ABSTRACT
There is growing agreement among educators about the need to move toward more democratic, just, and equitable approaches to building positive classroom communities and learning environments. Yet, there is less clarity about how, toward what, and for/with whom these learning spaces are fostered within schools imbued in and reflective of broader societal contexts. This chapter discusses how racism embedded in teaching and the teaching profession reifies white supremacist, colonial, capitalist, and cisheteropatriarchal normativity in schooling contexts. It considers the power of Women of Color (WOC) feminisms as an alternative theoretical, ontological, and pedagogical approach in conversation with equity-centered frameworks for realizing and co-creating collective and radical learning spaces. To elucidate how WOC feminisms advance racially just and healing learning spaces within schooling contexts, the chapter offers the concept of collective intersectional care, defined as practices that nourish the knowledges, life pathways, full personhoods, and collective wellness of multiply marginalized students and communities.
