I am in AWE of radical care and hope. Lots of things stood out to me in the reading this week:

1. I love the review of literature of critical care and hope to create a framework for radical care. I shared this article with a lot of my colleagues to provide a brief, but solid foundation of what is meant by radical care.
2. DOE IRB rejecting the proposal to include students, parent, and teacher participants! Wow. Why?
3. High expectations of staff– this was very compelling as a component of critical caring in schools. Johnson’s high expectations of his staff may have been met by pushback, but by setting those same standards for staff as he did for students and himself, the movement towards radical care became a possibility, that otherwise may not have been.
4. I am in awe of the radical hope exhibited by Johnson frequently asking “what if…” or making statements like “I believe we can use education to change the world. I believe we can end poverty, wars, and hate in our lifetime”. This is a reflection of perhaps my own struggle in cultivating hope in resisting the violent dehumanization in our schools. I really struggle with holding onto my imagination– sometimes I worry that hope may become false hope in the face of a reality of oppression. Although this feels painful and even wrong to write– I find it hard to hope. This week’s reading has pushed me to reflect on and realize that i must do the internal work of holding onto that radical hope that I certainly once had, but let go in the process.

Looking forward to class today!!

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