The guiding questions that lead to the creation of A Journey through Care: Healing Justice and Arts were 1. How do Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and API girls and TGNC youth experience care? And un-care? 2. How do they imagine care for themselves? 3. How can understanding and imagining care serve healing justice? There are undeniable harms done by schools and beyond in perpetuating toxic forms of care (and un-care) towards youth, families, and communities. Through a framework of healing justice, the lesson plans focus on how we respond to and interrupt harms of un-care on our mind, bodies, and hearts through meditating on our experiences and imaginations of care. The created lesson plans employ art as an embodied, healing practice for Black, Indigenous, Latinx and API girls and TGNC youth through a journey of realizing, living and imagining care.

Lesson Plan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RIpsVezDiF1Xz2mI6FiQIT30AsI_r_Vn/view?usp=sharing

My own art in engagement with lesson plans: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NwrnGFMCaqYSU0KH6OGABxvLkLFv2VEr/view?usp=sharing

In the first paragraphs of Douglass-Hosford’s Voices in Urban Ed Metro Center piece, she discusses whose integration, school integration is and how in the process reformers, policy elites, social justice advocates, and allies all “wield disproportionate control over the education of children of color and the options made available to their parents and in their communities”. Continuing to her dissection of the vision problem, I kept thinking back to a Tiktok I saw recently by a Black woman who was talking about how Black liberation would be a lot easier if allies were to just die. This point emphasizes the truth that Black people can and will liberate themselves; that Black liberation is not contingent on the need for allies or non-Black people, and to deny this truth demeans the self-determination and empowerment of Black people (and, thus, perpetuates Anti-Blackness). Douglass-Hosford talks about integration vs de-segregation, where integration leads to the demise of Black institutions and ultimately Black folks’ self-determined realities. In her EducationWeek article, she writes “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution”, highlighting that Black liberational schooling in the United States will NOT be a reality without centering Black voices and enacting Black imaginations.

            As a non-Black person, I am constantly examining how I can enact actively, meaningfully, and purposeful solidarity with the movement of Black liberation. Even in the recognition how my communal oppression within white supremacy as a Bengali woman is still based in Anti-Blackness. This may not be directly related, but I have been considering the unfortunate reality that systemically POC solidarity does not exist (which sustains white supremacy)—and the most recent proof being the passing of the anti-Asian hate crime bill with BIPARTISAN support. (like what?!). And on top of that, the bill directly gives MORE power to the police in being the ones to enforce the bill (i.e., NYPD Anti-Asian Hate Crime Task force). Regardless, I am angry about this on all levels in how Asian Americans have a) agreed to a bill that is not only complicit but further sanctions the oppression of Black people through policing and b) clinging to whiteness as a means of “liberation” or repairing harm. Anyways, all of this floats in my brain as I read about how common it is in education, and blatantly in educational policy, for Black voices to exist in the margins of imagining and creating just, humane, critically caring schools FOR Black children and youth. I commit to listening, unlearning, learning, calling folks out in my spaces and communities, letting myself get called out, shutting up sometimes, and staying true to and centering Black folk’s intentions, goals, and desires. But are multiple truths true here? Can what DuBois (1935) determined also be true? Is the only way all Black children can receive a just, humane, critically caring education in this society to be that Black children need separate schools?

Looking forward to class tomorrow!

I want to talk about the Blackfoot nation’s (an indigenous tribe) model of self-actualization. In psychology, and particularly educational psychology, “maslow’s” hierarchy of needs is often drawn upon to make sense of and provide direction to how students learn and can optimally learn. Duncan-Andrade notes this in his Google Talk, but still somehow misses the point. First of all, it is not an “inverted triangle” as he says. Duncan- Andrade makes sense of maslows work by saying that he change how he did, because “our society was soooo off from where it should be”. This is wrong, what Duncan- Andrade fails to note is that actually Maslow only created his rendition of the model to FIT the capitalist foundations of the united states. There is little “radical” about his “hierarchy of needs”, namely, it’s a hierarchy. He fails to recognize the value of connect and collective actualization, which still perpetuates the individualistic narrative of racial capitalism, and ultimately serves to oppress Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and AAPI people in different ways.

            First of all, Blackfoot Nation’s model is an inverted tipi- a THREE dimensional model, that actually is no hierarchy at all. Embedded at every aspect of the model is serving each of the needs, sense of belonging, and self-esteem (that maslow wrongly places hierarchically)—each of these aspects of wellbeing are achieved BOTH individually and in community simultaneously. Also, this is a model built by and for the Blackfoot Nation, it is a sacred way of life, that to now colonize in psychology and education is dangerously intrusive and disrespectful. I am all for cultures gatekeeping some shit, and this is one of them.

