Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. This journal is published by Pitt Open Library Publishing. 49 This journal is supported by the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate: A Knowledge Forum on the EdD (CPED) cpedinitiative.org impactinged.pitt.edu ISSN 2472-5889 (online) Vol.9 No.4 (2024) DOI 10.5195/ie.2024.449 The Role of Theory in a Practitioner-Based EdD Program: A Braided Dialectical Interplay Between Professor and Scholar-Practitioner Theresa L. Burriss Emory & Henry University tlburriss@emoryhenry.edu Elizabeth Mayers Radford University eamayers@radford.edu ABSTRACT In this exchange between an EdD professor and one of their practitioner-scholars, the two recount their respective and overlapping journeys in Critical Social Theories for Just Schools and Communities. While the professor was trained as a philosopher and has embraced the theoretical throughout her career, the practitioner-scholar enrolled in the class with much skepticism about the usefulness of theories, especially coupled with the word “critical” in our politically divisive society. They share the educational unfolding that occurred for both of them as they navigated various challenges of infusing theory into a practitioner-based educational doctoral program. The professor offers insights into their pedagogical strategies when presenting sometimes contentious topics, and the practitioner-scholar provides an honest unveiling of their self-awareness. KEYWORDS critical theories, critical pedagogies, practitioner-based program “As part of the language of hope and possibility, I develop a notion of critical pedagogy that addresses the democratic potential of engaging how experience, knowledge, and power are shaped in the classroom in different and often unequal contexts, and how teacher authority might be mobilized against dominant pedagogical practices as part of the practice of freedom. […] I also argue for developing a language for thinking critically about how culture deploys power and how pedagogy as a moral and political practice enables students to focus on the suffering of others.” (Giroux, 2011, p. 5) According to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, or Purdue OWL (n.d.), a braided essay, which is a form of creative nonfiction, contains multiple ‘threads’ or ‘through-lines’ of material, each on a different subject. The essay is broken into sections using medial white space, lines of white space on a page where there are no words (much like stanzas in poetry), and each time there is a section break, the writer moves from one ‘thread’ to another. (para. 2). Although braided essays are not typically found in academic peer-reviewed journals, we, a professor and scholar-practitioner duo, decided this genre was the most effective in communicating our journeys into various theoretical realms, into the challenges and triumphs of applying theory meaningfully to practice. Scholarly writing need not be devoid of creativity. Thus, we welcome you to join us as we braid our respective threads to weave a holistic narrative inquiry. Professor During Thanksgiving break of my sophomore year of college in 1985, I announced to my father that I was declaring philosophy as my major. Ever the practical engineer, he sincerely, albeit pointedly, queried, “What are you going to do with that?!” Although I don’t recall my immediate reply, his question eventually led me to law school to demonstrate the value of such a degree. Because I attended only to appease my father, I am a law school dropout, lasting only one year after enduring sheer drudgery. However, my training in philosophy has served me in profound ways throughout my career as a lifelong learner and educator. When I returned to graduate school to pursue a master’s in English, a much better fit with my humanities-based interests, the canonical philosophy foundation I obtained in college prepared me to embrace and apply myriad literary theories to the texts I studied. In fact, I took great delight in the required literary criticism class. Similarly, once in my interdisciplinary studies doctoral program, with a dual focus on Appalachian Studies and Women’s Studies, I was poised to deepen my application of theory in all my coursework and incorporate various theoretical perspectives into my dissertation on three Affrilachian writers, Frank X Walker, Crystal Wilkinson, and Nikky Finney. A shorter version was published as a book chapter, “Claiming a Literary Space: The Affrilachian Poets” (Burriss, 2005). Thus, when I was asked to teach Critical Social Theories for Just Schools and Communities for Radford University’s EdD Program, I welcomed the opportunity. My study of philosophers such https://library.pitt.edu/e-journals http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ http://cpedinitiative.org/ https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8285-5842 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1832-1265 Burriss & Mayers Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 9 No. 4 (2024) DOI 10.5195/ie.2024.449 50 as Frantz Fanon (1961/2005), Helene Cixous (1990), and bell hooks (1991, 1994, 2009) enabled me to create a class especially for practitioner-scholars, where theory was applicable and useful in their educational settings. The students, on the other hand, were skeptical about such applicability and usefulness, at least at the start. Scholar-Practitioner After years of teaching in elementary classrooms, seeking a challenge, I shifted to a central office position as an early childhood education specialist. While I acclimated to the nuances of central office life, I realized quickly that my new colleagues all sported a “PhD” or “EdD” after their names. As I grew in my current position in a large suburban school division, I didn’t relish the thought of being a student again, but knew in order to be competitive, I