Black Teachers' Lives Matter: Teaching to Heal, Resist, and (Re)Member

• In Event: Reimagine to Reclaim: Shifting Teaching and Organizing to Center Healing Justice for Communities of Color

Abstract

What are education contexts and practices that help Black people heal from the wounds and
injury of racism and racial violence? That might help Black women teachers see the impacts of
the long legacy of their lives more clearly? Utilizing Black and endarkened feminist theories, this
paper explores how engaging identity, heritage and culture can transform the very foundations
of teaching and learning for Black women teachers. Further, it examines essential ways that
identities matter in their education. A central thesis is this: That Black women teachers and
teacher educators can heal, resist and (re)member their identities in ways that are empowering
for them and the students they teach. While some research highlights the racialized and
gendered realities for Black teachers (Dillard, 2006; Delpit, 2003; Dixson, 2003; Foster, 1990),
few studies examine how these realities matter to the spiritual, mental and everyday lives of
Black teachers and teacher educators. This paper draws on cases from an IRB approved
research project with Black women pre-service candidates, inservice teachers and teacher
educators who participated in an intensive study abroad experience on Black heritage and
culture. Key findings show how racial, cultural, ethnic and gendered identities for teachers and
students of color are also deeply embedded in acts of (re)membering that include both recalling
Black heritage and cultural experiences and putting them back together again in ways that are
healing, empowering, and critical in the contemporary contexts of racism, sexism and racialized
violence in the U.S. Possibilities for a different kind of education, one with (re)membering at the
core of our practices, pedagogies and curriculum for Black women teachers, youth and children
is put forward.

Author

• Cynthia B. Dillard, University of Georgia