Integrating Learning and Hummingbird Medicine to Heal Academic Harm

Elizabeth Mendoza; Adria Padilla-Chavez; Beatriz Salazar; Aachey Susan Jurow

doi:10.29333/ejecs/2305

Authors

Elizabeth Mendoza University of Colorado Boulder https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5700-4814
Adria Padilla-Chavez University of Colorado Boulder https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6110-8245
Beatriz Salazar University of Colorado Boulder https://orcid.org/0009-0000-6970-5680
Aachey Susan Jurow University of Colorado Boulder https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6755-5604

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/2305

Keywords:

Healing, Design, Learning, Academic Harm, Hummingbird Medicine, Reframing Failure, Dignity

Abstract

Schooling practices and institutions of schooling have harmed racialized K-12 students, teachers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. How we define learning plays a significant role in understanding and ameliorating this harm. To envision a more hopeful future for education, in this article, we explore the relationship between learning, academic harm, and healing. To do so, we bring insights from Curanderismo—an oral healing and spiritual tradition—and sociocultural perspectives on learning into conversation to foreground the historical and cultural dimensions of learning in everyday practices. To breathe life into these connections, we share three stories inspired by hummingbird medicine, one form of wisdom found in Curanderismo. The stories illuminate the fluidity of time and space to support expansive views of learning and healing, the need to acknowledge the winding paths of learning and how they often grow through missteps and failures, and the need to offer ourselves and our students love as we try to heal ourselves from academic harms. Bringing learning and healing together intentionally can move us toward creating educational systems that allow for the flourishing of people in mind, body, spirit, and heart. We conclude with questions that can guide the design of learning environments characterized by healing and dignity.

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Author Biographies

Elizabeth Mendoza, University of Colorado Boulder

Elizabeth Mendoza, Ph.D., is guided by a desire to integrate healing in learning in her professional and personal life. This includes finding intersections between her training in Curanderismo and her work in learning and community co-design and research. She is a co-founder of Healing, Empowerment, and Love (HEAL), which seeks to heal academic harm.

Adria Padilla-Chavez, University of Colorado Boulder

Adria Padilla-Chávez is a doctoral candidate in Learning Sciences & Human Development, and an instructional coach in a newcomer center near the Denver metro area. She has been a public school teacher for more than twenty years and an advocate for children’s right to their cultural and linguistic practices as part of their learning in public schools. Adria’s research is centered on how to design learning experiences in pursuit of educational dignity.

Beatriz Salazar, University of Colorado Boulder

Beatriz Salazar is a doctoral candidate in the Learning Sciences & Human Development. Beatriz’s research is centered in failure and answering the question, “Who has the social capital to fail?” Throughout her time in graduate school, Beatriz has worked within community based research (CBR) and youth participatory action research (YPAR) to address social justice issues that face communities and youth of color.

Aachey Susan Jurow, University of Colorado Boulder

A. Susan Jurow, Ph.D., is Professor of Learning Sciences & Human Development. In her research, she has studied learning as part of progressive social movements for justice and learning and “un-learning” related to organizing for equity in institutions of higher education. Her passion is working with students to develop their ideas.

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