Enacting Critical Care: Educators Caring for Urban Communities During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, discourse emphasized a lost generation and learning loss. However, community educators worked tirelessly to meet the needs of youth, families, and communities. However, there needs to be more research documenting the actions educators took to support their communities. Using critical care, we characterize the actions of community educators in an urban west coast city and an urban midwestern city and the sociopolitical factors that influenced them. Our goal is to illustrate how educators sustained communities during a crisis. We offer implications for professional learning opportunities for educators that emphasize ways to enact critical care.