Cultivating Justice-Oriented Learning Mutuality: Exploring Critical Literacy Practices and Identity Work With Black Students

• In Event: Exploring the Interplay of Identity, Learning, and Literacy

Abstract

This presentation will engage attendees in a focused conversation that illustrates the vital need for educators to explore the possibilities of engaging in literacy practices that disrupt anti-Blackness. I will model humanizing, critical, and creative curricular and pedagogical choices that support Black students’ humanity. As such, I will push to show the importance of affirming Black students’ identities, learning, and literacies, especially when one considers the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in schools and beyond. Finally, I will illuminate how the partnership between a Black teacher and Black teacher-researcher benefited Black students when a classroom space became a site for healing, discovery, and Black joy.

Author

• Jackson Davena, Boston University