            The themes that are presented in the Blackfoot Model are reiterated and reflected in the discussion of critical hope and healing in this week’s readings as well. Critical hope and healing are inherently communal when cultivated by teachers. I wish the readings stressed this. To see yourself and grow critical consciousness IS a relational process, to be in relationship with yourself, with others, and community. It is to strengthen and sustain each of these relational bonds that support and in tandem encourage to be “committed agents  of change” (I.e. Yolo’s relationship with students) (Cammarota, 2011) through the relational pathways of critical consciousness, action, and wellbeing (Ginwright, 2011). Communal sustenance and wellbeing is predicated on cultivating each of these pathways all the while maintaining a critical hope relationally. And I don’t want to lose sight of that.

Remind me why do we want (cultural) capital, again? As I read both Yosso (2005) and Rodela & Rodriguez-Mojica (2019) I keep thinking about Audre Lorde’s words: “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. She also talks about how doing so only narrows the parameters of change that are possible and allowable and does not enable genuine change. The concern I have in reading this weeks’ texts is the danger of language and how powerful language can be through discourse in the use and implications of words for the realities of people. There are limits that are placed by using the framework of capitalism to discuss something inherently anti-capitalistic– community and indigenous cultural knowledges. The semantics of framing “Outsider”, mestiza, an transgressive knowledges as (cultural) “capital” is dangerous. As capital in a system of capitalism is capitalized—and that is exactly what is happening and what ends up happening from using a framework of oppression to make sense of indigenous knowledges, that persist in opposition to intersectional, colonial oppressions. August, I hear you– to then go on and discuss SIX forms of capital and call it community cultural “wealth” (again a capitalistic term) is entirely counter intuitive. I am new to this theory but have often heard “cultural capital” thrown around by educators as a justification for why ELL, predominantly non-white immigrant students from primarily working class families struggle in public school. And ultimately is used to promote assimilationist pedagogies and goals for those who do not fit the white-middle to upper class-english speaking-american student typology. At the same time, my concerns may be reduced to a disdain to semantics (although I see it as much more nuanced than simply semantics). I do want to recognize the insight that Yosso (2005) and Rodela & Rodriguez (2010) (through counternarratives) provide. Maintaining hope and dreams (aspirational), strengths as a multilingual (Linguistic) , cultural knowledge that hold communal history, memory, and intuition (familial), strength in relationships  (social), navigating spaces with resilience (navigational), and inherent resistance towards oppressions (resistant) among communities of color all still contribute to how we are theorizing about radical care. Radical care draws on these six areas that Yosso (2005) identifies and Rodela & Rodriguez (2019) extend in the counterstories of Latinx School Administrators, however to view them as “capital” and not integral components to the critical, radical care we imagine defeats the purpose. I am sure there are people out there in the world talking about what I am trying to say here much more articulately but I hope you get what I’m tryna say.

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!!

One thought that kept surfacing as I read this week: Love is not neutral, it is and must be an act of justice. I reflect deeply on Freire’s words “Whether or not we are willing to overcome slips or inconsistencies, by living humility, lovingness, courage, tolerance, competence, decisiveness, patience-impatience, and verbal parsimony, we contribute to creating a happy, joyful school” (Freire, 1998, p. 212). Freire has always made me return to what it means to be human: our humanity. What has become of love in the capitalized, masculinized, white supremacist world has distanced greatly from a love that is core to our humanity. Each of the other readings this week reflect and take further the contributions of an epistemology, an ideology, and way of thinking that Freire grounds. Miller and colleagues (2011) argue and describe the ways in which love, hope, and humility are embedded within progressive pedagogical practice. And in Rivera-McCutchen (2019), the armed love of Principal Bowman in resisting the high stakes testing and Principal Bloomberg resisting racist resource allocation, truly confirms the notion that love must be a commitment towards resisting injustice. In reflecting on teaching practices and my own schooling of course, the seemingly political neutral “love” of teacher is never truly neutral, and wasn’t really love. I wonder really how neutrality is a trope that educators in my suburban town cling to in their teaching. I think a lot about what the conversations that we have in our class would mean to them? Would such conversations push them to conceive their role as a teacher differently? What happens when we begin to include the voices of suburban white middle aged women teachers in these conversations to developing radical care in the classroom? If they are primarily white teachers serving predominantly white schools, how will they realize that the work of critical care extends to their responsibility to deconstruct harmful assumptions of Anti-Blackness and capitalism that their white students are mostly likely entrenched in?

While reading this week’s articles, I kept thinking about my high school principal who I spoke to when I went to visit my high school after graduating. I met with the principal, a white male, in efforts to actually share/propose a culturally responsive social emotional curriculum that I had been facilitating in 7^th grade classrooms. I remember very clearly his response: “I am so surprised by how you can stand to work in New York City public school classroom, no one could pay me any amount of money to step into a New York City public school” (I chose to not speak with this person after this conversation). This principal had recently become the principal of my public high school in Cincinnati, Ohio and had previously spent 5 years being a principal in a New York City private school. I read each of these articles in stark contrast to the white male principals I had all through my K-12 schooling.

In discussing ethno-humanist leadership, Lomotey (1993) discusses the compassion that Ms. Scarlet, an African American principal, exhibited through her statements through the “we” pronoun: “we have lost that with our kids, we don’t know how to deal with adversity, we don’t know how to be adults”. She places herself within the communal responsibility of caring, CRITICALLY caring, for our children, our students. She also voices concern of her teachers, more so than her students, as their buy in to a project of anti-racism is incredibly important in reaching students. This tension was extended and described in each of the other articles this week. Tillman (2004) reflects on the displacement of Black principals, and of course their associated notions of critical care, post Brown v Board. Something that stood out to me in Hosford et al. (2011) is the discussion of anti-racist pedagogy (as opposed to culturally relevant teaching) was too explicit and could turn teachers away from the important work as words like “race” and “racism” are too “intimidating”. Making anti-racism palatable to white people should be the last of worries, honestly. But then I think about how somehow they have still colonized/co-opted anti-racist work to steer away from its foundational goals directed to call out, resist, and change Anti-Black racism embedded in schooling and education. Khalifa et al., 2016 also highlight the importance of teacher preparation for culturally responsive school leadership, but also note the equal importance of teachers actually wanting to position themselves as culturally responsive. All of what I am reading about school leadership this week, takes me back to a question from last week of can a humanizing, anti-racist position rooted in empathy and critical care, really be taught? Last week in a breakout session, I shared that from my psychological background, I would say no. Empathy and Care are innate human psychological capacities (evidenced through numerous studies with babies of all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds and assigned genders, e.g. Still Face Baby Experiment, Tronick, 1975). But psychological literature also shows that it is truly our horrific dehumanizing white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal culture that steers us away from our innate human tendencies, and those with power are the most separated from our core human desires and capacities (such as care, empathy, community, emotions, etc.). So my question now becomes how do we reignite this innate empathy and care, that as humans we all hold, in those who have become distanced from their natural capacities? How must we not simply rely on the radical care of individuals, often Black women, to facilitate this process of resistance for other teachers?

My immediate response to all of the articles this week examining the counternarratives of, and more broadly, the role of Black Feminist/Womanist caring among Black women educational leaders is– who is showing the same radical care to them?!! How are they navigating and finding care for themselves in the same dehumanizing spaces as their students/children? Amidst enacting critical care in schools, Wilson (2015) draws the connection between critical care and transformative leadership in listening to the counter narratives pf Principal Simms, also an African American woman, in confronting and engaging in systemic critique of the poverty context of the community through instilling a school leadership force principled in care and embodying compassion with parents and students. Beauboeuf-Lofontant (200) identifies the themes of the maternal, political clarity, and an ethic of risk in the womanist caring of Black women educator. The maternal care that Black Feminist caring teaching enacted was rooted not in the individual relationship with men and children, but rather emerged from the sense of mothering as a communal responsibility (Bass, 2012; Wilson, 2015). This embodiment of critical care holds political clarity in the recognition of interlocking, intersectional, systems of oppression and injustices that implicate society and education simultaneously, and is rooted in the ethics of risk that there lies an interdependence in the creation of fairness and justice rooted in an understanding that the “self is part of rather than apart from other people” (p.81). Withserspoon & Arnold (2010) extend such themes of womanist caring in the conceptualization of care in a theological/religio-spritual sense. I was intrigued by the account presented in Bass (2012) of care triumphing justice- the teacher who shares her decision to not implicate a student for the possession of weed and instead express an enormity of care that place her own self at risk. It is this risk and also the radical empathy and care that Womanist educators, as in this narrative, the begs the question of WHO is showing radical care to the “care-ers”, or ones enacting the care? Of course, this is not a one-directional process, but the responsibility of care of course holds risks and implications for Black feminist educational leaders themselves. But how does/can the system or settings of schools treat womanist/black feminist educational leaders better? Who is healing our healers? How can we enact the same critical care towards Womanist educators, specifically Black women in educational leadership positions?