This article is an example of how one preservice teacher (PT) uses self-reflexivity to explore the evocative nature of vulnerability regarding their own biases, prejudices, and privileges in the process of learning to become a teacher. Through poetic self-examination – in teacher education or any other field – the ability to admit honest, often brutal truths about ourselves and/or others strengthens our ability to communicate effectively. Through the process of acknowledging self-reflexive truths, educators not only learn to engage in more authentic ways, but we also better our understandings of the world around us. As educational scholar-practitioners, this self-reflexivity opens space for personal and collective learning.

Dedicated to the people of Minnesota, this article examines one teacher educator’s perspectives on teaching others to teach during a federal occupation of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA, and surrounding communities. This autoethnographic poetic reflection questions how he—and anyone—can focus on a future, when the present is in turmoil. Highlighting average citizens and the pushback against an unwanted, considered by many to be unlawful, invasion of federal officers, under the guise of immigration reform, the poet’s response questions the ability of citizens to move forward, grow, and create during unprecedented crises.

On July 11, 2021, walking across the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis, MN, USA, I came across a piece of street art—public pedagogy—which has lived rent-free in my brain ever since. Through poetry, this article explores the political and personal impacts one piece of graffiti art has on me, a gay, White man, and what it means for me as a teacher educator, reflecting on my own mis/steps in addressing racism, bias, privilege, and meaningful dialogue with and through art.

In 2014, two educators in their graduate program considered the implications of surveillance in two day-in-the-life narratives and reflect on its meaning in their own PK-12 classrooms. A decade later, as teacher–educators, and university faculty in two different states, they reconsider and conceptualize the political and societal implications surveillance now has on marginalized communities in the United States.

This article examines how five secondary education preservice teachers (PTs) explored their past, present, and possible selves through self-reflective poetry regarding different crises. Their exploration; (1) provided space in a teacher education course for understanding different forms of crisis; (2) allowed PTs to self-reflect upon perspectives of crisis in their own lives; (3) prepared PTs to address these crises in their future classrooms; and, (4) allowed teacher educators to examine emotional health and well-being of PTs.

There are moments in history that stop us in our tracks. We are living through one of them today. Using survey data collected from preservice teachers in a Midwest, USA university teacher preparation program before and after the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, these four polyvocal poems, explore the evocative impacts of a presidential election on preservice teachers as they learn to teach, while living through c X ns X rsh X p and the continued erasure of ideas, beliefs, and identities.

Racial turmoil and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests across the United States in 2020 heightened awareness of systemic racism for preservice teachers. Thus, for teacher educators, understanding how geographical psychology can impact preservice teachers is vital to socially just, antiracist teacher education. This article explores through poetic inquiry: 1) if and how preservice teachers see systemic racism relating to themselves; 2) how preservice teachers use “Midwest Nice” as coping mechanisms when confronting emotional issues such as systemic racism; and 3) analysis of preservice teachers’ teacher identity relating to systemic racism and the implications of whiteness with/in teacher preparation.

This article examines the perspectives of 18 preservice teachers in a Midwest, USA university teacher preparation program through poetic inquiry. The polyvocal poetry, created from the transcripts of two focus groups, explores the emotional health and well-being of preservice teachers in their field placements amid crisis, such as the COVID pandemic, systemic racism, and the resulting mental health and financial strains facing students in the aftermath. This article further contemplates a researcher's need to maintain authenticity while working closely with evocative data to construct polyvocal poetry.

This article is an example of how one preservice teacher utilizes poetry as a platform to convey emotion over time. Through reflection- retrospective and prospective-the following poetic triptych examines the past, present, and possible selves of one future educator and her hopes of beginning a teaching career, amid amplified visibility of systemic racism afflicting the Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN metroplex since the murder of George Floyd and subsequent racial strife in the community. Providing poetry as an avenue to discuss emotions of crises and stressors facing society-in teacher education and elsewhere-allows for in-depth self-reflexivity, essential to articulating emotional health and well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the educational landscape. This article offers the model, Crisis Theory with/in Teacher Education Programs (CT-TEP), which examines how the interplay of preservice teachers' stressors and personal coping strategies filtered through their identity provides teacher educators strategies for helping students persevere through crises. Data collected in one teacher education program during the spring 2020 COVID-19 shutdown across the United States illuminates preservice teachers' present and possible selves, through a series of poems demonstrating emotions and coping strategies of student-participants. Implications for teacher educators to focus on possible selves with/in teacher education classrooms as a mechanism for understanding emotional health and well-being is discussed.

