Decolonizing my Classroom During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Autoethnographic Study

American schooling is a colonized construct that seeks to maintain white patriarchal hegemony (Battiste, 2013). As a critical educator whose personal epistemologies are shaped by Indo-Caribbean feminism and Coolie feminism, I continually grapple with a large bureaucratic system that thrives on the perpetual dehumanization of teachers, families, and students. The sudden shift to remote learning surfaced the particular cognitive dissonance I navigate, both within myself and in my professional spaces, as I work to decolonize my classroom spaces while inadvertently perpetuating them. As a high school English teacher serving a population of exclusively BIPOC students in a small urban school, I took the shift to remote learning as an opportunity to engage in an autoethnographic study aimed at examining the decolonization of virtual classroom spaces. Utilizing Smith\u27s concept of the line, the center, and the outside (2012), I interrogated the process of decolonizing schooling both in my English literature courses and in my leadership of the English department. Using Lyiscott\u27s fugitive literacies framework (2019) as a lens, I examined ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internal manifestations of white supremacy in the decolonizing process. As a result, I crafted a unique tool for critical reflection and analysis called the decolonial compass. This tool was used to situate my personal identity within relevant socio-political and historical contexts. This was achieved by integrating the larger frameworks of decolonizing theory and critical constructivism with my personal epistemologies. This study documents my authentic decolonizing process during the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic with two major findings: (1) relinquishing epistemological control is central to decolonizing classrooms and (2) critical love is a tool for combatting dehumanization. Recommendations for teacher education and professional development are included

Decolonizing my curriculum during remote learning: An autoethnographic study

The American institution of schooling was shaped around a colonial center wherein the legacy of white Supremacy, racism, and capitalism endure (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Colonial power structures are duplicated especially in the classrooms of students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of color (BIPOC). In the sudden switch to remote learning during the COVID 19 pandemic, teachers were tasked with reimagining virtual schooling, but often did so using long entrenched hegemonic expectations, assumptions and standards. In a continuous effort to decolonize my classroom and work against reproducing oppressive power structures, I seized the unique opportunity presented in the shift to remote learning to interrogate the practices that shape my curriculum. In my autoethnographic study, conducted in an urban public high school in New York, I critically examined the ways in which I make and unmake colonial oppression in my practice as an educator and teacher leader through a process of critical reflection. Using guiding questions adapted from Lyiscott’s Fugitive Literacies framework (2019), I interrogated and examined the curricula I created and taught in my English classroom. I center my experiences as an educator during the COVID-19 pandemic working to create more equitable, democratic virtual and physical classroom environments by anchoring my research in decolonizing theory (Smith, 1999), critical constructivism (Kincheloe, 1991), womanism (Walker, 1979), and Indo-Caribbean feminism (Hosein & Outar, 2016). In this presentation, I will share the findings from my autoethnographic study, including reflections on my own researching, teaching and learning process over the last year

Lessons from a Chambered Nautilus

This session is presented in the spirit of learning from the world about curriculum through relationships that span geographies, temporalities, and biospheres. To focus our attention, we are inspired by the chambered nautilus, a sea mollusc famous for its uniquely segmented, spiraling shell. The exponential growth of the nautilus spiral is essential to the survival of the individual mollusc and its species. As its shell grows, the nautilus moves into the outer segments of the spiral, using the inner segments to regulate buoyancy, sinking into or rising from ocean depths by pulling and pushing water in and out of its shell. The shell’s spiraling growth reinforces its structural integrity, allowing the nautilus to feed at the seafloor and deposit its eggs in the cracks of coral reefs. The nautilus teaches us that reflexivity, growth and hope sustain its life force. It grows inward and outward to thrive and gestate generations. Papers in this session attend to reflexivity, growth and hope in curriculum and human thriving