Fostering Equity: The Role of an After-School Program in an African American Community

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: African Americans: Home, School, University, and Community

Abstract

In many impoverished, urban communities, community centers and after-school programs are providing African American children with the support, resources, and relationships necessary for children to overcome the systemic and endemic racism found in many schools today. This ethnographic study documents the experiences of children participating in an after-school program as they attempt to navigate the educational structures which seek to hold them back through deficit-laden discourse and instruction. This research shows that after-school programs are now serving as an intervention to achieve equity in educational outcomes for children too often forgotten by educational policymakers and their reforms.

Author

• Ann M. Bennett, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville