Education Commons^™

Disabled Lives And Pandemic Lives: Stories Of Human Precarity

Occasional Paper Series

The idea for Carol Rogers-Shaw’s essay began in April 2020, six weeks into the initial COVID lockdown, at her Zoom-based PhD dissertation defense. Carol’s dissertation brought together a narration of her life as a person with a disability and her work as a high school teacher of students with identified disabilities, conceptualized and reconceptualized through the lens of critical disability studies.

Feisty Stories Of Living With Disability, Scot Danforth

Occasional Paper Series

Carol Rogers-Shaw’s rich memoir continues a fascinating tradition of autobiographical disability narratives that include works such as Stephen Kuusisto’s (1998) Planet of the Blind, Terry Galloway’s (2009) Mean, Little, Deaf Queer, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s (1998) Willow Weep for Me, and disability rights leader Judy Heumann’s (2020) Being Heumann. These exemplify what Garland-Thomson (2007) called “fresh and feisty disability narratives” (p. 119). Without apology, and often with great pride, these stories place the impaired and vulnerable body at the center of the plot structure. Through her own narrated experiences and by weaving in myriad encounters with her many disabled students, Rogers-Shaw …

Disabled Lives & Pandemic Lives: Stories Of Human Precarity, Carol Rogers-Shaw

Occasional Paper Series

In this article, I pay particular attention to four concerns that have come to the fore in startling ways for people worldwide during the pandemic. These include building empathy and community through the struggle to manage the fear of death, acceptance of disappointment and frustration, recognition the importance of being in tune with one’s body, and living with chronic grief. Drawing on stories from my life as a teacher and as a person with a disability, I hope to provide readers with both a way to reflect on the ongoing existential and practical concerns raised by the pandemic, and to …

On Turning Tables, Hubris, And Humility: Reflecting Upon Carol Rogers-Shaw’S “Disabled Lives & Pandemic Lives: Stories Of Human Precarity”, David J. Connor

Occasional Paper Series

What can be learned about the pandemic through the lens of disability, and conversely, what can we come to know about disability through the Covid-19 pandemic? Rogers-Shaw contemplates these reciprocal questions in a highly original essay that is wide in scope. After thinking about how to best describe the experience of reading her work, the word “wondrous” came to mind, as the essay is both delightful and powerful. Why? Because she examines and explores what has recently concerned many of us in education, that is, the pandemic’s impact upon the lives of both teachers and students with and without disabilities. …

Introduction To Carol Rogers-Shaw’S “Disabled Lives And Pandemic Lives: Stories Of Human Precarity”, Gail M. Boldt

Occasional Paper Series

The idea for Carol Rogers-Shaw’s essay began in April 2020, six weeks into the initial COVID lockdown, at her Zoom-based PhD dissertation defense. Carol’s dissertation brought together a narration of her life as a person with a disability and her work as a high school teacher of students with identified disabilities, conceptualized and reconceptualized through the lens of critical disability studies.

Moving Into A New Realm Of Education And Parenting, Katherine Rodriguez-Agüero

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Schooling During The Pandemic: Children’S Perspectives And Lived Experiences

Occasional Paper Series

This issue of the Occasional Paper Series is enriched by a collection of images, artwork, and photographed experiences from five child contributors who help us understand what it was like to be schooled during the pandemic.

Black Feminist Love: An Open Letter To My Children, Katie Harlan Eller

Occasional Paper Series

In an open letter to my young twins, I reflect on an open letter from the past and consider the context of this one: the historic moment of living through a pandemic anticipating a presidential election in 2020. In this reflection, I document the circumstances of our family’s life and turn toward what we are learning. My children have taught me to recognize my need for and commitment to Black feminist conceptions of love. I share a story and imagine letting go of conditional, enwhitened love that fears discomfort. Black feminist conceptions of love cannot coexist with fear and must …

Raising A Coconspirator: A Letter To My Daughter, Abby C. Emerson

Occasional Paper Series

In this letter to her daughter, the author utilizes a journey map to anticipate some of the decisions and actions she will have to make and take in order to raise her as an antiracist co-conspirator. As a white parent to a white child, the author explores necessary moves towards racial literacy, rethinking obedience, and revisiting concepts of independence. She explores the way in which her parenting must be envisioned differently given this current COVID moment amidst the movement for Black lives.