In this article, I analyse my self-reflexive examination of my poetry performance calling for the need to have lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) educators serve as role models in the secondary classroom setting as a mechanism to promote social change. I presented an original poetry collection in front of 400+ high school students and educators advocating for the need for queer educators to come out of the proverbial closet, and here I reflect on this act as both poetic inquiry and performance autoethnography, providing a hybrid methodology—Poetic Performative Autoethnography (PPA), while framing the experience and its meaning to both me as participant-researcher and the audience. I include discussion about the importance of/and political nature of representation, the need for space and dialogue, as well as obstacles facing LGBTIQ+ educators in the classroom.

Teaching diversity and social justice can be difficult when working with teacher candidates (TCs) from primarily homogenous areas, with little to no exposure to pluralistic realities. In multicultural classes, TCs often struggle to understand intersections of race, gender, orientation, socioeconomic levels, religion, ability, and citizenship. In this article, an educational studies professor and four undergraduate students discuss their methodological use of Artist/Researcher/Teacher (a/r/tography) to introduce intersectionality to young students in the classroom. The article discusses a/r/tography as a method in teacher education and provides arts-based examples of how intersectionality can be taught in the PK–12 school system.

This article describes how an assistant professor addressed complicated, politically charged issues of social justice during the 2016 Presidential Election to primarily first-year teacher candidates (TCs) in a Multicultural Education course through Poetic Inquiry. The article presents Poetic Inquiry as a pedagogical tool to employ tackling controversial subjects through the use of voice from current events, legitimate news sources, interviews, and the TCs' personal identities, which all articulate diverse concerns with issues on the 2016 campaign trail. Poems within the article include a range of current issues: Whiteness, homophobia, xenophobia, objectification of women, Black Lives Matter, immigration, women's self-perceptions, electorate distrust, and bullying. Using poetry to make meaning from the election campaigns, TCs, as future educators and advocates for students, begin the process of deconstructing pluralistic voices heard in society and the classroom.

Undergraduate students training to become educators—unfamiliar with schooling and student populations beyond their alma mater—center on their own PK-12 milieu, rather than challenge their dispositions to acknowledge varied lived experiences. Their struggle to comprehend identity intersections can complicate diversity and social justice discussions in teacher preparation. Thus, pushing future teachers to better understand other lived experiences, as well as their own levels of privilege, is paramount in preparing them to effectively teach all populations. This article is an autoethnographic study of instructing teacher candidates (TCs) in a multicultural education course to investigate issues of transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex communities—exploring literature, current events, and classroom discussions through poetic inquiry. Analysis of arts-based curriculum interwoven with TC-authored poetry demonstrates: (1) one course’s evolving understanding of TCs’ cisgender privilege; and (2) how privilege impacts TC interactions with gender non-conforming youth.

For 18 years, these words from the former New York politician were clearly displayed above a whiteboard in my high school speech, debate, and English classrooms. As an educator, when students asked, I explained the quotation meant we persuade others through the beauty of language, but the reality of getting things done comes through the utility of language. In a sense, language is two-fold: You need to understand the weight and magnificence of each individual word; moreover, you must marry these words together to make meaning, which is how a substantial argument is made. In the fall of 2015, I conducted a national survey of over 1,000 former high school speech and debate competitors. As I told a colleague, I was drowning in data. It was a good problem to have, but I was not sure how to thoroughly examine the heart of data; how do I make meaning of their experiences? As terminology, “speech and debate” refers to a wide scope of interscholastic high school events: debate, public speaking, and oral interpretation; thus, it is important to consider each focus through different lenses. This article addresses the 276 participants who identified oral interpretation as their preferred event category. Oral interpretation is a term utilized to encapsulate a variety of events, which all focus on performance of literature. Concentrating on events supported by the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA), they range from dramatic and humorous interpretation (memorized one-person performances) to duo interpretation (a memorized two-person performance) to prose and poetry interpretation (one-person performances presented from a manuscript). Although event rules and regulations vary across the United States, participants in these interscholastic events focus on authors’ words, language, and characters to create their own unique presentations of the literary work. As I examined a dataset of such differing lived experiences, it became clear perspectives of alumni fluctuated based on what their specific experiences entailed.