How Do We Build Community Outside of the Academy to Support Future Teachers in Becoming Antiracist Educators? A Communal Approach to Teacher-Activist Preparation

• In Event: Community-Engaged Teacher Preparation: Issues and Insights From Teacher Educators

Abstract

The traditional White-centric teacher preparation paradigm has supported and reproduced oppressive ideologies for over a century, and formal teacher preparation and professional development often run counter to goals of liberation and justice in education (Brown, 2014; Love, 2019). As a result, educators who are marginalized by the educational system have long engaged in what Givens (2021) calls ‘fugitive pedagogies;” practices that build community, subvert the system, transform practices (hooks, 1994) and work to abolish the status quo. This project explores the designing of a holistic model of teacher preparation that supports cultivating student teacher-activists, with a specific focus on anti-racism and abolition through community partnership.

The vision that informs this work is the co-creation of knowledge that honors the humanity and capacity of variously positioned people as participant-researchers, teacher-educators, and co-learners. We take this up by intentionally engaging a community network to support student teachers’ progression through the culmination of their teacher preparation program. Student teachers are invited and supported to intentionally build relationships that respect their own and the humanity of a group of teacher-educators: high school students, host teachers, college supervisors, college-based educators, parents, and education community member activists. The work of humanizing educative practices through dialogic consciousness-raising, relationship building, and storytelling serves as a foundation for the various forms of and opportunities for learning in this holistic teacher-activist preparation model (Paris, 2011; San Pedro & Kinloch, 2017; Tuck, 2009).

This research project attempts to relocate or co-locate ‘teacher preparation’ outside the confines of the compliance-driven educational system and within radical antiracist educator communities agitating and working for change. “Abolitionist teaching is not just about tearing down and building up but also about the joy necessary to be in solidarity with others, knowing that your struggle for freedom is constant but that there is beauty in the camaraderie of creating a just world.” (Love, 2019, p. 94). While this solidarity is what nourishes so many teacher activists, it is especially essential for nurturing Black, Brown, and other marginalized student teachers.
In this vein, we co-constructed a pipeline and support system for student teacher-activists. We found that this holistic student teacher network offered student teachers radical communities of both education and care that are essential for resilience, resistance, and transformative practice. In the future, we envision strengthening multi-college connections to create a support system for students as they transition from pre-service education preparation to in-service teacher practice.

This project contributes to a growing body of literature (Love, Kaba & Gillen, 2021) that grapples with the question, “How do we build community outside of the academy to support future teachers in becoming antiracist educators?” We envision our future as creating and building communities of critical future educators, within varying education programs and sparking an interest and commitment to disrupting the status quo in private and public education (Bartolomé, 2004). We operate under the guiding principles that teaching and learning are fundamental to human life and growth, and fundamentally connected to struggles for understanding, liberation, and justice (Royal, 2022).

Authors

• Chanelle Wilson, Bryn Mawr College

• Jen Bradley, Swarthmore College