An Invitation To Imagine Education Otherwise, Grasilel Esperanza Diaz

Occasional Paper Series

This article presents an invitation to imagine education otherwise, what education could be if we took a restorative justice approach and make immediate changes. It focuses on the changes needed to make this vision a reality. Covid-19 has exposed many of the inequalities that exist in education and how these inequalities have negative effects on the neediest students. You are invited to imagine schools as sites of justice and freedom, to think of teaching that is centered on children, caring, and building relationships with families.

The Pandemic As The Time To Interrupt Harm And Foster Healing Through Schooling, Jessica Martell

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Taking Flight: Giving Up The Things That Weigh Me Down, Karina Malik

Occasional Paper Series

From the perspective of a Latinx, dual-language, special education, public school teacher, I explore and detail what an equitable and just education could look like in our future. I begin by envisioning a future that:

• Values collaboration in teaching and learning

• Allows for spaces of ongoing teacher learning where we teachers decide where we want to grow and how we want to learn.

• Invests in our growth and development as educators.

• Consists of a solid understanding that there is more expertise across communities than in any one person.

I continue by explaining that in order for this to be a …

Shifting Skins: Becoming Multiple During Emergency Online Teaching, Bianca Licata, Catherine Cheng Stahl

Occasional Paper Series

In this essay, we reflect on the emergence of our (new) teacher identities from the phenomenal space created within online learning, following the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Thrust from classrooms into in-between spaces mediated by digital technologies, the capricious co-inhabited new learning space functioned as a becoming-other space of identity-play, surfacing from centrifugal intra-actions among human, non-human, and inorganic entities and energies—what we have named a thinning space (authors, forthcoming). It called for becoming shapeshifters together through resisting crystallized roles and (re)claiming a multiplicity of vulnerable thin skins. We draw from the possibilities of existing virtual gaming spaces to …

Reimagining Early Childhood Classrooms As Sites Of Love: Humanizing Black Boys Through Head Rubs And “ Playin’ The Dozens ”, Nicole M. Madu

Occasional Paper Series

Black boys in American schools are often subjected to crisis narratives that negatively impact teacher-student relationships. However, two Black male early childhood teachers in New York City have reimagined teacher-student relationships which can be used to inform the future education of Black boys post-pandemic. Central to their reframing of teacher-student relationships between Black male teachers and Black boys is a focus on the importance of nurturing social and emotional health. This manuscript highlights how these two Black male teachers foster positive relationships with their young Black boys, empowering Black boys to see themselves as capable learners.

Recognizing And Sustaining #Blackgirlmagic: Reimagining Justice-Oriented Approaches In Teacher Education, Tia C. Madkins

Occasional Paper Series

As our global public health, race, and education crises continue to converge, PK-12 teachers must engage justice-oriented pedagogies. This historical moment highlights BIPOC children’s dehumanizing experiences, yet Black girls’ educational lives remain invisible. To address these issues within teacher education, scholars suggest teachers need to develop critical consciousness and reject deficit views of students, especially Black girls. Therefore, I discuss how we can support educators and teacher educators in recognizing and sustaining #BlackGirlMagic (i.e., Black girls’ and women’s universal awesomeness and brilliance). We can prepare educators to celebrate the diversity of Black girlhoods and disrupt monolithic views of who Black …

The Pandemic As A Portal : On Transformative Ruptures And Possible Futures For Education, Mariana Souto-Manning

Occasional Paper Series

In 2020, as COVID-19 made us pause, it also gave us pause, shedding light on inequities in schooling and society. As Roy (2020) notes, it “brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.” However, the tragicpatterns of inequity unfolding before our eyes were not new; we were witnessing “the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years” (para. 8). Inequities that have long existed in Black, Indigenous, and other communities of Color were accentuated by the pandemic, and the exacerbation of these inequities remains devastating in and beyond the United States.

