December 1st, 2021—Why do you teach? What fuels your teacher imagination and heart when the times are tough and deenergizing? When is the last time you slowed your teaching and leaned into the question of meaning and purpose, not for your students or your school, but for yourself? When I’m honest, I rarely find or make the time to adequately address these deeper questions. When asked about why I teach, I have quick answers stemming from quick reflections, but as such they are shallow and less than adequate for the complex nature of teaching. Furthermore, because my understanding of why I teach is often repurposed thoughts stemming from older moments of reflection, my thinking is often out of date with my recent experiences in the classroom. My inner and outer selves are out of alignment and, as a result, my reasons for teaching are slightly blurred.
Why do I teach? I teach to be in fuller relationship with my whole-self as educator; my teaching mind, body and soul. When I’m at my best, I teach because the act of teaching helps me understand who I am and who I am becoming. The act of teaching places me in the community of other educators and students who act as a sounding board for my authenticity. When I stray too far from my center, they invite me back to the fullness of my identity. A case in point occurred recently when students were presenting their final course projects which included an image of their personal learning based on eight-ten course readings. One student, Gerardo Munoz, noted that while creating his picture he realized that as an educator he is a “healer”. His classroom is a “fugitive space” for Black and Brown students seeking to escape the controlling and normalizing influences of school which tend to diminish and at times deny their humanity. He is a healer because students find wholeness and affirmation of their full-being in his classroom.
Fugitive, I think, is a telling word to describe the work of educators committed to empowerment of self and others. To my ears and heart, it suggests a covert space that exists and thrives within the presence of and in resistance to the normalizing gaze of the school. I consider fugitive space as a sanctuary hidden in plain view. It is a place, Gerardo notes, of “re-connecting, re-charging and re-framing” the wholeness of students of color. In addition to healing, fugitive spaces are also sites of active decolonization because they are places where individuals can return to the roots of their unique self, an identity that existed prior to the imposition of school norms and values. In most cases, decolonization is thought of as a subtractive process as it works to remove white and Western influences that overpower and marginalize the funds of knowledge students of color bring to school. What I learned from Gerardo is that decolonization can also be additive and generative as it leans toward liberation of self and identity through the reemergence of authenticity. In this framing, decolonization feels like a forward reaching practice of abundance while continuing to acknowledge the ongoing forms of dehumanization occurring in schools.
Decolonization takes on meaning and practices depending on the individuals seeking to move beyond the narrow and deforming confines of Western ontology and epistemology. For instance, students of color have firsthand experience with the norming forces of the school that directly and indirectly push them toward mainstream forms of behavior. Teachers, on the other hand, can feel the pressures of conformity, but in contrast to students, they experience a greater degree of autonomy and agency. Educators can close their door and teach in ways consistent with their beliefs and commitments to social justice. In contrast, the limited autonomy of students means they seek out teachers who are creating fugitive spaces. Although emanating from distinctly different sources of oppression, the need for sanctuary spaces in schools for students and teachers has a similar purpose; a place of healing and wholeness.
What I am suggesting, and I thank Gerardo for pointing me toward this truth, is that there is some aspect of decolonization that white educators, like myself, can relate to and learn from marginalized students. In this case the search for wholeness. At the same time, I want to preserve and validate the unique ways that historically marginalized individuals relate to the project of decolonization. The similarities should never eclipse the troubling patterns of dehumanization that emerge from an honest accounting of history, frequency and depth of systemic racism directed at Black, Brown and Indigenous individuals. In my case, I’m committed to liberating the heart and soul of educators, to scrape away the detritus of the industrial, commodified, and regimented overlay that defines much of teaching in the modern world. I want to decolonize teaching and invite educators back to their organic wholeness by offering fugitive spaces of healing that encouragement reactivation of fuller notions of self.
Imagine what might happen if educators committed to the project of decolonization, aligned their energies with students committed to the same mission; the liberation of human potential. Imagine what schools committed to the creation and maintenance of fugitive spaces would look like. Imagine if the measure of a school’s effectiveness was wholeness and healing rather than fragmentation. I know that my personal project of decolonization has been a long and slow process, a form of re-creation that often bumps up against the Siren’s call to return to the dulling and normalizing influences of Western white-ways of knowing, teaching and learning. I’m blessed to teach classes where students invite me into imaginative spaces that offer alternative forms of knowing and being that are humanizing and holistic.