ABSTRACT
In this chapter we draw on teaching, learning, and research within the One World 1 after-school program at a large suburban high school in the Northeastern region of the U.S. nation-state. We generatively take on how difficult the CSP project of supporting critical literacies can be in educational practice as we aim to sustain youth and communities. Specifically, we examine the role of adults within youth-led and transnational educational spaces as deserving of attention and critical inquiry (i.e., “adult ally” within the One World program, what we refer to as a “lifeway sustainer” within the realm of CSP). We question what it means to enact CSP to decenter the White and hegemonic gazes, and reflect upon how power was spoken about, felt, enacted, and imagined. We aim to push forward what it means to engage in decentering as a process rather than as a stance, considering how pedagogical theory often neglects the real-time social exchanges that result in contested visions of collective liberation.