needed to. When I did apply and was accepted into a program, I was pleasantly surprised when I realized the content was easily connected to my day-to-day work. In fact, work and school merged so well that the addition of a graduate program didn’t even feel as if it were extra. I coasted through the first few semesters of my program confident that I was already a well-rounded, open-minded leader – capable of seeing the perspectives of all people. I wrote essay after essay espousing my abilities to see life through multiple lenses because of my acknowledgement of my own identity. In short, I knew all the buzzwords and believed them, and I thought that was enough. As the beginning of my second year started, I read the syllabus for Critical Social Theories for Just Schools and Communities. “This is all political and opinion,” I lamented to a friend. “It even says ‘critical’ in the course title,” and finally, “This has nothing to do with the day to day running of schools.” The truth is, though, I was scared. This was going to be it. The class that would expose that I wasn’t doctorate- worthy. The syllabus made it very clear that this was not just a course on diversity. This was a course on humanity. Professor After researching various texts, I selected Darder et al.’s The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd ed.) (2009), which is now in its fourth edition. To prepare the students for what to expect from the class, I provided the following course description: In this course, students will be immersed in critical theories, primarily focused on pedagogy, analyzing not only how these theories apply to their professional lives and problems of practice, but also how they may be employed in their personal lives. Based on the Frankfurt School’s critical theory (Celikates & Flynn, 2023), critical theories of today have continued to evolve and respond to contemporary oppressions manifesting in a variety of forms, including political, physical, racial/ethnic, gender/sex, intellectual, social, environmental, and economic. Thus, critical theories require action/praxis to challenge power and domination for liberation from repression, oppression, and subjugation. Student learning is grounded in inquiry, exploration, writing, and discussion. With my background in the humanities, I require students to submit reading reflection logs, no matter the course. Writing about reading, particularly challenging reading, enables students to better understand the material and to engage with it in a deeper way. For this seven-week class, students submitted five logs on the readings of their choice. I provided the following in the syllabus to guide their approach to crafting the logs: I suggest you identify one or two issues/concepts/arguments in the readings that resonate with you and enhance or challenge your understanding of critical theories. You may incorporate class discussions into your responses, as well. How do the theories’ tenets apply to your problem of practice? In what ways do the theories encourage you to reframe your context? The logs should enable you to think deeply about systems of power and oppression and how they operate in your professional and personal lives. Additionally, the logs will allow you to explore your roles in the systems, provoking you to consider ways to disrupt structural inequities in professional yet substantive ways. Be sure to cite direct quotes incorporated into logs, not only for attribution but also for ease in identifying relevant material for your final paper or project. While the logs are intended to aid students in their comprehension of the readings, they also provide me an opportunity to be in one-on- one conversation with the students, responding to their queries, challenging their thinking, and problematizing their assertions. In many instances, I ask probing questions to invite the students to think more deeply about a topic and to examine their preconceived ideas about ways of being and believing. Such epistemological inquiry can prove uncomfortable at times; thus, it is vital that I provide a safe space for students to engage in these exercises, both in their reading reflection logs and in class discussions, particularly in an all-virtual joint synchronous/asynchronous class. Scholar-Practitioner I perused the syllabus and felt conflicted. I could handle reflection. I prided myself on self-assessment and shifting perspectives based on new information. I could handle this! But that word – “critical” – was woven throughout the assignments and guidelines. While I understood there was nothing ominous about the word critical, it had become politically charged and thus gently ignored in day-to-day educational talk. I danced around it, acknowledging critical theory openly with close colleagues, but shying away in mixed company. I realized much further into the course that my discomfort was not because I didn’t believe in critical frameworks. It’s because I didn’t understand critical frameworks. There is a difference between knowing what something is and understanding it as it applies to real life. I knew that critical pedagogy was a framework that helped expose and challenge social structures in classrooms. I knew it was often misunderstood. But I also knew that given the political climate of the country, even in isolation, the words critical and “theory” were often misconstrued to mean “anti- White,” or “anti-American.” At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant for my personal or professional life. I looked at the copious amount of reading, diving into the first assignment with much trepidation as I read the opening chapter of Darder et al.’s The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd ed.) (2009). I recall finishing that week’s reading and promptly googling Darder and Torres to see what ethnicity they were. I think that was an example of