“To learn is to construct, to reconstruct, observe with a view to changing— none of which can be done without being open to risk, to the adventure of the spirit.
~Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

This is a space for collaborators of Foreword Motion to riff on how we “construct, reconstruct, and observe with a view to changing” and to describe the adventures of our spirits.
The way we make things, the process of how we create and collaborate, matters much. It’s also fun and instructive to think about. Let’s go!

Toolkits have been inspiring me lately, especially ones I’m encountering in the organizing/movement space, like In It Together from Interrupting Criminalization and Dragonfly Partners, the Let This Radicalize You workbook by Project Nia based on the book by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, and the Narrative Design Toolkit from Butterfly Lab. Their design invites me to reflect and create, without feeling judged on some rubric of how to be a better organizer. Teachers are organizers too, and I want to give them tools like this. When teachers are engaged in healing-centered practices like restorative justice and trauma-informed care, they need a supportive space and structure to process their own experiences and to freedom dream.

We’ve been working with New York City Outward Bound Schools on their “crew initiative” — an NYC Department of Education-funded project to increase social emotional and academic learning (SEAD). Over fifty NYC public schools are part of an improvement network, sharing practice across schools, and engaging in continuous improvement cycles. Educators develop and implement “change ideas” to grow their practice of joining social-emotional learning to academics. We’re working on the documentation and dissemination part of the work, creating videos that show the crew initiative work in action.

Rosa was documenting some work at Harvest Collegiate High School and interviewed a student named Ness, who was teaching her peers about Ramadan in response to islamophobia she experienced at school. Rosa asked to return to the school to document Ness teaching a leadership class that included students of different faiths, Ness agreed, and this video was born.

This video, and others made in collaboration with NYC students and educators, will become case studies in a creative toolkit. In this toolkit, educators and students can choose from a menu of creative protocols, mostly rooted in storytelling practices, to process the video case studies, and apply them to their own practice. We want the toolkit to feel creative, generative, supportive, inspiring, and also practical. To practice liberatory design, we want to make this toolkit with those closest to the problem, and those who will be using it. Our plan is to pilot a section of it, focused on student voice and leadership, and user test it with participants. Just like the “change ideas” that educators are working to “adapt, adopt, or abandon,” we enter into this toolkit design process with the adventurous spirit to “construct and reconstruct” based on feedback from those closest to the work. Because what’s the point of a toolkit designed without help from the people who need to use the tools?