 Hello and welcome to the session. I'm so excited to be joined by Mia and Maha to share with us a session on building appreciative narratives of equity and care in the open. This is one of our first workshop sessions here at our conference today and I'm really looking forward to seeing you all participate. The session is going to run a little bit differently and I'm going to let Mia and Maha explain in their own time how things work. But for now, a warm welcome to you all. I'll post some helpful links in the chat in a minute for all those who've already joined and I'm going to hand over here to Maha and to Mia. So welcome to you both. Fantastic to have you with us and enjoy the session. Thank you, Maren. Thank you, Maren. Welcome everyone. Feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat because it kind of feels weird that we don't know who is here. We know Johanna Funk is here. Hello. Oh great. We can see you when you post in the chat so it's nice to see that. And feel free to tweet about the session. These are our Twitter handles. We're going to be talking about building appreciative narratives of equity and care in the open. And Maren will put in the link to the slides. Hi Martha, hi Wendy. Hi Wendy, hi Martha, hi Francis, hi Laura. Yeah, all the lovely people that we care about equitably. Hi Lorna, hi Gabby. Hi Sarah, Lorna, Gabby. Okay, we need to stop, right? Yeah. It's very difficult to stop, but yes, okay, cut off. Up early from Texas. Okay. This is a little tricky to navigate, but the first thing we want to ask you is, how are you feeling today? Tell us in the chat. Hi Katherine, hi Kate, hi Jonathan. It's really hard not to do that. I know. Tell us in the chat, how are you feeling today? Hi Joe, hi Johanna. Everybody's saying hello. Oh, hi Patricia. So happy you're part of this whole entire conference. Relief to be with all of you. Yeah, I feel that kind of relief in meetings with people who are kindred versus some of the work meetings that are stressful. Yeah, yeah. Feeling good because it's spring. Yeah. Physically exhausted and spiritually excited. I can relate to that. Grateful for small kinds of justice here in the US, yes. Yes. Waking up with a sense of relief. Waking up with a sense of relief that there's accountability. Oh, Debbie's breaking away from supporting duty. Sneaky. Up since 4.30 a.m. Oh my goodness. Some people need coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Good morning from this side. Good afternoon to many of you. And yeah, there's probably other time zones as well represented at some point. So hi everyone. So for today, we just did the checking in on how you guys are feeling. Keep that going as long as you like. Like keep using the chat as long as you like. Apparently we can't type for you in the chat, but Marin can type for us. So if we want to type to you something, we'll do it. But we can see your chat as you can see. And then we're going to talk to you about the equity care matrix that Mia and I started working on at the OpenEd conference, but we're developing it further because this is the OER conference. So we have to do it. And then we're going to head over to Zoom to do a breakout room activity that hopefully will be fun and interesting for all of you and then come back here in the main room. We're going to try to keep time. Hopefully, inshallah. If something needs to figure it out, that hopefully will be all right. So we wanted to start with a quote from Bell Hooks. Teachers who care, who serve their students, are usually at odds with the environment where and they teach. And so Mia and I, before our OpenEd keynote, tweeted this out. What is equity without care? What is care without equity? Some of you have actually participated in responding to this and we're going to show you some of the tweets that came from that and the model that we developed and where we're going with it and how we want to expand it. So the first question we want to ask you is, what is care without equity? And we'd like for you to type that in the chat after you have a think. What is care without equity? Even if you've answered it before, you may think something different today. Yeah, we know about that. It could be patriarchal. Johanna says it's performance. Pity, paternalistic, really important words there. Thank you so much, Marin, for highlighting those comments. That's so cool. Yeah, performative. Performative and performance is very funny because Mia and I, recently, we're talking about how Sarah Ahmed uses that term. But I think she uses it for equity without care. So it's interesting that people, colonial, I love that one. Lots of hard work, Tanya. Yep. Oh, Anna is AC Page. I just realized that's Anna Page. Tanya, lots of hard work. A mask, Autumn says. I like that. Something we see a lot of here in the States. Sarah is saying lots of care is not equitable, like family relationships. That's a very good angle to take on it as well. All right, I move on to the next one. Unacknowledged labor, Lorna says. Unacknowledged