(Re)Active Praxis: Teaching with Rigorous Imagination When “no education is politically neutral”

Underscored by bell hooks’s assertion that “no education is politically neutral,” this essay describes one teacher educator’s praxis with preservice undergraduate students. We engage with scholarship about desire-based ways of knowing and thick solidarity to articulate our values, connections, and practices for teaching and learning. Students develop rigorous imaginations for educational possibilities, a critical practice for English teachers and teacher educators amid mounting regulation, constraint, and criminalization of social justice praxis. This essay includes a discussion and examples of a social justice vision board project, a curricular tool designed for preservice and inservice preK-12 teachers to articulate their educational values, connections, and practices.