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Abstract

In a collaborative letter, Florida feminist faculty instructors describe pedagogies of discomfort devised by the state to empower an assumed alienated student decentered by difference and to disquiet a culturally responsive teacher who treats education as transformation and liberation rather than career-relevant job training. They recall classroom resistance strategies and tactics not only to speak to the policies of erasure in this moment, but also to speak to the precarious student who needs to feel cared for, honored, and acknowledged in their pursuit to learn and unlearn to be in community today. The political intent of discomfort is to divide and distance students and teachers from their interconnected experiences and histories. But, Florida feminist faculty instructors use discomfort to reconnect and to recommit to the democratic value and purpose of public education. They come together—letter writing through fear—to show how they aim to create an empathetic, critically reflexive space for students to reimagine and cultivate a just and equitable world for all of us.

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