labor, for sure. And what is equity without care? So we want you to think the reverse. What is equity without the care? No recognition of structure, Catherine says. Laura Gibbs says scary. There's infantilization, which I think is care without equity, right, Lou? And Anna Page is saying exclusive, which I think is also care without equity. Gabby says an academic exercise when thinking about equity without the care. That's interesting and good. Lip service, Teri says. Yeah. And Lorna is saying both are performative, like things both are performative. Joe Murphy is saying algorithmic. Oh, Catherine was saying that was the first question, Mia. Sorry, too slow. There might be lag too, so. Matt's talking about Spivak and speaking for people rather than letting them speak for themselves. There's instrumental from Francis, flag waving from Laura Gibbs, soulless from Page. A spreadsheet from Johanna. That was so cool. That's a new one. I don't think I've heard that one, but I know what you mean, like checkboxes, right? Checking boxes. Yeah, it's all about ticking the box. Yep. I love it. Yeah, exactly. I think we're going to use that one. Can we use it, Johanna? Permission to use that one? Because we haven't heard anything like that one. Actually, is there a way to save this chat? If someone can save the chat for us, I'd be very, very happy. And then we'll ask permission to reuse some of these terms. Okay. So in the crowdsourcing, so many amazing responses came, just like this moment we're having now. We'd like to highlight Kate Denial's response because it sort of opens up both directions. So she says, care without equity is fundamentally unjust. It's a fundamentally unjust practice that tries to place a bandaid over a deep rupture and pretend the injury is taken care of. Meanwhile, when you're thinking about equity without care, she's acknowledging that it can be harmful. It privileges a goal over the humanity of those engaged in reaching that goal. And then Kate Bowles reminded us that both care and equity are design choices made by those with the power to choose how others will be treated. So neither of them fully challenge the power, the person who's powerful that gets to choose. Both are trapped in the nexus of power. So we often refer to Nancy Frazier's work about the concept of poverty of participation. So we love this quote from Desmond Tutu, I'm not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights. So it's about this coming to the table, who's invited to the table, who's listening at the table. That's the metaphor. But we would like to argue that, you know, what about the creation of the menu itself? You know, who's choosing the ingredients? And we also found that Mel Nottings has a concept of care with parity of participation herself, because she says do unto others as they would have done unto them. And so this is sort of trying to oppose this patriarchal. Is it patriarchal? Patriarchal? Anyway, patriarchal approach to care where the carer assumes they know what the other wants. But actually, this in this case, listens to them and gives them the opportunity to say how they would like to be cared for. So Kano Algi says, care is ameliorative and often the responsibility of or experienced by the individual, while equity is transformative and has systemic impacts. So often we think of equity in the realm of policy and institutions, care in the realm of individuals. And so me and I, when we were looking at all these quotes, we came up with this matrix that we're still developing. It's always a work in progress. And so this is the latest version of it. And so we're thinking equity without care is what Tanya Elias talks about in the sense that it could be structural, could be ingrained in our ways of thinking so that it cannot be undone by carelessness. So she's thinking of it as systemic in the same way that Tsukaina said. And Donna Lanko also talks about this. She's like, I don't need my institution to care for me. I need equity. I don't need empathy. I need justice. And I kind of feel this is a little bit of what just happened yesterday, right in the US. You need justice, empathy of individuals. You need justice in a system, right? But these are the positive ways of looking at it. But there are also ways of seeing it as tokenism, diversity, theater, performance and things like that that you all have also mentioned and window dressing, lip service. Go ahead, Mia. In the lower, like bottom right hand corner, you see that care is paired off with inequity. So, you know, think the idea of giving care in a context in which maybe that isn't covered in a systemic or policy orientation. So, Autumn says, care is a coping mechanism that arises in environments without equity. And Catherine has said, care without equity is care for a few, the few who are seen. This means less or no care for those who are less visible, already marginalized. Care without equity, writ large exacerbates inequality. So, it's selective and certainly sort of drains the individual