Abstract
Arguing that significant encounters with care often go unnoticed in a United States’ educational system largely defined by a neoliberal agenda, in this article I undertake a deep investigation of encounters with care that emerged in my experiences mentoring beginning art teachers. I approach these encounters as provocative disturbances that might reveal the nuances and intricacies of the entanglements at work. Through this exploration, I aim to show that these caring entanglements are, in consequential ways, run through with precarity—not only as an existential condition of life, but as a specific set of social, cultural, political, and material relations that produce an unequal distribution of both precarity and care, especially along the lines of gender and race. I conclude by offering provocations for how those who support beginning art teachers might, given the earth-wide and school-specific conditions of precarity, prepare them to navigate the complexities of caring relations in schools.