The Pandemic As A Portal: On Transformative Ruptures And Possible Futures For Education

Occasional Paper Series

In 2020, as COVID-19 made us pause, it also gave us pause, shedding light on inequities in schooling and society. As Roy (2020) notes, it “brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.” However, the tragic patterns of inequity unfolding before our eyes were not new; we were witnessing “the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years” (para. 8). Inequities that have long existed in Black, Indigenous, and other communities of Color were accentuated by the pandemic, and the exacerbation of these inequities remains devastating in and beyond the United States.

The Times Of Our Lives, Deborah Britzman

Occasional Paper Series

I recall a remark Anna Freud once gave around the age of 85. She said there are two ages that are most challenging for the human and require the most strength: the times of early childhood and the times of old age (Sandler, with A. Freud, 1985). Within these bookends of life, Anna Freud exchanged the ideality of strength as might for that of care for vulnerability. Strength becomes the capacity for tolerating, as in living with bodily fragility, care, and dependency. Here, perception of time, or our feelings in time, are other to the function of time. It is, …

Quintessential Jonathan, Virginia Casper

Occasional Paper Series

It was only a year ago, but many worlds away, Jonathan and I took a few hours off from a conference to hike in the hills above Las Cruces, New Mexico. The conversation wandered around people we know in common, those we have lost, and ideas we shared over 25 years as friends and colleagues. We kept returning to the topic of legacy, however, based on Jonathan’s recent reconceptualization of the term (Silin, 2020) and my interest in thinking more about it. As I listened to him explain his more generative version of this venerable notion, I remember thinking how …

Enlaces In Reflections And (Re)Memberings As Latina Border-Crossers: Journeys Of Childhood And Professional Un/Welcomings, Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, Paty Abril-Gonzalez, Cinthya Saavedra, Michelle Salazar Pérez

Occasional Paper Series

We are humbled to be part of this special issue honoring the life work of Jonathan Silin. His scholarship and activism have opened spaces for future generations, like our own, to share our testimonios. We are straddling between being former early childhood teachers and current teacher educators—between our profe lives and our everyday lived experiences as Latina border crossers. Testimonios, which we engage in for this piece, have herstorically captured intimate tellings that connect individual struggles and strengths to the larger collective (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001). It is in these testimonios that women …

Welcoming Play In Times Of Trauma: A Response To Cassie Brownell, Karen Wohlwend

Occasional Paper Series

I’m honored and delighted to welcome Cassie Brownell to a growing community of early childhood play researchers. In one sense, welcoming implies an unequal power relation where an established member of a community introduces an unknown newcomer. This feels a bit disingenuous. Cassie is already a rising star in our field and really needs no introduction! Her work is part of an exciting new trend in literacy research that blends play with social activism and community building.

Mapping Common Grounds Between Mother And Child: A Response To Alyssa Niccolini, Jennifer Rowsell

Occasional Paper Series

In this short response, I connect my own mother-daughter story to Nicollini's article. Drawing on Silin and Stewart, I consider the ways that vulnerabilities lead to expression and a fluency of thought. In particular, how Covid-19 draws out affective intensities that lead to compositions. Inspired by Nicollini's honest and brave framing of her anxieties about her child, I reflected on a similar sense of fear and deep sadness years ago, at a different time and place.

Vulnerable Literacies, Alyssa Niccolini

Occasional Paper Series

We’d find them nestled behind earlobes, amidst eyelashes, between fingers, in folds of the neck, along the scalp, behind knees, cozy in armpits, in zigzagged waistband imprints, hidden in eyebrows, or brazenly mid-chest. Who knew the body had so many hiding places?

