After Whiteness by Willie James Jennings

We live building / with the motions that / compose a living or a / dying

The work of building in education touches the deepest structures of personhood, moving its way through the sinews of hope and desire, longing and fear, all bound up in the irrepressible energy that forms at the intersection of teachers, students, and administrators. There at that meeting place, thinking and feeling and acting layer upon each other, spiraling up and down. Those spiraling motions never stop. Like the wind, they can be incredibly creative or dreadfully destructive. They can facilitate healing or harm. By spiraling motions, I am referring to the energy constantly unleashed by the actual daily operations of an educational institution. This chapter explores how we might reshape those spiraling motions toward life by reframing the daily operations of a school inside a new vision of edification. We urgently need a new vision of edification informing our daily work that builds people toward each other.