Teacher Education in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter

• In Event: 42.038 - Black Like Me: Urban Education and State Violence in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter

Abstract

In the era of Black Lives Matter (#BLM), teacher education does not exist in a vacuum. The white supremacist, neoliberal context that impacts all aspects of Black lives also serves to support antiblackness within the structures of teacher education. In this paper, the authors, who are grounded in a race radical analytical and political framework, share a vision of what it means to be an urban teacher who actively understands and teaches in solidarity with #BLM. The authors unpack their theoretical framework and the vision of #BLM. Then they examine the state of teacher education in this era of neoliberal multiculturalism and #BLM. The authors then contemplate what a race radical, #BLM-aligned, approach to urban teacher education might look like. The paper concludes by addressing ways that teacher educators must act in solidarity with the #BLM movement in order to better prepare teachers who understand that the lives of their students matter within and outside of their classrooms.

The struggle for Black liberation as seen through #BLM is bound up with the project of human liberation and social transformation and requires all of us to actively work toward solidarity. As teacher educators, we must heed this call to action. Given the challenges of institutional racism and economic inequality upon which this country was founded and that continue to mutate, we argue that teacher education currently operates from an “All Lives Matter” framework. This is to say that even with the progressive trajectory that teacher education has travelled, from being ethnocentric, to additive of multiculturalism, to ‘social justice’ oriented, teacher education still works institutionally in ways that answer to and uphold White supremacy and racial capitalism. We argue that to actually center the demands and vision of #BLM within teacher education and in the urban schools and communities we purport to serve, we within teacher education need to understand and transform ourselves through the vision put forth by #BLM. While the #BLM movement has few explicit demands about education, they have stated, “We demand a public education system that teaches the rich history of Black people and celebrates the contributions we have made to this country and the world” (Black Lives Matter, n. d.). In this paper, we make sense of this specific demand of education but are thinking about the broader collection of demands and how it interfaces with teacher education. As such we seek to unpack what the responsibilities of those of us in teacher education are to support the actualization of this demand and the transformative vision it is leading us toward.

Authors

• Edwin Mayorga, Swarthmore College

• Bree Picower, Montclair State University