A branch of ITOC
The Well-Being
Collective
Educators of Color carry the racial climate of their schools in their bodies. The Well-Being Collective is the part of ITOC that tends to that — a place to build well-being and community together, and to treat both as part of the work of racial justice.
Facilitated by Altagracia Montilla, ITOC’s Healing and Wellness Coordinator.
About our garden
Place is physical. Space is spiritual.
The garden is the image the Collective works inside. We join from different places across the country and across circumstance, and each time we meet we build one space together — made new by whoever shows up.
These gatherings restore hope and energy by making room for connection and wellness. That room is where imagination comes back, and where healing becomes a practice held in common instead of one more task to finish alone.
Altagracia Montilla founded the Well-Being Collective in 2023, together with ITOC’s leadership, as the place inside ITOC where educators tend to themselves and to each other.
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One
Solidarity
In a profession where many feel unheard, and in schools that wear down hope and energy, these spaces are a standing reminder that nobody is doing this by themselves.
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Two
Embodiment
We build the habits we want the world to have. What happens in the room is the practice, and the practice is what carries home.
Named by ITOC educators
What gets in the way
These are the barriers ITOC educators have named to tending their own well-being. If you recognize yourself here, you are in good company.
- Feeling unworthy of well-being, or unsure of what it means
- Doubting that well-being matters, and questioning whether there is time for it
- Not knowing how to practice well-being effectively
- Fear that tending to well-being will add to responsibilities that already feel like too much
- Feeling disconnected from the spaces meant to support well-being, and unsure there is capacity to take part fully
- Sustaining a practice once it has started
- Feeling the work does not count unless it is hard
Our intention is to keep creating spaces for connection while developing low-commitment ways to take part, to normalize the language of well-being, and to treat wellness as a tool for advancing racial justice.
The Well-Being Collective
How we gather, every time
The Spirit of Our Culture
An original framework by Altagracia Montilla. These norms open every Collective gathering, and they open Conflict Bravery as well.
- Village
- Together we are a village. We are a community made up of individuals who lead with love, and value and respect each other.
- Truth
- We have profound truths to teach each other. Allow yourself to be changed.
- Purpose
- We are here for a reason. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
- Abundance
- Time abundance. Breathe — we have all the time we need.
- Heal
- Sharing from the heart and spirit equals healing and capacity building.
- Spirit
- Spirit is the economy and capital. Give and take generously.
- Flow
- What comes up for you came up for a reason. Let it flow.
What grows here
The branches
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The ITOC Garden
A symbolic extension of the ITOC community where well-being is tended and celebrated, and where the language of wellness becomes ordinary.
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The Well-Being Collective
The branch that gathers educators of Color for collective healing, and treats care for the person as part of the work of racial justice.
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The ITOC Summer Program
Solo and collective ways for community members to pour into themselves during the summer convening at UC Riverside.
What a Fellow takes part in
The shape of an ITOC year
ITOC runs a summer convening at UC Riverside and a year-long virtual program. The Well-Being Collective runs alongside both.
| Offering | What it is |
|---|---|
| Summer Convening | Days together at UC Riverside, with balanced meals, room set aside for reflection and support, and workshops on healing and self-care, meditation and yoga, non-violent communication, and restorative approaches to conflict. |
| Keynote Talks | Six across the year, three in fall and three in spring, each with community building time inside the session. |
| Public Talks | Two, in collaboration with the UC Riverside K-12 Ethnic Studies Speaker Series. |
| Femtorship | Quarterly meetings, with femtors and femtees paired for independent meetings between them. |
| Well-Being Collective | The healing and wellness branch: facilitated gatherings, the garden practice, and a toolkit to take home. |
| Resource Guides | The ITOC Academic Resource Guide, the ITOC Wellness Resource Guide, and a standing set of learning opportunities and readings. |
ITOC rigorously selects and supports approximately 150 ITOC Fellows each year — a collaboration between Teacher Education, Educational Leadership, and Ethnic Studies.
Institute for Teachers of Color
Who builds it
The people who run ITOC
ITOC is an independent national professional development community for teachers of Color, sponsored by The California Endowment and the UC Riverside School of Education. It has selected and supported roughly 150 Fellows a year since 2011, and its organizers and facilitators are volunteers. What follows is the published ITOC leadership roster, with roles and affiliations only.
Directors and founders
- Rita KohliCo-founder and co-director. Professor, Education, Society and Culture, UC Riverside.
- Marcos PizarroCo-founder and co-director. Dean, College of Education, California State University, Los Angeles.
Coordinators and arts
- Altagracia MontillaHealing and Wellness Coordinator. A.M. Consulting.
- Re’Nyqua FarringtonProgram Coordinator. UC Riverside.
- Devin WilliamsProgram Coordinator. UC Riverside.
- Danielle MirelesAccessibility Coordinator. University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
- Nicole “Novela” MartinezArts Director.
In their own words
The garden, described by the people in it
Every word below was written by a member of the Well-Being Collective and published by them, under their own name, on Altagracia Montilla’s site. Nothing here is a summary and nothing has been rewritten.
