“I Am Not Black”: “Educators Are Like, Well, Your Problem Isn't Relevant”

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 10:50 am
  In Roundtable Session: Innovations and Tactical Tools for Critical Teacher Preparation (Table 8)

Abstract

The experiences and sociopolitical reality of racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse K-12 youth are often divergent from their educators. Teachers need to build knowledge, skillsets, and mindsets for working with diverse students—including building a critical consciousness of inequities and injustices prevalent within educational systems and strategies to dismantle them. In this study, we immersed teacher candidates within a case-based instructional module and discussions to illuminate and generate solutions to racial and cultural tensions, conflicts, and actions among diverse students and their teachers. We report on the continuum of teacher candidate awareness, proposed uses of culturally responsive, sustaining strategies to a case, and how discussion helped teacher candidates see affordances and barriers to social justice.

Authors

• Oluyemisi Ajoke Oloniyo, Washington State University

• Amir Asim Gilmore, Washington State University

• Yuliya Ardasheva, Washington State University - Tri Cities

• Sarah L. Newcomer, Washington State University - Tri-Cities

• Dustin Sonny James Van Orman, Western Washington University

• Yun-Ju Hsiao, Washington State University - Tri-Cities

• Shannon M. Calderone, Washington State University

• Shenghai Dai, Washington State University