Autoethnography of a First-Time Racial Justice Student-Teacher: Challenges and Chances for Youth Leaders

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 10:50 am
  In Roundtable Session: Lighting Our Way Home: Recovering Community, Youth, and Educator Stories as Resistance (Table 27)

Abstract

The voice of youth in education and decision-making has drawn lots of attention from educators in recent decades (Liebenberg et al., 2020). Although most educators and researchers realized the importance of youth voice, giving youth a voice and listening to the voice is still very challenging (Komulainen, 2007). To provide the youth from western Massachusetts with a safe and centered space for them and their voice, the youth board was built up accordingly. The youth board is a safe and centered space for the youth to gain the skills to be leaders and front liners for racial justice and equity within their spaces. The youth board's mission is to immerse the youth in a student-centered and voice-mattered place where they will learn to be youth leaders in racial justice work in their own schools, city, and town communities. Within the board, the high school youth work collectively to raise their awareness and to take action toward racial equity and justice. We are not giving them our analysis of the society and the reality, but encouraging them to use their own knowledge to do their own and to become youth leaders for their communities. However, since challenging the privilege and hegemonic culture is arduous (Garza, 2008), the way to achieve our goals is challenging. In these two years, I met difficulties in reaching our aims but from my connections with the youth, so many possibilities to achieve racial justice in public education are happening around us.
Autoethnography is a newly established qualitative research method in educational research and it originates from ethnography (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). Autoethnographic analysis of researchers themselves benefits them in reflecting original intention, their goals, and future plans because teachers and those who work within the educational fields have a unique understanding of personal, community, and social public education policy and realities (Anteliz et al., 2022). Through analyzing the researcher’s lived experiences, the close connections between their specific educational, research experiences and the broader society will be made (Keleş, 2022).
This autoethnography elucidates what difficulties I met as a first-time student-teacher working in extracurricular racial justice education, the youth board. My research journal expands from building up the first youth board, regular session planning, and public youth-led events preparation. My first and second-year working experiences with high school youth, along with my lived learning and life experiences, were the only data resource for this qualitative inquiry. This study reveals the challenges faced by youth who want to become youth leaders and the opportunities obvious and potential for them in their studies, personal development, and future career. It also demonstrates what difficulties a first-time student-teacher working in social justice in public education met and handled. Through the study and analysis of myself, a safe, centered, and relaxed situation is a prerequisite for youth to speak out their thoughts and to facilitate their passion and motivation to become youth leaders.

Author

• Yingyuan Sun, University of Massachusetts - Amherst