Can the critical caring energies of a principal alone be enough to make a whole school a critical caring environment? This is what I am thinking about after reading about Principal Johnson. It is clear that he had a lot of energy, a lot of skill, and a clear vision that was firmly rooted in critical caring education. He hired his teachers because he felt they would also be critical care-ers. But even then, there were some tensions between his goals and the teachers’ means of achieving those goals. Which was a bit unexpected considering that he started the whole school himself and hired everyone. One would think that if someone so hands on basically built a school from the group up that there would be very little tension within the school. But the article we read this week showed glimpses of this tension. So it makes me wonder if it is a bit of a blunder to try to critically care outside of a collective. So maybe my question is more “Is critical care necessarily a collective practice?” Authentic caring between teachers and students has to be a bidirectional practice. Shouldn’t that same rule stand for the interactions between principals, communities, families, students, and teachers?

Something that keeps coming to mind as I write this is this study that I read when I was an undergraduate. It was about a Fae summer camp (for lack of a better term). In this space they had a firm rule that all decisions had to be unanimous. And they would sit and talk for hours and hours if they had to until they could come to consensus on something, even the smallest thing like who will do the dishes or who will cook breakfast in the morning. So I am wondering if critical care and radical care also might benefit from a similar consensus-based system. That everyone has to buy into and contribute to an idea before it can be carried out. Practically, it is impractical. But it’s honestly the only thing that feels right in my mind. How can critical care flourish in such a hierarchical structure? Can critical care flourish in such a hierarchical structure? Maybe it can flourish in hierarchy and I just have too many anarchist friends influencing my thoughts?

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