who's dispensing care. And we kind of feel parity of participation is definitely, in our opinion, a way of doing justice in care and also intentionally equitable hospitality, which the co-directors of virtually connecting talk about, is ways of trying to address both systemic equity issues and also to embody care in the ways that we try to do that. Mm-hmm. And then finally, in the lower left hand corner, we have the nexus of no-care inequity in systems and we know that is ultimately systemic injustice. So, just putting it all together in a cleaner form over here and we will move on to this. So, equity work is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a lifelong commitment. And we have some quotes here, one from my graduate student, Sonanda, who says, if you care about equity, you do more than just say it. You share the importance of it and you take steps to begin integrating and enacting acts of it in your daily life. You demonstrate that it's not a sprint, but it's a marathon. It's the long game. Equity is a long game and it's a marathon of goodness and learning. Jasmine Roberts says, if you care about equity, you realize there's no shortcuts to this labor. It's a lifelong commitment to socially just student experience. And we didn't know Jasmine was going to be keynoting the conference. We also found this quote from White in Toronto about justice needing care, because justice requires the empathy of care in order to generate its principles. So, Mia and I have been thinking about where people were thinking that equity without care would be okay at least. We're thinking that doesn't actually work. So, here are some broad conclusions. Mia and I wrote an article and Mia is going to start us off with one of them. Sure. So, equity is multidimensional. This is acknowledged by Nancy Frazier. And oppression is multidimensional. So, essentially, injustice lives in varying spaces, economic, cultural, political. Oppression, as we know, is intersectional. So, we have to think about that complexity when we're thinking about the convergence of both care and equity. And then oppression also occurs at those multiple levels. If you're aware of those four eyes of oppression, you're internalized, interpersonal, institutionalized, and ideological. And so, therefore, work on equity also needs to occur on multiple levels, systemic levels, and interpersonal levels as well. And that's the work of Borski's equity literacy. So, this one's important. Care is not monolithic. Care can be harmful. So, when we get into this, we start to think about the carer's goals, right? There's ideas like virtuous care. Oh, do I look like I'm a caring person? Or instrumental care, which is, you know, I feel the responsibility, but my dispositional leaning is not to nurture. Care can be distant and professional. So, sort of like what you see in geriatric care, or care can be focusing on things that are visible. We see that in the medical or healthcare profession quite a bit. Body is the focus, but not the soul. And care can be weaponized in the ways that Autumn Keynes and Cindy Richard talk about by, you know, a lot of ed tech companies who claim to be doing something to help students learn, but actually really harming. And carers can be exploited and require care themselves. This one came out for some of you, like a sort of effective labor, right? Like the people who care take on more of a burden of care. They get exploited for it, and everyone else doesn't do anything. There's no equity. Um, finally, or not finally, there is power in relationships involving care. That's an important acknowledgement. Care can be patronizing, patriarchal. Francis brought that up early on. You know, care can carry that. I fix that. I'm going to fix this mentality. And a Korean care worker incomplete if the recipients of the effort are not themselves empowered to participate fully. So examples of equity in care, inequalities in access to educational development support worldwide. Also urgent need for community building online with care and equity. And we've been working hard at that in our own realm. So if you didn't know about this project, Mia, Autumn and I, and a lot of other people participated in this, created these community building resources with demos to help people figure out what to do, you know, if they were teaching online for the first time, and I didn't know how to do community building online because not everyone has enough factory development support to do that. So this is one example of us trying to tackle a systemic issue with care, um, by using open, right? Openness as a solution to systemic inequality. All right, so we are about to head over to Zoom. I want to take a look at the chat. We're doing good on time. So I'd like to head over to, I'm just going to look at the chat as I, or actually, Mia, you look at the chat while I set up Zoom. Sure. And we're going to get you guys to go three minutes in trios just to say hello, so that the next time you go to the breakout rooms, you can