Cultivating Sacred Spaces: A Racial Affinity Group Approach to Support Critical Educators of Color

• In Event: 43.035 - What Is to Be Done With Curriculum and Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers

Abstract

Objectives
While scholars have highlighted obstacles that educators of color face (Achinstein, Ogawa, Sexton & Freitas, 2010), and more specifically, how they experience navigating a profession dominated by 82% white teachers (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016), missing from the discussion is how they heal from the internalized, interpersonal and structural forms of oppression that they have experienced. The purpose of this study is twofold: to examine the daily racialized and gendered challenges that critical educators of color (CEoC) face; and, to explore how a group of CEoC cultivated a racial affinity group (Author, 2016; Mosley, 2018) to collectively heal from such challenges as a form of transformative resistance within the field.

Theoretical Framework
In response to neoliberal, colorblind, and apolitical approaches to professional development, educators and organizers across the country are reclaiming and reframing their learning through critical professional development (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015) facilitated through grassroots activism in the struggle for repurposing education for liberation (Valdez, Curammeng, Pour-Khorshid, Kohli, Nikundiwe, Picower & Stovall, 2018). Focusing particularly on CEoC, I utilize the concept of intersectionality to examine the multidimensional impact that racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of subordination (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991) simultaneously have on them; and, how radical healing, a framework to repair psychospiritual and socioemotional harm caused by structural violence (Ginwright, 2015) offers a holistic approach to conscientization for CEoC.

Methods and Data Sources
This three-year ethnographic case study (Yin, 2003) examines a California racial affinity group of twelve CEoC situated within a multiracial grassroots social justice teacher organization. I examine the nature of learning and relationships that evolved over time and how members’ participation impacted their personal/professional lives.

I employed participant observation (Patton, 2002), audio-recorded over 25 monthly meetings, as well as 1-1½ hour interviews, twice with each member. I also relied on testimonios (Author, 2016) as an additional focal method. For data analysis, I utilized grounded theory and inductive approaches (Straus & Corbin, 1998) to engage in a systematic process of discovery of important themes from the data.

Results
This grassroots racial affinity group became an important space for learning and healing for its members.  I illuminate how the twelve members’ voices, needs, and collective knowledge were centered and in so doing, they: (a) supported one another in navigating socially toxic education institutions; (b) collectively cultivated an intersectional healing space for their sustainability and wellbeing; and (c) empowered one another to take an array of actions toward social justice and healing within their work.

Scholarly Significance
When teacher learning maintains and privileges whiteness and capitalist logics, the presence, needs and wellbeing of CEoC are neglected and they experience alienation in the field (Martinez, Valdez & Cariaga, 2016). A racial affinity group approach that centers intersectional healing praxis is a necessary, and culturally sustaining interventions that facilitate the personal, political, relational, and pedagogical growth of CEoC have key implications on their retention and leadership within the field.

Author

• Farima Patricia Pour-Khorshid, University of San Francisco