'Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere’ Together: Inter/Intra-Generational Freedom Dreaming in the Classroom

• In Event: World Building as a Balm for Civic Education: Graduate Student Research Perspectives

Abstract

This paper explores the praxis of freedom dreaming in the classroom through inter/intra-generational world-building. A book authored by 9th-grade students and illustrated by 2nd and 3rd-grade students during the 2021-2022 school year provides insight into the pedagogical possibilities for teachers and students to co-construct sites of world-building in the classroom. Weaving together Kelley’s conceptualization of freedom dreaming (2002) and Garcia and Mirra’s framework of interconnected commitments for world-building civic education (2022), this case study advocates for tangible opportunities for collective imagining in the classroom that transcend traditional bounds of class or grade level. I expand upon the commitment of networking for civic education to embrace inter and intra-generational dimensions, ensuring we are building lineages of freedom dreamers for generations to come.

Students engaged in world-building through a three-part freedom dreaming research project: I) Honoring the past, II) Understanding the present, and III) Re(imagining) the future, situating their freedom dreams within larger movements for social change. Students interrogated the historical roots of their freedom dreams (I), drew connections to how their freedom dream is being actualized in the present through local and national community organizations (II), and rewrote their original freedom dream as a letter for an elementary school student to illustrate (III). By translating their research into language that an elementary school student could understand, 9th-grade students embraced an ethos of community care: they assumed a deep-seated responsibility to educate and inspire the next generation of freedom dreamers. This ethos underscores the type of community educators can cultivate in order to transform classrooms into sites of world-building.

In alignment with critical pedagogy, this work emphasizes the role of students as producers of knowledge and partners in learning, both with their teachers and with one another (Freire, 1970; hooks, 1994). Through the lens of the world-building civic education framework, networking, as a commitment, speaks to the social requirement of social justice (Garcia & Mirra, 2022). In practice, a commitment to building networks among young people also propels us to consider opportunities for cultivating inter/intra-generational solidarity among students across grade levels.

Robin D. G. Kelley reminds us of the collective nature of freedom dreaming, calling upon the most revolutionary impulses available to us—love and imagination—in visionary thinking to sustain and inspire social movements toward liberation (2002). Through the Freedom Dreaming research project, 9th-grade students began their process of collective world-building with their classmates. In the project’s final component, 9th-grade students collaborated with 2nd and 3rd-grade students through freedom dream letters, envisioning how the movements they start will be carried on and pushed forward by the next generation.

Findings expand upon the praxis of freedom dreaming in the classroom amid attacks on culturally relevant, sustaining, and expansive curriculum and pedagogy. This case study demands a commitment to building learning communities that transcend the walls of the classroom and considers one’s responsibility to younger members of their community in what poet Jayne Cortez calls envisioning 'somewhere in advance of nowhere' (1996)."

Author

• Anisa Yudawanti, Stanford University