focus on the task. And so, and I had it. Marin will share the, maybe I can stop sharing my screen. Marin can share the links to the Zoom. Absolutely. I'll put it in the chat. So we're going into this other space, but we're continuing on, so just click the link. I'll send that to everybody in the chat now, and I'll also stay in here for any later finals. Okay, I am in Zoom now. Can you hear me in the stream yard? Yes, but I'll, um, I can remove you from the screen now. So people are welcome to start coming in. Great. I hope that link is easy to, all right, I'm starting to admit. See you in 20 minutes, Mara. Mia, are you leaving as well? Yes, I'm, I'm entering the other space. Great. I'll see you all there. So there's the session chat now. I've put the link to the Zoom room in, and I'll put a notice up here. The session will stay live, and we'll see you back here in 20 minutes. Hi, Mara. Did you need anything? Thanks. We're good. I think we're good. Ma has probably, like, uh, getting those slides up so that we can tell everyone what we're going to do in breakout room. In essence, we're going to be telling stories. Let's send them, let's send them to breakout rooms to say, uh, hello first, and then I'll set up everything else while they're in three minutes. So three minutes, that's just like one minute for each person to say hi. Okay. Everyone gets to say hello, and that's it. And then we'll come back and start working together. Mia, you're going to end up in one of the rooms, okay? That's confusing, because I don't want to be, like, using power, but I do want to guide in a way that's thoughtful and good for everyone in our community, because some of that stress has been seeping into our experiences as a community in just interactions and classes, and it's complicated, right? Everyone's coming back. Great. I think we did something wrong with the time, but we'll be okay. Welcome back, everyone. I'm sorry, the slides were not editable. I just realized that, like, I'm so sorry. So initially, welcome back. I'm sorry about the slides. It's always happens. It's like, no matter how many times you do this, this will happen to you, like, 10% of the time. Thank you, Kathy. Oh, Kathy, thank you so much. So we were going to send you back for five minutes to try to bring out common themes among your different stories, but your stories may have been quite different from each other. Lou was actually starting to do that in our main breakout room, but because we're sort of running out of time, I'm going to send you for three minutes to do, and then we'll go back to the main room and everyone will share in the chat. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah? All right. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. It's working. Hi, everyone. Are you back? All right. So we have about, yeah, about 15 minutes, which is not bad, to hear from you about some of the themes that came out. I'm so sorry about the slide deck. If you have a minute to go back and write some stuff, I saw some of you already did that. So if you want to share something, go ahead and share it in the chat. I feel so agile popping through platforms. So what were some of the things that came out in your sessions? Like in our main room, Gihad Bumicroft, and there were some interesting new terms that came out. Gihad, you want to talk about some of the other people types? Lou told a wonderful story of a colleague who was in a supervisory position who she felt was genuine and very wonderful to work with. And there was a kind of public forum in which she hadn't seen this person for a long time. It might have been, you know, like something that might have been forgotten, the connection, et cetera. This person was very public and gracious about their connection, and they came together in a way that was very fulfilling to her in this public space. And it would have been something that was quite easily kind of, you know, she's the center of attention in this space and could have easily just sort of moved beyond her. So we were talking about the issue of power, but what she said was that that's a moment of solidarity and coalition. Because in a sense, it's sort of, you know, speaking to that sense of connection publicly is speaking to the way we're all in this together and working together. So that was an interesting navigation of power structures and the public private aspect of it. You know, how would it be different if it was in a private space that welcome hello versus in a place very public? We were thinking about that. It's just a small anecdote around these issues. A lot of the comments before Frances's comments were about, like, the jumping between Zoom and here. But this one is about the topic. The issue of anonymity came up in our breakout, and that's something that Frances brings up in general a lot and has made me think about a lot. And she's saying that has care equity implications. Sharing was easy in small group, but tricky to share in public side. Okay, that's fine. And that's totally okay