Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Becoming A Social Justice Educator: Emerging From The Pits Of Whiteness Into The Light Of Love. A Response To "Respect The Differences? Challenging The Common Guidelines In Social Justice Education, Kay F. Fujiyoshi

Democracy and Education

This paper addresses the limitations of social justice in institutional spaces and in rhetoric. I write in the form of a quest narrative to describe the lessons I learned from a brief sojourn in a temporary position in an urban teacher education program with a social justice focus and at a nonprofit organization with other social justice workers. My quest entails a retelling of encounters with Whiteness, the challenges of engaging social justice as a process that pushes beyond conversation, and the lessons I took away from my own sense-making of the contradictions in social justice work.