Feeling gratitude for this garden full of camaradas who I always want to be with me any time I feel or experience hope about what’s possible in our collective lives. Want you to be part of any and all blooming in my life! Want that loving garden-ness to be ubiquitous, especially for all of our young people.
I started this collective wanting wellness for myself, but not having any idea how to even start. I have learned so many different tools! I have a better idea of what brings me joy and wellness. It’s nurtured different parts of me that have been dormant. I am looking forward to continuing these practices and hopefully creating those spaces for others.
Thank you for holding the space and allowing people to flow in and out as possible. I’m holding the idea of tending to myself as a garden. Centering nurturing with water, light, and tenderness. I’m grateful for the reminder of the power to interrupt harmful constructs that rob me of my time and ultimately my life. I’m grateful for strangers opening up to be vulnerable, celebrate each other, and offer words of encouragement in moments (months) of chaos. I’m grateful for my container and appreciated the time to connect with self - physically, spiritually, lovingly.
Having this community has made such a positive impact on my life. Especially in ways that I could not have imagined. I feel connected to nature and my ancestors in such powerful ways. I never feel alone or isolated. I feel powerful and I’m much more in tune with my intuition. Hope, joy, and power are words that I use often as a result of this community. I am now creating the life that I’ve always dreamed of, yet felt was out of reach.
My garden experience have been to co-cultivate a place to grow collective rest, so that we can go back to the collective resistance against the harm.
I am feeling so grateful for all of you and the energy and space that we’ve shared. Altagracia love your BGE and could not imagine this garden without you tending to it. I feel so cared for by y’all and it’s funny how even though we don’t see each other in person or that often I feel such comfort and safety with this group. Thank you all for what you’ve been able to give to this space.
A feeling that I’m not alone - not in my teaching, not in my life, not even in my big personality. Altagracia is the closest thing that I’ve ever seen to my own Self. Except, she harnesses her Big Goddess Energy, while I don’t fully recognize mine.
In this moment: resignation - acceptance - transformation; making peace with and coming to terms with embarking on a journey for myself and the people I choose to pour my heart and spirit into, even if that means I must let other people go or cannot take them with me on that journey. Love, courage, beauty, faith, life, memories... I believe I remember.
Members add or withdraw their own words through ITOC, and each person decides how they are named here.
The practice, carried out
From ICEJ
In 2026 the Collective presented Planting the Seeds of Liberation, a session on ancestral peace and educator wellness, at the 16th International Conference on Education and Justice in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.
Placeholder images. The photographs and video from the session are not published yet.
Caption for photo 1 goes here, with the photographer’s credit. 
Caption for photo 2 goes here, with the photographer’s credit. 
Caption for photo 3 goes here, with the photographer’s credit. 
Caption for photo 4 goes here, with the photographer’s credit. 
Caption for photo 5 goes here, with the photographer’s credit. 
Caption for photo 6 goes here, with the photographer’s credit.
Video from the session, with captions. The file and its transcript are not published yet.
Published by ITOC and the Collective
Resources
ITOC publishes three guides on its own site, and the Collective publishes the practice it hands out in the room.
- ITOC Academic Resource Guide — readings and materials for the classroom, on the ITOC resources page.
- ITOC Wellness Resource Guide — the wellness companion to the academic guide, on the same page.
- Learning Opportunities and Readings — a standing list ITOC keeps current.
- Open the three ITOC resource guides
- The garden toolkit — the practice the Collective takes home: three questions asked in the room, and an action plan to work through afterward. Open the garden toolkit
How ITOC is funded
Support ITOC
ITOC is funded by participant registration fees and by donations. Its organizers and workshop facilitators are volunteers, and it is seeking funding to grow the program.
- Give to ITOC — gifts go through the UC Riverside School of Education. On the giving page, choose the ITOC – GSOE Fund. UC Riverside holds the nonprofit status, so gifts are tax deductible and go to ITOC. Open the UC Riverside School of Education giving page
- Sponsor the program — ITOC is seeking funding to grow. Sponsorship and partnership questions go to ITOC directly. Reach ITOC through its contact page
- Volunteer — the people who organize ITOC and facilitate its workshops are volunteers. Ask about taking part through the same contact page. Read ITOC’s own support page
Come into the garden
Get involved
The Well-Being Collective is open to the ITOC community, and the way in is an ITOC Fellowship. ITOC selects Fellows on three published criteria:
- An advanced level of racial literacy
- An asset framing of communities of Color
- A commitment to critical, theoretically driven approaches to transforming schools
Teacher Educator Fellows work in a university setting, training K-12 classroom educators.
Dates, the application window and registration rates change each cycle. This page does not carry them; the ITOC site does. Nothing is collected here.
Subscribe to Altagracia’s newsletter — her own newsletter from A.M. Consulting. It is an opt-in, and it is separate from anything ITOC sends. Subscribing there adds nobody to an ITOC list.