Occasional Paper Series

In 2020, as COVID-19 made us pause, it also gave us pause, shedding light on inequities in schooling and society. As Roy (2020) notes, it “brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.” However, the tragic patterns of inequity unfolding before our eyes were not new; we were witnessing “the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years” (para. 8). Inequities that have long existed in Black, Indigenous, and other communities of Color were accentuated by the pandemic, and the exacerbation of these inequities remains devastating in and beyond the United States.

As schools throughout the country and the world closed, I witnessed and even yearned for a return to “normality,” attempting to stitch the future to the past (Roy, 2020). Yet my own yearnings for normality were soon jolted; one could say I came to my senses. Initial short-term closures stretched on for months, and as an Afro-Latina educator, researcher, mother, and engaged citizen, and also as a woman and human being, inspired by Arundhati Roy, I came to realize that “nothing could be worse than a return to normality” (para. 48). After all, normality—in schools and schooling—has long been marked by damage, inequities, and dysfunctionality.

Rather than a return to an idyllic notion of normality, I found myself yearning for a more just future, considering: What if we were to reject a return to an oppressive past marked by harmful practices, pathologizing portrayals, and damaging pedagogies for Black, Indigenous, and other communities of Color? Recognizing that there is more expertise distributed in communities than in any one person— however educated or schooled an individual might be—I turned to researchers, teachers, mothers, and children to imagine education anew, taking up Roy’s invitation to re-envision the pandemic as a portal.