Disrupting the Discourse on "Bad" Teachers and "Failing" Schools: Why the History of Black Educators Is Critical for School Reform

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this session, three presenters will share public-facing oral history projects that document the historic contributions and legacies of black teachers in the South from the Civil Rights Movement to the present. Researchers and the veteran teachers with whom they have learned and labored will expose the ahistorical narrative of educational privatizers and policymakers, who leverage the discourse of “failure” for their own accumulative project, while purposefully avoiding an historical analysis of black educational struggle in the context of white supremacy. This session is significant as it builds upon the call to learn from teachers as stakeholders through their own voices, to share powerful examples of such engagement, and restore the historic possibilities of connectivity

Sub Unit

• Division F - Historical Inquiry in Education

Chair

• Derrick Alridge, University of Virginia

Papers

• Teachers in the Movement: Reconceptualizing the Role of Education Activism - Danielle Wingfield-Smith, University of Virginia

• Disintegration of Education Associations During the Civil Rights Movement - Jon Hale, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• The Legacy of George Washington Carver Senior High School in New Orleans - Kristen L. Buras, Georgia State University

Discussant

• Derrick Alridge, University of Virginia