2022

We're six weeks into the school year, and Cornelius and I are facilitating the beginning of a year‐long learning series with a cross‐school community of teachers in our home district. We open our day with gentle celebratory conversation. Here, teachers are meeting each other for the first time. Prompts like “Who was your childhood crush” and “Go into your phone—where were you exactly one year ago today” light up conversations and the beginnings of community start to form. The positive vibes are palpable.

We're charged with developing relational equity amongst teachers, school leaders, students, and families, figuring out what it really means to live and breathe practices in schools that are human‐centered, that spark intellectual curiosity, that enact joy, and that are developed through the lens of justice.

We discuss the “community up model” (see Chapter 5), and I show the teachers a chart of Gary Chapman's “Five Love Languages” that my friend Marcus Harden and I unpacked in our earlier work on love and building literacy culture across schools. I show them Marcus's examples from his former students within the chart. We review the continuum of communication exchanges (Minor and Harden 2020). Cornelius and I give examples of our love languages, and how they differ across contexts (quality time for Cornelius, acts of service for me).

I ask teachers to identify their love language, too; that is, how they like to receive love in the context of school. There is a pause. The energy changes. Not from good to bad, but from fun and spirited to more saturated with hurt and need. A teacher then shares what maybe all the others are thinking:

It's hard to name how I like to receive love in school because it's been so long since I've felt it. For the past few years, I've not really focused on anything but filling everyone else's cup.

Our budding community sits in a moment of quiet, swallowing the heaviness in the air.

There are a lot of different ways to describe the reality of teaching life within the context of school. Regularly, I witness the spirited quest so many teachers embark on toward joy and justice in spite of x and y and z. But the journey is draining. Teachers, educators, and just about everyone who plays a role in running a school are exhausted. The transformation we work so hard for, sometimes, feels invisible.

But remember those multiple truths I identified way back in the introduction?

• Truth 1: Now, more than ever, teachers have limited bandwidth to engage with the idea of re‐existing in the world.
• Truth 2: Now, more than ever, changing the school experience for kids who are learning within that institution requires labor, instincts, and collaborative, creative critical thinking from those who are most proximate to their experience.

More than anything about school, I believe in the possibility of the relationships and learning that happens between a teacher and their students. I continue to embrace that possibility. Whether you are a teacher, a school leader, or a caregiver, think about what it means to nourish the teaching community. The alchemy created when something like a Structured Generator of Hope is held closely within a community—prioritized, and facilitated with fidelity—has the power to actualize the joyful and just transformation so many of us have been looking for. That, to me, reader is redefining ferocity.

The last thing I leave you with as we press pause on our journey together, reader, are elements of my personal edu‐credo. Whether you are initiating, developing, or holding your edu‐credo more tightly, consider what it means for you to teach fiercely, and work toward spreading joy and justice in our schools.

My Edu‐Credo

We care for ourselves, and we care for our community.

The resistance lies in educators' ability to locate, experience, and sustain joy for themselves and their community. It also lies in their ability to identify and unpack both justice and injustice.

Curriculum‐making and developing classroom life is expansive work. Those who spend the most time with students are in the best position to make decisions about their learning life, alongside research and community support.