Students Over Standards: Stories of Care, Connection, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies During the COVID Pandemic

• In Event: Pedagogy of the Pandemic: What Teachers' Experiences Reveal About Educational (In)Equity and (In)Justice During COVID

Abstract

Purpose
This project centers the voices of BIPOC scholars whose who call for the transformation of the anti-Black/Indigenous/LGBTQ2IA+ oppressive nature of our school systems (e.g. Brayboy, 2016; Muhammad, 2020; Neville, 2020; Simmons, 2019). Building on that scholarship and the experiences of teachers in the field, we examine how teacher’s use of distance learning during the 2019-2020 school year opened possibilities for increased emphasis on care, connection, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Although current research is clear that the pandemic magnified the already existing inequities of our educational systems, we ask whether it might also offer a space to amplify and enact the transformational visions of BIPOC scholars who have long been asking us to teach for justice, joy, and freedom.

Perspectives
This paper draws on the work of Bettina Love (2020) and her call to “...radically dream because before COVID-19 closed our schools and dismantled our way of life, schools were failing not only children of color but all children.” The study approaches teacher stories as not separate from theory but as theory (Brayboy, 2016; hooks, 1991), intentionally focusing on the possibilities present both within and because of the pandemic.

Data sources
This project engaged over 100 practicing US and international educators in semi-structured interviews (Rubin & Rubin, 2012) using Zoom conferencing technologies. Interviewees included educators working in majority Black schools on the south side of Chicago and in North American Indigenous communities.

Methods
Interviews have been transcribed and coded using a constant comparison method of analysis. Moments where teachers were able to engage in transformational teaching because of the move to remote teaching are identified that provide case study illustrations of the papers’ thesis.

Results
The interviews provided evidence of three positive possibilities emerging from remote teaching: care, connection, and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies. Educators told stories that reflected:

• An ethic of collective care that prioritized social-emotional well-being over standards-based teaching (Valenzuela, 1999)
• Humanitarian mindsets that prioritized connections with families and students’ basic needs at a level equal to or greater than curriculum content,
• Culturally sustaining pedagogies that resisted damage centered narratives about BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ students and a movement to a desire-centered (Tuck, 2009) framing of student stories.

Scholarly Significance
Guided by Audre Lorde’s (1984) observation that “the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house…”, this paper calls for (re)defining education as more than a space to master academic standards. This study documents ways in which the COVID19 crisis created both the necessity and an opportunity for educators to frame education as more than what happens in a formal setting and encompasses collective knowledge building (Brayboy, 2005). The results from this study invite us to “look beyond the given, beyond what appears to be unchangeable” (Greene, 2009, p. 397). By mapping teachers’ leadership in the centering of care, connection, and culturally sustaining pedagogies onto the theories of BIPOC thinkers (Brayboy, 2016; Muhammad, 2020; Neville, 2020; Simmons, 2019), this study highlights possibilities for change that centers students over standards.

Authors

• Roshelle Weiser-Nieto, University of Oregon

• Shareen Springer, University of Oregon

• Allison Ivey, Oregon Department of Education

• Sue Wilson, University of Oregon