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This chapter revolves around a Zoom conversation between Tim Martindell and Cheryl Craig to which Chestin T. Auzenne-Curl added field-based evidence and reflective comments. The exchange between Martindell and Craig had to do with how Tim facilitated the Writers in the Schools (WITS) writers in conjunction with Tina and Maryann who led the WITS Collaborative. The embedded snapshots and excerpts stemmed from the field notes we accumulated during the life of the project. The conversation discusses some of the fine points of facilitation as well as the boundary areas where what unfolds fringes on the unknown. Near the end, hope for the future is discussed.

As part of a larger study into the influence of a Writers in the Schools (WITS) professional development consultancy, this narrative inquiry began just as Hurricane Harvey, the second most costly hurricane to hit the United States, devastated the Texas Gulf Coast in August 2017 and drew to a close in late 2020 during the COVID-19 global pandemic. This chapter explores the 2017–2018 school-year interactions between WITS Collaborative writer, Mary Austin (pseudonym), and six writing teachers with whom she worked at McKay High School (pseudonym) in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. With record flooding and widespread damage causing school-opening delays, teachers, students, and WITS consultants navigated a rip tide of emotions as they strived to balance educational/professional needs and duties with personal loss and unexpected financial burdens. This inquiry examines how WITS teacher professional development was carried out in the midst of these trying circumstances.

Craig and Auzenne-Curl reflect on how their individual experiences and personal practical knowledge developed in context over time contribute to a collective review of the backdrop of the stories of experience shared in this volume. The chapter provides context for the study that inspired the collection and a preview of the chapters yet to come.

Teacher retention and continued teacher growth and development have long been critical global issues in education. The recent pandemic crisis and subsequent “great resignation” (Lodewick, 2022) have returned our attention to the need for positive and enriching educational landscapes that promote teacher collaborative reflection, knowledge, and growth in order to sustain teachers in the field. This chapter explores the ongoing teacher learning that has occurred within two knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) in the United States. It begins with an overview of Craig's early work with teachers, during which her conceptualization of knowledge communities emerged. According to Craig, knowledge communities are safe, collaborative spaces that cohere around teachers' intra/inter-school dialogue and their storying/restorying (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996, 1998) of experiences. Additionally, knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) begin with originating events, allow teachers' experiences (Dewey, 1938) to resonate with others in the group, feature reciprocity of members' mindful responses, and promote the development of shared ways of knowing. Equally important, knowledge communities evolve and change, fuel ongoing reflection in community, and bring moral horizons into view. Employing these knowledge community qualities as our lens, we examine the interactions of the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy. The Portfolio Group is a teacher/teacher educator/researcher group formed in 1998 during a US education reform era (Craig, Curtis et al., 2020). Its sister group, the Faculty Academy, is a cross-institutional, cross-discipline higher education group of teacher educators/researchers formed in 2002 (Craig, Turchi et al., 2020). Employing a parallel stories representation (Craig, 1999), exemplars (Mishler, 1990) from both groups show how teacher collaborative groups have the capacity to be safe spaces in which critical professional dialogue, reflective exchanges, and generous scholarship occur among members. Furthermore, they are nurturing spaces in which teachers can thrive and be their best-loved selves (Craig, 2013; Schwab, 1954/1978). These two groups exemplify the ways in which knowledge communities support teacher collaboration, promote ongoing teacher growth and development, and foster teacher sustainability.

In this chapter, we discuss how an outside writing program was able to assist the stakeholders at a local middle school and the story behind the leaders involved in the process. This program was part of a larger system of “interventions” geared toward improving student success and teacher efficacy. Traditional interventions (after-school tutorials, grouping by state assessment scores, test-taking strategies) were viewed as lacking when it came to their impact on the campus's mostly students of color. Knowing the potential impact of a solid reading and writing program on urban youth, the faculty on the campus teamed with a Writers in the Schools (WITS) writer who proposed several promising practices. The contributions of a professional writer, real-world examples, and ongoing teacher professional development with support contributed to creating a knowledge community of writers that, in addition to creating more scholarship for students and staff, manifested itself in more minority students performing at the highest levels on the state accountability assessments.

The notion of excessive teacher entitlement arose out of concerns with trying to understand and find a language to describe the paradox of faculty/teachers' intransigence in the face of the flexibility required of them to promote the learning and well-being of all in the institutions they serve. Through unique narratives, the authors trace the parallel paths they negotiated in their challenging curricular journeys, which led them to unmute teachers' voices cached in reform stories. The first author, Tara Ratnam, coined the term “excessive teacher entitlement” to characterize the putative deficit view of teachers that is projected onto them and how the concept of the teachers' “best-loved self,” which the second author, Cheryl Craig, developed, embraces teachers' input and complements “excessive teacher entitlement,” albeit from a different direction and perspective. This introduction also provides a bird's-eye view of the diverse ways and contexts in which leading international authors examine excessive teacher entitlement in the 17 chapters that follow.

This concluding chapter discusses how the unfurling of the Writers in the Schools (WITS) Collaborative took place against a backdrop of four pandemics: COVID-19, the movement against racial injustice, climate change, and the inevitable economic despair that spills over into the field of education. The work looks backwards on the chapters in this book and their findings. It also looks forward to the lessons that the WITS Collaborative has taught – and will teach – as it moves toward a future unknown, yet much anticipated.