The Sunken Space

A Critical Autoethnography

Abstract

This critical autoethnography examines my teacher development experiences within formal and nonformal spaces. The former being neoliberal organizations such as Champion All Students (CAS) and Claiborne Day School (CAS), a public charter school in New Orleans, while the latter includes my learnings from students I taught and a grassroots organization in the 9th ward of New Orleans, the Orleans Parish Panther Party (OPPP). My reflection situates myself as being formally developed into an egocentric pedagogue while my nonformal development serves as an unlearning process of teaching within an ecosystem of community. I employ Epistemologies of Ignorance to examine my narratives while conceptualizing a concept I call The Sunken Space. I define The Sunken Space as teacher development that uplifts ahistorical and dysconcious ideologies by developing K-12 teachers working in schools primarily populated by Black youth. Overall, my work posits that neoliberal institutions seek to create egocentric teachers devoid of social, historical or political context to maintain white-centric, patriarchal and capitalist mindsets of the teachers they employ. Alternatively, students and grassroots organizations work to counteract, enlighten, and reorient such educators out of The Sunken Space to serve the social, political, and material needs of Black youth. Just as these narratives have allowed me to see my development as conduits to maintain the status quo, this work is foundational in the work I will continue to do in exploring pedagogies of revolutionaries of the Global South and marginalized communities to further re-define my pedagogical priorities.