Walking the Talk: A Journey to Prepare Teacher Candidates With Social Justice Dispositions

• In Event: Roundtable Session 34
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching Social Justice Ain't Easy: Stories of Historically Black College and University Faculty Who Walk the Talk

Abstract

I am a Civil Rights baby who grew up in a segregated world of overt racism in the Southeastern United States. My Daddy was active in the community serving as a voice against racism and discrimination for who were then called ‘Negro’ men and women. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968. Sixteen days later, my father died, the story of his last day is questionable. I was told my Daddy went to the jailhouse, and in the early morning he was brought home by someone, allegedly White policemen. The next day his cold body was discovered on the steps in front of our home; his eyes shut from life forever. I was told not to question, it was best to be quiet and remember. So I did what I was told. Silence was a double-conscious way for Negroes to survive in the White world. From the brutality and overt racist acts of White Americans during those years, you learned when to speak and when to be silent.
Poignant memories flash through my mind from childhood. My childhood was peppered with sickening feelings of oppression. I could read the ‘Colored only’ sign before I could read any book. As a young child, I saw a Negro man with burnt feet in his socks hanging from a tree. I saw a cross burning in the field more than one time before then. Racism shaped my truths about the world, my soul and my spirit. The bitterness that prevailed in my soul could have grown into the venom that would poison my spirit forever, but I learned it was best for me to tell the stories that could impact our advocacy forever.
Such memories propelled me to prepare teacher candidates with social justice consciousness to teach. Today’s generations see injustices involving much more than race, more than issues of Black Americans as a minority verses the injustices of the majority. Now, it is my turn to model what it takes to be an advocate for justice. My passion for teaching soared when I became responsible for preparing students to teach. It is my Daddy’s last breath that I must breathe into my advocacy.
I wrote an introductory-level course for students to explore their advocacy titled “Promoting Social Justice through Education”. The goal of this course is preparing teacher candidates committed to teaching for social justice. Students research and develop written definitions of social justice, explore areas of oppression and injustices locally, take part in a project that takes them out of their comfort zone, and plan a project consistent with their research. This course embodies principles of justice, equality, diversity, and advocacy. Self-reflection is the core of each class session. At the end of the course, students develop personal social justice definitions and expressions of their advocacy. Course participants began to see social justice in powerful, new ways after the course.

Author

• Fran Bates Oates, Winston-Salem State University