Teacher embodiment of culturally responsive pedagogies in a fifth grade classroom

Schools need better roadmaps for accomplishing culturally responsive pedagogy and intercultural education. In this article, I feature the culturally responsive practices of a Black teacher situated in an elementary classroom in the U.S. Her practices contribute to a roadmap for enacting culturally responsive pedagogy that incorporates small group instruction and cooperative learning. I also contend that queries investigating pedagogies affirming minoritized students must consider the primary actors charged to implement such work. In addition to her pedagogical practices, I include data that elucidate how the teacher’s racial biography is explicitly tied to the culturally responsive work she engages in the classroom. I conclude with considerations for how this case study might offer educators, researchers, and policymakers’ ideas for deep integration of intercultural education.

Crests and Troughs in Inclusion: Narrative Expressions of a Black Teacher in Independent Schools

The current article draws from Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) to analyse narrative expressions of a black South African teacher’s experiences of moments of exclusion (troughs) and inclusion (crests) after twenty years of service in two predominantly white independent schools. Data was generated from one South African teacher who was prompted to reflect on crests [inclusive moments that deserve to be embraced and celebrated] and troughs [moments of exclusion that seek to assimilate/ignore diversity] in her teaching journey spanning two decades at two independent schools. Using the interpretivist paradigm, we attempt to understand the teacher’s journey which shows amongst others, that agents of exclusion with tendencies to demand compliance and subsequent assimilation, include other teachers, school leaders, learners as well as some parents. The teacher was however, provided with an opportunity to read the situation and may, depending on her agency, work to circumvent oppressive and exclusionary tendencies. Crests celebrating diversity were noted in her second school. I conclude that diversity remains multi-perspectival and therefore simultaneity should be borne in mind when dealing with inclusion in the teaching fraternity.

Policy Dialogue: Black Teachers of the Past, Present, and Future

In the second half of the twentieth century, the ranks of Black teachers and school administrators declined precipitously. Today, less than 7 percent of American teachers are Black. This loss has had a number of consequences for schools and communities, but perhaps especially for Black students. As recent research has found, Black students benefit socially and academically from having a Black teacher, are less likely to be suspended or expelled, and are more likely to enroll in college.For this inaugural policy dialogue, the HEQ editors asked Gloria Ladson-Billings and James D. Anderson to reflect on the past, present, and future of the Black teacher corps. Their wide-ranging exchange explores the various roles of educators, the legacy of segregation, the role of policy, and the Black experience. They close with a provocative list of research questions for emerging and established scholars to consider.

A CRIANÇA QUE ESCUTA NA PROFESSORA QUE GINGA:

O artigo analisa a trajetória de uma professora negra na periferia de uma capital do sul do Brasil e tem como objetivo explicitar como valores e memórias de uma certa formação étnico-racial podem influir no processo de “tornar-se professora”. O estudo se baseia em uma entrevista direta, realizada durante a atividade de uma disciplina de um curso de pós-graduação e tem como instrumental teórico-metodologico a autobiografia, concebida como uma ‘tipologia das mediações sociais” (NÓDOA e FINGER, 1988), construída a partir de “saberes distintos” (TARDIF, 2002). Recorremos, ainda, aos conceitos de Conscientização em FREIRE (1979) e outras referências em J. CANDAU e M.C. PASSEGI. PALAVRAS-CHAVE Autobiografia, Saberes, Práticas. THE CHILD’S LISTENING TO THE TEACHER’S GINGA STYLE: the knowledge mobilization of a black educator from the outskirts of Porto Alegre on "becoming a teacher" ABSTRACT This article analyzes the pathway of a black teacher from a capital city in South Brazil and aims to explain how memories and values of a certain ethnic- racial education may influence the “becoming a teacher” process. The study, carried out during a postgraduate course activity, is based on a direct interview and its theoretical and methodological tool is autobiography, which was conceived as “typology of social mediation”(NÓDOA e FINGER,1988) and built from “distinct knowledge”(TARDIF, 2002). We have yet used the Critical Consciousness approach by Freire (1979) and other references in. Candau and M.C. PASSEGI. KEYWORDS Autobiography, Knowledge, Practices.

School Desegregation and Black Teacher Employment

Prior to the racial integration of schools in the southern United States, predominantly African American schools were staffed almost exclusively by African American teachers as well, and teaching constituted an extraordinarily large share of professional employment among southern Blacks. The large-scale desegregation of southern schools occurring after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act represented a potential threat to this employment base, and this paper estimates how student integration affected Black teacher employment. Using newly assembled archival data from 759 southern school districts observed between 1960 and 1972, I estimate that a school district transitioning from fully segregated to fully integrated education, which approximates the experience of the modal southern district in this period, led to a 41.7% reduction in Black teacher employment. Additional results, including event-study specifications and models with extensive controls for concurrent policy changes, strongly suggest that these employment reductions were a causal effect of integration and not due to school district self-selection into desegregation. To study the broader impacts of reduced teaching employment, I estimate race-specific changes in occupations and earnings in the Decennial Censuses, and find that displaced southern Black teachers either entered lower skill occupations within the South or migrated out of the region to continue teaching, and that integration induced displacement led to substantial earnings reductions.

Relationship Building in a Black Space: Partnering in Solidarity

Given the persistence of anti-Blackness, the author demonstrates what can happen when Blackness takes precedence over anti-Blackness in an 11th-grade English classroom. This study uses critical autoethnography to explore a collaborative approach to teaching and learning that sustains Blackness. The author uses storying to amplify the significance of relationship building between a Black teacher and a Black teacher-researcher. This research further provides tools for transforming classrooms into sites of hope, healing, and resistance in a time when Black lives matter more than ever. In closing, the author offers the framework of justice-oriented solidarity (JOS) and highlights the power of cocollaboration to create an antiracist learning environment that sustains Blackness.

Teaching While Black

A review of Matthew E. Henry's Teaching While Black. Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2020. Matthew E. Henry's slim, searing first book of poems, Teaching While Black, is composed of situations or "teaching moments" that have occured throughout his life and particularly in his career as a Black teacher at mostly white and privileged schools. Particularly timely after the recent police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, the poems, and the moments each represents, highlight the intersection of race, class, and gender politics, exploring the conflicted meanings of place, position, and identity for a Black educator. These are challenging, insightful, and passionate poems that would be ideal reading for courses focused on these issues, particularly in conjunction with the BLM protests that coincide with the collection's publication and with helping students both to understand and resist the received positions that society, or educational institutions assign them.