Collective Liberation: Enacting Culturally Responsive Pedagogy to Create Cycles of Empowerment Within Urban Communities

• In Event: We're Breathing! Black Female CritTeacher Educators in Historical Pandemic Moments

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes
This paper highlights a Black female professor’s use of culturally responsive teaching to empower and uplift non traditional teacher candidates of color during the 2020 pandemic. Marcus College (pseudonym), located in a dense urban center, is one of 26 colleges which comprise the largest university system in the U.S. As a predominantly Black institution, with a recent increase in our Latinx population we serve a diverse student body. Birth from community activism, Marcus College maintains open enrollment and serves those who have been traditionally un/underprepared for college. I highlight some of the warm demander educator (Delpit, 2012) and culturally responsive teaching approaches used to hold high expectations for teacher candidates of color, while providing them with increased support to enhance their academic skills. In addition, I discuss how through an ethnography project candidates learned to give voice to (Clandinin & Murphy, 2009) and empower (Freire, 1996) marginalized urban youth who often are in need of healing (Ginwright, 2010).

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay, 2018; Howard, 2001) recognizes that practices can be conceptualized by nine elements, which teachers can draw upon to guide their instruction: caring, establishing community, engaging classroom, environments, validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory. When these tenets form the basis of teacher candidates’ practice they connect to students’ culture (Author, 2016; Gay, 2018; Souto-Manning, & Mitchell, 2010).

Methods and Data Sources
Teacher candidates’ use of student narrative (Clandinin & Murphy, 2009) through an ethnography research paper allowed them to share the cultural, societal and community experiences (Connelly, & Clandinin, 2006) of K-12 students. Given the rapid shift to remote learning and working, many teacher candidates faced unprecedented stress. Therefore, during the spring 2020 semester the ethnography projects took on a different form. Instead of having candidates come up with individual research questions for their ethnography projects, we chose a collective question which focused on how K-12 urban students were impacted by the pandemic. Interview questions were written in class and each candidate interviewed one student virtually.

Results
Findings revealed that urban students’ voices were largely left out of the mainstream conversations. While a few students enjoyed the new online experience, this was not the case for most. Students missed their friends, felt they were ignored by their teachers and parents alike and yearned to get out of the house. This ethnography project allowed teacher candidates who themselves had challenges during the pandemic to hear directly from urban youth and empower these students who faced neglect and limited resources. There was a critical cycle at work, as a Black woman I was teaching my mostly Black teacher candidates how to empower Black and Brown youth. As the candidates presented I felt as though we made, albeit minute, a positive difference in some persons’ lives at a time when we all truly needed healing.

Scholarly Significance
This work provides examples of how teacher educators can facilitate course assignments that allow teacher candidates to meaningfully engage culturally, linguistically and racially diverse student populations.

Author

• Tabora A. Johnson, Medger Evers College - CUNY