my unconscious (or conscious?) bias. I thought that if someone who was not the same ethnicity questioned the intent of the concerns and arguments of another ethnicity, that they must be racist. Even using the words race and ethnicity interchangeably confused me, especially after reading Darder and Torres. They asked, “What analytical value or utility does the concept of ‘race’ have in our struggle against racism and inequality? (Darder & Torres, 2019, p. 151) and questioned whether racism could even exist if race Role of Theory in Practitioner-Based Program Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 9 No. 4 (2024) DOI 10.5195/ie.2024.449 51 did not exist. I was flabbergasted. I spent years dismantling my ‘70s and ‘80s upbringing being taught that we’re all the same – that brown and white eggs all had the same color yolk. I’d worked hard to understand that differences were important and valuable. I didn’t know how to consider the idea of “No race.” Professor Perhaps one of the most profound experiences for the scholar- practitioners in the class centered on their acknowledgment that they were experiencing similar feelings to their own students; namely, they struggled to understand a new discourse, unfamiliar concepts, and previously unexplored ideas. In many reading reflection logs, I responded to my students’ frustrations of feeling inadequate and incompetent, while urging them to give themselves grace. As I have learned myself and stressed to my students, “There is no finish line.” Learning, in all forms, is a lifelong journey that requires perseverance, patience, and diligence, with a constant meta-awareness of our own positionality, which draws from feminist standpoint theory (Bowell, n.d.). Such personal probing can be taxing, especially when students bravely admit to blind spots in their thoughts about and perceptions of others unlike them. The scholar-practitioners began questioning their own educational backgrounds, what they were and were not taught and how they were taught. They reflected on control and power over curricula, as well as who holds such control and power, both in their personal K12 experiences and in their current positions. Scholar-Practitioner While I read and reread many of the theorists and still struggled to understand their passive voices in writing, Paulo Freire’s “banking” analogy yielded a physical response. I felt seen and heard. It triggered a frustration I long felt having benefited from a communicative and interactive early school experience that became the banking experience Freire discussed as I grew older (Freire, 2009). As I read, I realized that teacher and child interactions, an endeavor that should be transformative, are largely transactional. Instead of exploring the whys and hows of life, we’re handed the who and whens of life. As I reflected, I realized that’s why I dedicated my career to early childhood education. Because we’re allowed to engage in problem-posing education. When I coach preschool teachers, I’m not looking at assessment scores or attendance data. I’m looking for how and why questions. I’m looking for analysis and reasoning and comparing and contrasting. I’m listening for feedback loops where a persistent teacher is genuinely trying to understand the child and scaffold him or her to a place of critical and reflective thinking. Our coaching team frequently reminds teachers, “An open- ended question is the question you ask a child that you don’t know the answer to.” I can’t imagine this going over well in an upper grade classroom. Our teachers are genuine play partners with children, entering and becoming a part of the child’s thought process and experience. Many of the practitioners I work with have post-it notes on their plan books reminding themselves, “The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.” While this is my daily education experience, I am acutely aware that it is not the experience of most. I know that the moment young children leave our preschool classroom and enter kindergarten their experience shifts to that banking approach Freire discusses, with deposits being made by someone who is only providing information (Freire, 1970). The reciprocity of the adult and child interactions in preschool is lost to the transactional nature of “big school.” When teachers are able to be truly creative and are empowered to be responsive to their students’ ideas and inquiry, when educators are collaborators in human development, both partners grow and benefit. Reality stops being the perspective of the educator or adult and becomes simply what is. Freire noted, “The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of the reality deposited in them (Freire, 1970, p. 53). Professor Some students pushed back against certain theorists, for example when the theorists investigated tenets of capitalism and nationalism taken as inevitable, and not as socially constructed concepts. In one reading reflection log, a student vehemently railed against Peter McLaren (2009) and several of his assertions in his chapter, “Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts”. The student was offended by McLaren’s (2009) claim, “To be an ‘American’ carries a certain set of ideological baggage. Americans generally think of themselves as lovers of freedom, defenders of individual rights, guardians of world peace, etc.; rarely do Americans see themselves as contradictory social agents” (p. 68). Understanding that educators, no matter the level, must strive to not alienate students and to respond in respectful, caring ways, I acknowledged the student’s feelings while gently challenging them: I understand why you feel this way. However, I believe McLaren is arguing that Americans need to remain vigilant in and critically minded of blind nationalism. He’s not arguing that we shouldn’t be proud Americans. I agree that some folks blanketly