There is always a bolt of shock when the examined spot—a speck of dirt, a freckle?—comes alive with spidery legs. Mother and child then engage in a practiced routine—a submission of the body, a pinch of skin, a tug of war with a barbed proboscis, a cold swab of alcohol. The wriggling visitor is always observed with a …

Ambivalent Legacies: A Response To Harper Keenan, Jen Gilbert

Occasional Paper Series

Harper Keenan’s generous letter to beginning queer/trans teachers hinges on the question: How do we stand in that impossible moment when we are welcoming newcomers while still acknowledging our debts to those who’ve come before? Jonathan Silin, whose work this issue celebrates, grapples with these questions of legacy in an essay that reflects on his contributions as an early childhood educator and researcher and a gay rights and HIV/AIDS activist. Silin (2020) asks:

Is it possible to leave behind traditional ideas about legacy, weighted down as they are with commitments to social and biological reproduction, and reimagine it as something …

Keep Yourself Alive: Welcoming The Next Generation Of Queer And Trans Educators, Harper Keenan

Occasional Paper Series

Dear new queer/trans educator,

Welcome to the work of education. I am glad that you are here to take part in the wonderfully challenging task of supporting young people to learn more about how we might be together. I often think of classrooms and other educational spaces as something like a dance floor, where people who may not know one another gather together and learn how to interact and relate to one another in shared space.

Ungrasping The Other: The Parent, The Child, And The Making Of Solidarities. A Response To Esther Ohito, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández

Occasional Paper Series

The child reaches forward with his toes, extending to touch the world from the comfort of his mother’s lap. She smiles, wide brown eyes into the camera, left hand resting on her left knee while the index finger of her right hand clinches the child’s overalls near his belly, holding him in place. He smiles, wide eyes into the camera, right hand resting on her right wrist while the index finger of his left hand points forward. He feels the warmth of his mother’s chin resting on his nearly bald head, nested in the safety of her crossed legs. The …

What Can We Not Leave Behind? Storying Family Photographs, Unlocking Emotional Memories, And Welcoming Complex Conversations On Being Human, Esther Ohito

Occasional Paper Series

Everyone was startled by the flood that burst forth from my previously dry tear ducts, even me. What was supposed to be an ordinary oral presentation of a culminating assignment for Wendy Luttrell’s popular graduate school course on visual methodologies, Doing Visual Research with Children and Youth, had morphed into a strange waterworks festival starring me as the headlining performer. In addition to Wendy, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, the audience included Tran Templeton and several other peers who were also my fellow doctoral students at Teachers College, Columbia University.1 The course drew on …

What Grown-Ups Aren’T Thinking About: A Response To Tran Nguyen Templeton, Wendy Luttrell

Occasional Paper Series

Tran Templeton opens her article “Whose Story Is It?: Thinking Through Early Childhood with Young Children’s Photographs” with a compelling adult-child encounter. Tran and 6-year-old Saloma are viewing photographs taken of Saloma by early childhood teachers in the preschool classroom where Tran taught and conducted her research. Saloma offers a piercing analysis of “grown-ups” who neglect to consider children’s own wishes. “Maybe the people [children] don’t want you to take a picture of them when they’re like that,” Saloma cautions. But it isn’t just that adults are taking pictures that may be unwanted; what bothers Saloma is how we as …

Whose Story Is It? Thinking Through Early Childhood With Young Children’S Photographs, Tran Nguyen Templeton

Occasional Paper Series

Child-centered practices and pedagogies of listening to children are part and parcel of progressive early childhood education. As critical early childhood teachers and researchers, we demonstrate that we value the voices and narratives of children by placing them at the center of our classroom and research agendas. Simultaneously, however, young children’s social position can put them at the mercy of adults’ (teachers’ and researchers’) whims, and their stories may easily be consumed in the name of provocative classroom displays or academic articles. This work explores the potential for visual participatory research, guided by critical childhood studies, to grasp the stories …

What Stories, Like Water, Hold: A Response To Fikile Nxumalo, Debbie Sonu

Occasional Paper Series

The stories we tell carry our beliefs, our histories, and our relationships. They orient us toward particular ways of living and being, both with each other and with the natural world, and guide us into our sense of self and our encounters with difference. They describe what is made alive and what is rendered in service.