Educational Impact. Taking a Knee: Maximizing Our Students' Potential With Our Influence and Relation-ality

• In Event: AERA Handbook Session 1

Abstract

American schools remain in a web of thought with exclusiveness at the helm of its edification. Teachers should be excellent and reflect the diverse populations they service (Riley, 1998). There is a teacher-diversity gap in America, one that is proposed to widen with time (Boser, 2014; McNulty & Brown, 2009). Student-Teacher ethnic matching and cultural synchrony are showcased as advantageous for students gain. Phenomenological research is conducted to describe the relationality TOC use to shape their classrooms as invented creative spaces of learning. With referents to Kaepernick's stance against police brutality, this chapter illuminates how TOC work as Critical Educators by actively taking a knee to the inequities that are prevalent systems of education that serve students of color.

Authors

• Natalie Latrice Parker - Holliman, Texas Tech University

• Florentia Marcheve Spires, Ph.D., Prince George's County Public Schools