On Creating Collaborative, Social Justice Teaching
What is needed for the profession of teaching artistry to be ethically grounded in social justice? What does it look like? Who is involved? What values and goals are needed? How do we transform rich, meaningful discussions into practical applications in the classroom? These are just a few questions the Summer Institute collective sought to tackle in this year's three-day training for advanced teaching artists.
On July 16th, 2018, twenty-five teaching artists from across the country traveled to the South Bronx in order to participate in this year's training. We were fortunate to collaborate with BronxArtSpace, a non-profit gallery that promotes the innovative ideas of underrepresented and emerging artists and curators in the South Bronx.
On exhibit was a project called Model Redux, in which five artists showcased work that expressed how to create a cultural model in the midst of the current social changes. A perfect setting for this training.
At the helm of this year's training were TAP Facilitators Karla Robinson, Amanda Torres, and Andre Ignacio Dimapilis, together a QPOC collective committed to creating inspiring spaces for artist educators to develop critical consciousness and deepen their liberatory teaching practices. This is the first time this collective has facilitated together and they jumped head first into the process, furiously collaborating and building one another up to create a strong training for the participating Teaching Artists.
The training started with introductions, guiding questions, and exploring the definitions of different terms: Decolonization, Safety, Trust, Affirmation, Accountability, and Accessibility. The group worked together to research and analyze different definitions, intersections, and ways in which these words infiltrate our classrooms. While the "what" was exploring social justice, the "how" was doing it collaboratively, creating a strong, trusting team.
The participants were placed in Care Teams, in order to more closely connect with one another. Care Teams explored the neighborhood, researching and interviewing a variety of residents of the South Bronx. The teams conducted collaborative, community-based research designed, “to interrogate the gap between dominant ideologies and human lives, using deeply participatory methodologies accountable to the goals of social justice” (Torre, Fine, Stoudt & Fox, 2012, p. 171). This prevents research on a community without centering the community's voice: What do they think of their neighborhood? How do they feel about outsiders' views? What do they think are the highlights and challenges of their community?