Black Girl Third Spaces and Educational Empowerment

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

Abstract

There is a national and global problem of policing Black girls’ identities, literacies, and ways of being. Our schools fail to intervene within the barrage of intellectual, physical, and emotional attacks on the minds, bodies, and spirits of girls of color, specifically Black girls (McArthur, 2018). Educators and educational researchers who recognize how oppressive classrooms and schools can be for Black girls, have, traditionally, created third spaces where Black girls “begin to reconceive who they are and what they might be able to accomplish academically and beyond” (Gutierrez, 2008, p. 148). Scholars like Gholdy Muhammad (Black Girls WRITE), Sherell McArthur (Beyond Your Perception), and Marcelle Haddix (Dark Girls), started their programs as classroom teachers, in effort to respond to the needs of Black girls in their schools.

From the spring of 2014-to-date, the presenter has facilitated collectives with Black girls, between from the primary to secondary level, where we engaged in critical media literacy. Critical media literacy teaches learners how to access, evaluate and produce media, as well as, encourages them to define relationships of power by questioning social norms (Hinchey, 2003; Morrell, 2014). Critical media literacy is transformative for Black girls because it is not simply an exercise in reading and writing; “it is a mode through which Black girls learn how to push back and (re)write who they are” (McArthur, 2016, p. 468).

These third spaces—mine and others created by scholars who hold space for Black girls— serve to resist and work against the attacks on Black girlhood, namely that impact their self-esteem and construction of positive identity. Further, they are not only a means to educate, empower, and encourage Black girls but also to use their voices, pens, and digital platforms to advocate for social change. In these third spaces, Black girls are taught utilizing "agitation literacies" (Muhammad, forthcoming), which are “practices of reading, writing, thinking, speaking and being that is connected to the intention and action to upset, disturb, disquiet and unhinge multiple types of systemic oppressions" (p. 14).

What, then, are the implications for the academically rigorous and social-emotional learning that happens in Black girl third spaces for classroom practice? During this presentation, I share the voices of Black girls drawn from a larger project that utilized collective case study. This presentation will explore the individual cases of focus groups from 5th, 7th, 9th, and 12th grade girls from varying environments. This work is situated in a Womanist-ecological perspective to explore the multiple contexts that shape the experiences of Black girls. I am viewing Black girls’ individual narratives of their experiences in this third space in an effort to share strategies on how educators, schools, and teacher education programs can take up a political ethic of care (Lane, 2018) to ensure educational justice for Black girls, and develop “abolitionist teachers” (Love, 2019) who consider the identities, literacies and ways of being for all students.

Author

• Sherell A. McArthur, University of Georgia - Athens