disparage being American. That is not useful. But we must look to history to see that America is not innocent in certain conflicts, even recent ones. I think about the School of Americas, which is now closed due to the American public’s outcry against the US military training foreign military officers and personnel in terror tactics. The military junta in several South American countries enacted horrendous, egregious human rights violations based on what they learned there. This is just one example. Because I am acutely aware of the triggering potential of many of the theorists, I stress to my students that I am available to talk with them individually over the phone or via Zoom to listen to their concerns. The above student, as well as several others, accepted this offer over the seven weeks, which proved useful in many ways, including to solidify trust. In addition to hearing my students’ uncertainties and sometimes anger, I shared some of my personal stories to help us identify with each other. With the above student, I explained that I am a proud American, whose two grandfathers served in WWII, whose father served in Vietnam, and whose brother attended the U.S. Naval Academy and traveled to the Gulf during conflicts. Scholar-Practitioner I was challenged by the perspective of some of the theorists, questioning their writing skills, their investigative processes, and assuming the espoused opinion and not fact. I lamented about Stanley Aronowitz (2009) in a reflection log: I struggled with much of Aronowitz’s piece and found myself noting in the margins frequently, “Where did he get this information?” and, “This is uninformed and offensive,” and a few, “Has he ever been inside a school?” comments. I think there is value in opinion and up until this reading, I genuinely respected Burriss & Mayers Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 9 No. 4 (2024) DOI 10.5195/ie.2024.449 52 the theorists’ ability to couple opinion and perspective with evidence. It felt as if Aronowitz didn’t do that. He references New York City a lot (one small portion of the country) and other examples of cited evidence include, “A friend” or unnamed critics. While New York City is large and well known, it should never be (nor should any one location) be used as the foundation of critique for the entire country. He and Giroux felt very similar to me – more political centered than education centered and I think if you are going to critique pedagogy (which we should) it must be well rounded. Dr. Burriss encouraged me to sit on the ideas conveyed in the readings. I took her advice, and not only sat on the ideas conveyed in the readings, but also on my own ideas. When I looked back at this assignment, it occurred to me that my own thoughts were much more unfounded than the careful work of a labor scholar and activist. I did appreciate his stance on schooling and labor. My criticism was largely based on my lack of understanding. The labor movement was something that I did not truly grasp in my adult life. I’ve been alive for half of a century, and I didn’t understand the function of the labor movement until my 40s! My only reference for labor unions was the mention of the Teamsters in 11th grade US history. My teacher spent a few moments weaving the Teamsters and the mobster Jimmy Hoffa together, and they were never mentioned again. That one lesson created a connection between organized labor/unions to organized crime that made me assume unions were criminal entities until very recently. Early in my education career, my mentor and elementary teammates encouraged me to join the local affiliate of the larger Virginia Education Association and National Education Association. Nobody ever explained why, and admittedly, I never asked. The organization was fighting to represent certified and non-certified teaching staff in the collective bargaining process, and I began to pay attention as they relentlessly advocated for educators in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Despite this new knowledge about the overall stressful work conditions of teachers and despite learning that I was gravely misinformed that day in 1992 in my US History class when I perceived that labor organizations and organized crime were connected, it took me 15 minutes before voting closed, to vote “Yes” to collective bargaining. Even as I researched and educated myself on collective bargaining, I still felt as if I were selling myself to the mafia every time I opened the ballot to vote. Over 30 years since that lesson in US history and years of trying to unlearn that lesson, I still struggled to vote Yes. This experience yielded two thoughts for me. One was that all people, educators included, are very likely to bring their own perspectives and beliefs into the classroom and teach that to children either implicitly or not. I don’t know if any curriculum or policy can result in humans being able to let go of who they are and what they believe and not impact students’ futures. There will always be an imbalance of what is comforting and confirming to one group and frightening and dangerous to another. How do we find a balance between fact and personal belief and value systems? Professor Some students expressed gratitude in their logs for studying scholars who validated their lived experiences, particularly those related to marginalization and oppression. Reading about Paulo Freire’s (2009) banking concept of education, whereby students are passive receptacles taught predetermined material by “expert” teachers, several students applauded Freire’s (2009) problem-posing educational approach, as it fosters creativity, and ultimately, liberation. In their reflection log, one student shared, “Critical pedagogy offers teachers an opportunity to transform the education system from a place that reproduces the status quo to a place that, with question-based