In January 2022, while building reliability for our PreK inclusion study, I drew my first life map. I drew the tenure track as a jail—black and white, with vertical pillars.

The discomfort was so immediate that I drew a second, safer version to share with teachers. I was asking participants to be vulnerable about their educational journeys while hiding my own.

Three years later, I'm sitting with what that first map revealed about researcher positionality and the ecology of institutions of higher education.

What 272 teachers taught me about invisible infrastructure

Liminal spaces—those thresholds where you never quite belong—aren't just places of struggle. They're sites of insight that reveal what institutions miss when they only measure what's familiar.

What becomes possible when we design with people from liminal spaces rather than for them?

EI/ECSE faces devastating federal cuts that demand our fierce attention and action. What if we centered relational infrastructure as we work to protect, strengthen, and rebuild?

This practice and website are dedicated to my daughter. She is only four, but she has already been my greatest teacher—showing me in real-time what I've known in my bones but couldn't quite articulate since I was a little one myself.