if you didn't want to, yeah, to share particular stories in that way. That's a good point, and we should keep that in mind. Like, we don't always have to use every story. Sometimes it's just useful to listen and enrich us. It doesn't have to go out of the room. So you're kind of lucky that the slides weren't editable. What you were saying behind your back. Gabby, the word that came up in our group from Autumn, with a double M, by the way, was recognition. Public greetings sound like an example of that. Yeah, going into a university setting with equity is important to build on the growth of education as a whole. Yeah, so Patricia's acknowledging that institutional policies are kind of the foundation work for any caring work that comes there after. It's, if caring is the glue, but there has to be that sort of structure, the bones of those intentions. Frances is asking that she could share them anonymously. Yeah, sure, if you're okay with that, you won't get recognition for sharing the story. But yes, please, if you're willing to share the story anonymously, that would be great. Lou is also reminding us of the book she's reading. And Anna Page, also recognition was something that featured in the stories she and Patricia told. Okay, that's interesting. I don't think we've talked about recognition at all in our page. Yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact, this is an exciting kind of pathway for us to start to think about. This is what does recognition mean in the act of care and in the realm of institutional ambitions towards equity? Absolutely. And yes, Catherine is making that connection to Nancy Fraser, because the cultural misrecognition, right? That's what it is when you misappropriate a culture or you don't recognize a culture altogether. So I think I'm actually going to meet with these people again and talk about it a little bit more. Tania talked about the importance of building relationships. And that's also like, I think what Mel Nodding talks about in terms of relational care versus virtuous care. Let's see here. Johanna was saying, witnessing how students with different experiences receive equity in care. Yes. So that's actually the whole, you know, carers have their own intentions, motivations, etc. They're at play. What are their goals? And then this kind of, when we come together in community, how is that received by those who are on the receiving end of care? Is it distributed equitably or is the intention to do that? But then the perception of how it's received, misunderstood, these things become very complicated. So an example that I'll give from my own personal experience is just a quick one is, as a mentor, as someone who directs many people in their MA or their graduate thesis, I work very hard to pay attention to each project as much as I can and there's a lot on my plate. And yet there might be a case wherein you offer some kind of advice but that advice is not taken. And then that advice then is sort of seen as, there's a misperception in the way that you dole out your feedback, etc. And this is very difficult. So I'm conscious of the fact that there are many other stories coming in but that mentorship role is a very complex minefield for this issue of equity policy and care. I'm going to read these upside down so that's going to be easier for Mara to highlight them. So Kathy was saying about the importance for people to have agency to not accept care. And that's a really important point. Again, do unto others as they would have done unto them. I think our children probably often feel like we're not be showing unto them that they want to be done, especially as they grow older and we still cuddle them or whatever. And then I like Verena talking about a theme of reciprocal care that came out in hers. And again, Nell Nottings talks about this so much, even when there are power relationships, even with a mother and child or a teacher and student, there is room for reciprocity. It's not equal reciprocity but there is room to recognize and show the caregiver that the care is working for you or you're appreciating your other side of that. And Ana Pei just talking about recognition that breaks down through hierarchies. Frances, you are right. You are always right about these things. We should have maybe said at the beginning, if you want to share, give us your notes. You don't have to share. Someone can decide to keep it public. And then it's up to you whether you want to be acknowledged or to keep it anonymous. And if I ever do an activity like this again, I will take that into account. And of course, one of the other things, and Kate Bowles is not here but she would have told me, that maybe sometimes someone shares a story that others could be triggered by. So maybe also let people know you don't share the most tragic experience you've ever had. I don't know you that might actually trigger them. So thank you, Frances, for always. We're shining people who does that to me. Yeah. Well, but we're finding process and