In 2022, I moved my small family to Ohio for a job. It didn't take long before we realized that we did not belong. While I made the decision early that I would not stay past my one-year contract, I wanted to make the most of my time and give the best to my students.
I met Sarah Nagle, the Creation and Innovation librarian at my university, in the late fall of that year. Sarah runs the Makerspace there, and I was so inspired by the space and Sarah's enthusiasm that I asked if she wanted to partner with me to design a project for my social studies class. She jumped at the chance. Not long after, I was introduced to Cydni Robertson, a postdoctoral scholar in fashion and culture, farther north at The Ohio State. We invited Cydni to join our project, and a beautiful friendship and collaborative team was born!
The result was an interdisciplinary project geared toward assisting the education students in my social studies course to deeply connect with the concepts of culture, intersectionality, and social studies - through the study and creation of textiles. This project, which we titled Weaving Praxis, was so personally and professionally rewarding, we decided to write about it. As we were contemplating this, a call came through for chapters for an edited volume on resisting divide-and-conquer mechanisms in academia. This was exactly what we were looking for! Our entire project was collaborative, and by design, it not only resisted isolation and division within our universities, but it was actively subverting many of the accepted practices in education that separate and compartmentalize us all the time.
We wound up settling on collaborative auto-ethnography, a methodology that allowed us to reflect together on our experience of planning and teaching together, then unpack these reflections to look for deeper meaning. The chapter we have published is the culmination of this work. We also provide a step-by-step appendix that shares how we planned this meaningful project that included so many disciplines and working parts, with recommendations and takeaways for others who are curious about collaboration or who may feel isolated in their practice.
The book - edited by Dr. Dennis Rudnick - is scheduled to drop on July 30th, 2024: pre-order the book, click here.