Safe Space in the Last Option: What K–12 Educators Can Learn From Cultivating Sisterhood With Black Girls in Second-Chance Schools

• In Event: Hush Harbors: The Pedagogical Possibilities of Youth Third Spaces for Classrooms and Schools

Abstract

Purpose. Black girls’ school successes are shadowed by the larger challenges they face in educational research. This is particularly the case for research on Black girls caught in the school/prison nexus. Though we have come to understand the psycho-social barriers to educational opportunity they face, we have yet to make space for celebrating and understanding their strengths (Brown, 2008). Sisterhood, a small hush-harbor located in a second-chance school (traditionally known as an alternative school), seeks to use Black feminist educational research to address this challenge. The purpose of this paper, then, is to explicate the lessons learned from cultivating sisterhood with Black girls who face limited educational options. We wonder: What elements of Sisterhood are useful to traditional K-12 educators?

Theoretical Perspective. Black feminist theory was used to frame this study because it develops an understanding of lived complexities without relying on reductionist/additive notions of Black girls’ experiences (Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 2000). It is also a critical heuristic revealing how social phenomena maintains, resists, and/or transforms Black girls’ subaltern positionality. Such an approach was critical, considering the multiple sites of marginality and privilege both the girls and the researchers occupied.

Methods.The informal, culturally specific space of the metaphorical “kitchen table” underpins Sisterhood’s methods (Phillips, 2006). This healing-informed approach is important considering the girls’ significant school conflict histories. This way is committed to relationships, being-ness, and voice (Edwards, McArthur & Russel, 2016). Accordingly, we viewed their seats at the table as the source to guide group conversation, encourage solidarity/sisterhood, and to demonstrate the political realities of their personal experiences. Thus, we employed youth-led pedagogy and Black feminist praxis to develop findings through a mosaic of data sources (Evans-Winters, 2015; Collins, 2000).

Data sources. Five diverse Black girls participate in our weekly 90-minute Sisterhood group. The group meets at the end or beginning of the girls’ school day (depending on when they are scheduled to attend). Recordings and artifacts from a 30-minute portion of our weekly meetings informed this study’s findings along with three semi-structured, transformative interviews and participant observations made over a one-year period. The girls were asked to confirm the accuracy of transcripts and preliminary narratives on an on-going basis; and their level of comfort with recording group conversations, interviews, and sharing sensitive portions of their transcripts was regularly assessed.

Results. Seven key competencies employed by the researchers allowed Sisterhood to become a safe space for the girls: Judgement Free Zones; Relinquishing Control; Managing Power; Resisting Respectability; Unconditional Support; Connection; and Compensation. These orientations to practice positioned the researchers in ways that made space for the girls’ creative power and supported them in reaching their educational goals.

Scholarly significance. Given that Black girls are disproportionately pushed-out of school for subjective infractions, the orientations to practice employed by Sisterhood offer strategies to check the implicit biases inherent to the problem. Further, it offers a method to voice Black girls’ school/prison nexus experiences in ways that are immediately actionable without large-scale reform.

Author

• Erica B. Edwards, Wayne State University