learning, identifies and investigates questions in order to uncover the various perspectives and alternatives that can transform systems of oppression.” Applying Freire’s (2009) ideas to their Dissertation in Practice (DiP), another student queried in their log, “How does an assistant principal (AP) work with a teacher who may be stuck in a banking concept mindset to embrace the 5Cs (collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, and communication)? How does an AP build a culture in their school that prides itself on 5C-based experiences for students?” Indeed, as each week of class passed, students became more confident in their comprehension of the various theories, scaffolded their new knowledge, and effectively applied theory to praxis, both personal and professional. They began to acknowledge how theories serve as frameworks for critiquing everyday practices historically promoted as logical, inevitable, and true. Scholar-Practitioner I’m not sure if it was the fact that spring semester was beginning to feel like spring, but by early March, things began to feel lighter. The readings, the reflection – while they still sometimes felt like a jumble of passive voice and rhetoric, they more often felt applicable and relative to my work. I not only was able to connect philosophers we studied such as Paulo Freire to my work in early childhood, I began to see the alignment of the work of these philosophers to those known in early childhood, such as Lev Vygotsky. My Dissertation in Practice (DiP) is centered on the unique stressors of publicly funded preschool educators. A challenge in this field is truly understanding the development of the whole child – the whole human before being able to apply any form of practice. Many of our early childhood educators’ feelings of stress stem from having expectations of children that are unrealistic for their stage of development. Understanding who a child is, where they come from, and where they currently are is the very first step of supporting growth, and critical theory supports that. It’s easy, though, to look at lists of state standards and expectations of where children should be and begin to question our abilities to meet these fixed standards with fluid children who have a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Professor In the final week of the class, when we dove into principles of critical literacy, we started by reading Ira Shor (2009), now Professor Emeritus in English at the CUNY Graduate School. In his essay, “What is Critical Literacy?” Shor (2009) asserts, Essentially, then, critical literacy is language use that questions the social construction of the self. When we are critically literate, we examine our ongoing development, to reveal the subjective positions from which we make sense of the world and act in it. All of us grow up and live in local cultures set in global contexts where multiple discourses shape us. (p. 282) While I featured this poignant quote in my last lecture for class discussion, several students had incorporated it into their reading reflection logs and final papers, including Betty. Clearly, the message Role of Theory in Practitioner-Based Program Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 9 No. 4 (2024) DOI 10.5195/ie.2024.449 53 resonated with them as they expressed a meta-awareness of their ongoing development influenced by myriad messaging that must be constantly critiqued. Shor’s (2009) words enabled me to stress the importance of imagination in critical literacy. I shared quotes from bell hooks’s (1991) essay, “Narratives of Struggle,” in Mariani’s (1991) Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing, a text I read in my doctoral program, which prompted me to pose the question, “What do oppositional discourses look like?” hooks (1991) proclaims, “[I]f the mind was to be the site of resistance, only the imagination could make it so. To imagine, then, was a way to begin the process of transforming reality. All that we cannot imagine will never come into being” (p. 55). The students and I engaged in lively discussion about society’s seeming disdain for the imagination as we age. The realm of the imaginative is only appropriate for the very young. hooks (1991) continues: Globally, literature that enriches resistance struggles speaks about the way individuals in repressive, dehumanizing situations use imagination to sustain life and maintain critical awareness. In oppressive settings the ability to construct images imaginatively of a reality not present to the senses or perceived may be the only means to hope. (p. 55) Thus, the imagination in dehumanizing situations is necessary for people’s very lives as they strive to maintain hope and reclaim their humanity. My segue to Romanian artist and writer, Lena Constante, who was unknown to all the students, flowed seamlessly from hooks’s (2019) declaration. In Constante’s (1995) hauntingly poignant memoir, The Silent Escape: Three Thousand Days in Romanian Prisons, she describes her multiple years in solitary confinement, during which she was tortured repeatedly under order of the Communist regime led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Constante (1995) explains, The reason I speak time and again of poetry is that my whole life in prison was infused with it. I had nothing. No paper or ink. The books lasted only a short while. But in this vacuum I had struck a rich vein. Words. The force of words. I had the words and I had the time. A huge amount of time. […] Time lost. […] To allow it to become lost in vain was to lose a part of my life and I wanted to live my life. With this joining of words and time I lived. Survived. I even managed to be happy. Sometimes. (p. 52) Suddenly, words took on greater meaning for my students. They critiqued society’s apparent disregard of the power of language. They questioned their own