practice. Yeah. All right, Tanya, like that. Yeah, that's really interesting, Tanya. Maybe we need to create places and spaces where care goes in all directions. Not so much caregivers, caretakers, like emanating from one source. This is the complexity of power involved. Care is not exempt from power, and that's the problem. Yeah. And there are relationships that are naturally supposed to be like that? Supposed to be like marriage or whatever. Or like teachers in a department together. But in reality, there's underlying power, whether it's power in terms of hierarchy or power in terms of identity, male-female, there's that already, the gender issue. With teachers in an apartment, like the one who's more experienced or the one who's from the Ivy League College, or you know what I mean? All of those other things come into play. Actually, I think the open spaces have more space for that kind of non-hierarchical relationships, but they're still create their own hierarchies, right? And it's Bonnie Stewart's work, and a lot of our work over here, we recognize that even though they're supposed to be more equitable, because we don't report to each other, but there's still other kinds of power playing here. And those two are always in the floor, yes. Sometimes care can be just bearing witness, giving attention, exactly, Louise. Especially if we aren't in a position of changing things, we can care even if powerless, and that can be powerful. I often, in the chat we had with Lou and Maha, we were, I talked about the fact that care is exhausting because so much of it is bearing witness and paying attention, listening, which is, it exacts a lot from your humaneness. It requires all of you all the time, and that I'm hyper aware of as I move through my own life. Autumn is talking about recognizing the third space. Yes, so the cultures, yeah. That's so important. And then Joe Murphy is saying, so just one important thing is that power can be exercised in a caring way, but we need to, yes. So I found this article by Nicholas Burbules called Theories of Power and Education that talks about all the different ways philosophers have tackled this issue of power because it's not always that power is something someone has and someone doesn't, but there are some ways in which we're all exercising power in different ways. And I need to reread that article, but it talks a little bit about what you're also saying, but then power exercised in a caring way can also be in a patronizing way. And that's a little bit, again, this weaponization of care that I think is exercised in families, exercised in societies, like exercised with education and educational technology sometimes as well. But of course, a lot of us exercise power all the time, right? Or we believe we are and hope we are, but the leaves and what's a beautiful observation? I think the observation is the power of attention. The importance of attention. Should we look up that hashtag? Thinking environment? Recognition, obviously. All right, we have two minutes left. We do have references at the end of the presentation. We can't see your screen just now, but I'm very happy to, all the link is already in the chat, and I'll just post it again, so everybody has to link to the slides. So, yeah, you guys, that was an amazing session. Yeah, Jill came late, but she said something really important here. Yeah, those last questions I love. She said, labor often falls to people with precarious contracts, women, POC, or many other responsibilities, especially things like diversity, equity, inclusion. Yes, for sure. And she asked this important question, how can we make this shift systemic considering equity for educators too? And it's a hard question. It's a parody of participation because you want the most marginalized to make the decisions, but at the same time, you don't want them to carry all the labor. And I think what happens in institutions is that they give these people of color the responsibility, but they don't give them resources and they don't give them funding or other people, and they don't try to change the entire culture, and they ask this one or two people to fix it. It's like star-making trapped. There can be stars that are trapped in a box, right? Oh, wow. That's a place I know well. Okay, it's one minute, and I want to give hugs and kisses and I'm part of everyone. Thank you all for being so thoughtful with us and just really enriches our work as we continue thinking about this and trying to figure out this complex nexus. Thank you, Maren, for this wonderful opportunity, and thank you. I know Louie's drum is also one of the organizers that we all organize this conference for letting us play around with platforms. Yes, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you with us and on behalf of everybody and all together here in the room, thank you so much for joining Maha and Miha for what's been a very thoughtful poking workshop. We hope you enjoyed the rest of the conference and we'll see you all soon. Bye. Nom, nom, nom.