Weaving Care Threads: Matrixial Encounters in Teacher Professional Learning

The need for increased care in today’s classrooms is becoming undeniable. Yet, teacher shortages, budget cutbacks, and mental health crises makes injecting care into our field feel evermore demanding and depleting. What if abundant and systemic care was at our fingertips? This article shares the voices and processes of six seasoned, “non-artist” educators as they co-created a learning space that prioritized a relational, social-based, caring sensibility through art-care practices. The author brings the lens of Ettinger's Matrixial Theory to her practitioner inquiry into caring affect through Spontaneous Creation-Making (Bickel & Fisher, 2023) with promising and pragmatic implications for teacher educators.