Living well together: Educating teachers during changing times

Through this living inquiry, we (four seasoned teacher-educators) respond to the demands of the multifaceted crises unfolding within the Canadian education system, including the teacher shortage and increasingly impossible demands on educators. In our classes, political polarization and hyper-individualism are on the rise, which we suspect is coming from a place of isolation, fear, or anxiety. Increasingly student-teachers lack resilience or are too overwhelmed by political, environmental, and economic issues to fully commit to their studies. Teaching in these contexts requires us to overextend ourselves and has led to unexpected vulnerability. As we inquiry into how we might sustain ourselves and our students within this climate, we are revisiting the dimensionalities of hope and grace. Wheatly reminds us that the opposite of hope is not hopelessness, but fear, and Braid teaches us that grace involves mercy, not merit. We endeavour to remain humble and open to students’ realities, while offering them holistic pathways, and focusing on our own wellness. We have found that shifting from a place of frustration and idealism requires a collective grounding, as well as rooting out micro-spaces where it is possible to educate outside of neoliberal institutional norms. Modelling these practices is something tangible that we can offer to our students as we send them off into uncertain futures in schools. Drawing from Indigenous scholarship, we work collaboratively to explore how we can live well together, find peace with(in)the current educational landscape, and re-search how we might forge a path alongside our students towards mutual flourishing.