Bridging the potential-realization gap: one educator’s journey toward a praxis for personal and collective liberation

Abstract

My journey as an educator has followed a long, arduous path, laid on a rocky foundation of racial trauma and disability. It started well enough, as I tutored, coached, and mentored younger people. We engaged with each other in intimate and meaningful ways, all benefiting from boosts in self-esteem and self-efficacy. This motivated me to become a teacher, but as I crossed the threshold into the Institution, it marked a clear delineation of power, placing me and my students on opposite sides. This journey has been mediated by a stark divide between mind and body, manifest in racial crisis, emotional turmoil, and righteous indignation. All of this was informed by a potential-realization gap — between what seems possible versus what actually is — internalized as a hovering sense of inadequacy and externalized as a deep disillusionment with people and the world. Where before it had felt like a calling, education became an outlet, a raison d'être, and later, a target for my rage. In seeking a way to reconcile these disparities I’ve had to wade through toxic environments, spaces of collective trauma and bureaucratic rot, where any attempts to make change were usually met with fierce resistance. Lost in all of this were the young people I was ostensibly fighting for, yet for so long failed to recognize as agents in their own liberation. Hopes dashed against the rocks of some distant shore, my journey nearly ended in cynicism and defeat. Until a vision for healing and reconciliation shimmered on the horizon.

Keywords

• mind-body split
• potential-realization gap
• individualism
• racial trauma
• participatory action research