When teachers write and heal together

Abstract

The spring and summer of 2020 were rife with tension emanating from hate speech, racial violence, and a global health pandemic. Educators deliberated over the uncertainties of equitable access to learning, healthcare, and wellbeing. This article will describe how the Red Mountain Writing Project created a third space (Gutierrez, 2008) grounded by Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education (Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001) and Historically Responsive Literacy (Muhammad, 2020) to center the lives of teachers, their experiences, and their stories during a tumultuous time. The authors will share how they built and maintained a supportive virtual space for teachers to critically examine and reflect on their lived experiences, social awareness, sense of agency, and anti-racist teaching and writing practices. Now, after more than two years, teacher-writer communities are especially needed – third spaces where teachers from diverse backgrounds can hold space together and engage in writing to heal, find joy, empathize, and amplify their experiential knowledges.