8: Partnerships and Collaborations: A Multifaceted Narrative

Given the various socio-economic, political, and environmental challenges our global society faces, it is critical to cultivate the civic capacity of all stakeholders to use their agency to collaboratively identify sustainable solutions. We provide vignettes from a public, urban-serving research university in the Midwest, revealing how it engages with schools and communities in innovative ways intended to support social justice, racial equity, and economic mobility. Through our vignettes, we underscore the importance of showing up, being flexible, recognizing that schools move at their own pace, and the way forms of intimacy accrue overtime across stakeholders. As trust is formed, the expanding capacity to create sets the stage for the co-construction of knowledge. Challenges to our work involve P-12 classroom imperatives such as scheduling, state testing, personnel turnover and shortages, and less state funding for public schools and higher education. University faculty encounter the narrowing of what counts in workload agreements. Given these contentious times, despite the challenges, school and community partnerships with universities offer a strategic alliance and a critical source of knowledge on educational practices and policies. As evident in the vignettes, this work produces joy and resilience and the collective action among stakeholders necessary to protect, sustain, and further develop them as justice-centered communities of learners.