desensitization to words. And they vowed to remain vigilant in their quests to maintain critical literacy as a guiding principle in both their personal and professional lives. Scholar-Practitioner As I became more comfortable with critical theory, self-doubt began to creep in. Did I really understand this? Were the critical theorists cringing? This is what they wish to avoid – the long-range planning of an individual’s life by a system or someone outside of the individual. Isn’t that what education was, specifically publicly funded preschool? Was I dedicating my life to shape children who’d experienced both horrible and wonderful things in their lives to be who I, a middle-class White woman, wanted them to be? Who was I to define their experiences as horrible or wonderful? Was I robbing children of who they were in the name of helping them be “better?” Was my perspective on better the same perspective as the children’s families and communities? I still ask myself these questions every day as I continue to learn more about theory. I know with thoughtful integration of theory and industry, we can honor both the individual and society. These don’t have to be two isolated paths. Philosopher Ira Shor (2019) speaks to the relevance of reformer John Dewey’s stance on integrating the “ideal” and “real,” the “liberal arts” and the “vocations.” He notes that these can be, “…collapsed into a unified learning field” (Shor, 2019, p. 289) Shor (2019) continues that Dewey specifically is speaking in the context of language, which he purports is a “social activity where theory and experience meet for the discovery of meaning and purpose” (p. 289). This is very similar to Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory and the idea that a child’s environment will influence how and what they think about. I will never proclaim being an expert in critical theory. But I know when I build relationships with communities, families, and individual children and celebrate where they come from, where they wish to go, and most importantly, who they are in this moment in time, we can all move forward together. I know when I interact with children – when I provide opportunities for them to be heard – when I listen, they will grow into who they are meant to be, not who everyone else wants them to be. I cannot support children in growing if I am not growing, too. Professor For the final class assignment, I gave students three options from which to choose: a traditional scholarly paper, a braided essay, or a professional development series on critical theories. I introduced them to the braided essay concept in a previous class, noting that two of their peers in the first and second cohorts had published braided essays from my class in an international and national journal respectively. Regardless of their choice, the students had to incorporate several critical theorists into their work and deeply explore how the theories informed their leadership practice, whether they occupied a position in a school, detention center, or central office. My syllabus contained guidance and clear expectations for each assignment, and I encouraged the students to consult with me about their choices and sense of direction. No matter their choice, the students embraced the challenges of critical theorists and navigated their complexities in our current politically charged society, where even the word critical has become demonized and weaponized. While one student intertwined imagined dialogue from their enslaved ancestors into their braided essay, another shared the perspectives of one of their English-language learners, both compelling approaches to engaging readers in demanding topics. Even those who selected the traditional scholarly paper option shared their vulnerability and willingness to be challenged. As Betty confided to me in our final email exchange of the semester: This was one of the most challenging papers I have ever written because I had to tackle something that I genuinely did not (and still not entirely) understand. It's not often I have to "Read, wonder, wander, and ponder," and I had to do that a lot this semester - I loved every moment of truly being required to think and challenge some perspectives I had that upon reflection, don't make much sense! Thank you so much for being a part of Burriss & Mayers Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 9 No. 4 (2024) DOI 10.5195/ie.2024.449 54 this powerful part of my story! (B. Mayers, personal communication, March 6, 2023) And I am all the richer for students like Betty being a part of my life story, for their trust in me and in the process of critical interrogations. I return to Ira Shor (2019) here as his words aptly conclude Betty’s and my braided essay: A critical writing class is a zone where teachers invite students to move into deepening interrogations of knowledge in its global contexts. […] Critical teaching is not a one-way development, not ‘something done for students or to them’ for their own good. […] Rather, a critical process is driven and justified by mutuality. (p. 291) Indeed, I continue to learn and grow from my students in ways critical theorists value, for in this process both student and educator find their voice, share their lived experiences, and exert agency. REFERENCES Aronowitz, S. (2009). Against schooling: Education and social class. In A. Darder, M. P. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (2nd ed.) (pp. 106-122). Routledge. Bowell, T. (n.d.). Feminist standpoint theory. Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/ Burriss, T. L. (2005). Claiming a literary space: The Affrilachian poets. In D. Miller, S. Hatfield, & G. Norman (Eds.), An American vein: Critical readings in Appalachian literature (pp. 315-336). Ohio University Press. Celikates, R., & Flynn, J. (2023). 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