Black Male Teachers' Narratives of Schooling as a Site of Social Suffering

• In Event: Roundtable Session 39
  In Roundtable Session: Experiencing Difference: Constructing Identities in Educational Spaces

Abstract

Recent research on Black male teachers has examined elements of suffering in their lives and work. This study extends this thread of scholarship by coupling social suffering with life history methodology as a conceptual framework to examine Black male teachers’ narratives of their schooling and teaching experiences. Through an interpretive analysis of their narratives, I examine how the participants experienced suffering as youth academically tracked into remedial classrooms based on racialized and gendered identity constructions about their intelligence. The participants drew from recollections of their schooling lives as well as the educational enterprise to articulate understandings about the suffering of Black male bodies. This study has implications for pedagogical practices and curricular reform to better support Black male youth.

Author

• Amber Pabon, University of Pittsburgh