This week’s readings have me thinking about the exceptionally holistic caring that Black women educators can enact. It seems like the women we read about this week take holistic to another level. It’s not just making sure the student is fed and plays instruments and is physically active and learns social skills (in addition to academic instruction, of course). It is holistic in that these Black women educators want to make sure their students are ready to handle the oppressive social and political world. Even beyond that, they care in a way that can drive the students to be ready to change that social and political world themselves. It’s an expanded kind of care that is not just about the student as an individual, but the student as an agentic social, political, and spiritual being. Many of the women we read about found some ridiculously creative ways to care for their students in the micro-est, most immediate ways AND in the structural, systemic, macro ways. Simultaneously! I dunno. I don’t have anything very academic to say about it. I am mostly amazed and trying to be better after this week’s readings.
Dear August: I love being in class with you (again). I so appreciate your honesty and candor. And I totally agree that these women we read about are amazing and inspiring–how they could see the bigger picture of political and social realities, and then use that understanding to work for social change and educational justice while also providing individualized care to students. I loved the focus on risk-taking, too. Fondly, Jane