CENTERING BLACK CHILDREN’S WORLDMAKING VISIONS: Considering What It Means to Co-Facilitate Liberatory Space to Freedom Dream with Black Children

In this chapter, we conceptualize our role as a collective of Black scholars preparing to engage in a large-scale, national study that centers Black children’s worldmaking visions in recommendations for educational policy, praxis, and pedagogy. As we prepare to engage in this collective dreaming with children, we believe it is essential for us to interrogate our position in this work if we are to truly center Black children’s perspectives. Through a series of “kitchen-table talks,” this chapter centers our reflections of three essential considerations for adults co-creating freedom dreaming spaces with children: (1) How can adults truly cocreate liberatory spaces with children? (2) If we are to cocreate liberatory spaces for Black freedom dreaming, how must we extend our ancestral (re)connections to heal our minds, bodies, and spirits? (3) How must we cocreate space to listen, learn, share, and build alongside children to fully realize the goal of co-facilitating a space for transformative freedom dreaming? Our collective dialogue illuminated the importance of listening to, and redistributing power with, children while extending our ancestral connections as we engage in the critical work of worldbuilding alongside children.