suban (transform your life), I didn’t know how true it would be to my (re)membering on this two year journey. As a Black educator who leads school leaders in their professional development around equity and critical theory, I have always felt that being in transition was a part of the constant development of my critical lens and decolonization of my histories. Throughout our two year preparation for the trip, and throughout the pandemic, I was transforming and preparing my spirit to be malleable enough to learn and receive what the continent had to offer a Black woman, descendent of enslaved Africans, who could trace her family no further back than the plantations of South Carolina.
I was scared to transform my digital life to an in-person one, but responded dutifully to reopen NYC public schools. I was terrified that on this trip, I would catch COVID, malaria, or Monkey Pox and have long-lasting effects that would transform my physical life for the worse, but I responded dutifully to our group’s learning commitment. I came back from Ghana having undergone a transformation of body, spirit, and identity that I never imagined or anticipated. Journeying with Black female educators fed my creativity, and journaling was a daily practice that helped me to healthily process my emotions and the many ideological shifts generated during the (re)membering process of this trip. Motion and community exercise fed my body and skin, and physical connections to indigenous land fed both my workouts and my mind. I have never felt healthier than I have been on this trip and though we practiced measures to stay safe amidst the ongoing pandemic, my anxiety about getting sick has faded- not because I am more reckless, but because I know that my purpose is not yet done.
Returning was a laborious flight, but returning my grounded spirit to the US is still one that I am processing. Even in New York, I feel a deeper connection to my indigeneity, my diasporic relation, and my lifelong purpose that has transformed who I am and how I will always show up. I might eventually forget a word in Twi or the name of someone I met in-country, but my identity as a Black female educator has forever been transformed after this experience, which is the most powerful and permanent part of the process of (re)membering for me as I prepare to return to schools.

Author

• Celeste A. Housey, Fordham University
  Presenting Author