In Community with Others: How Black Families Navigate and Experience Home Education

• In Event: More Than a Bandaid: How Black Mothers Remedy and Repair in Homeschool Communities

Abstract

Black parents across school settings advocate individually and collectively to ensure their – and other Black children – are academically challenged and emotionally safe (McCarthy Foubert, 2022; Posey-Maddox, 2017; Rall & Holman, 2021). While this engagement and advocacy takes places in various school types (e.g. public and private), Black parents also engage in educational spaces that are intentionally created to support the learning and wellbeing of Black children, such as African American Immersion Schools, Black Independent schools, and other community-based learning spaces (Asante, 1991; Baldridge et al., 2011; Ginwright, 2004; Holt, 1991; Rickford, 2016). Home education for Black families is another avenue that Black parents pursue as they support their children’s education (Fields-Smith & Williams, 2008; Mazama & Lundy, 2015). While homeschooling more broadly is critiqued as a neoliberal and individual project (Apple, 2000), Black home educators are marginalized in this discussion (Fields- Smith, 2015; Puga, 2019; Stewart, 2020). This paper illuminates the unique experiences of Black families and the role of community in their home education.
This paper utilizes BlackCrit (Dumas and ross, 2016) as a framework to better understand the specificity of (anti)Blackness mattering in the lives of Black families and the possibilities of Black home education. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with Black parents, interviews with Black homeschooled youth, artifacts (e.g. curriculum, lesson plans, drawings, journals, photos) from focal Black homeschool families as well as follow up data with a subset of these families who participated in education journey mapping interviews (Annamma, 2018), this paper examines the collective aspects of home education for Black families who have homeschooled in the U.S. Midwest.
This paper reveals the key ways that community has shaped Black home education. Based on preliminary analysis, Black families’ decisions to home educate as well as their home education practices were shaped by the communities they were in. I find that many Black parents have homeschool communities of support and other supportive relationships that aided them in navigating their educational choices and decision to homeschool. Moreover, I find that Black families home educate in a variety of ways, including in community with other Black families – when possible. Lastly, young Black people experienced home education in positive ways, especially when compared to previous homeschooling experiences.
This paper contributes important insights into what Black families search for in their children’s education and how their educational decision-making and practices take place in community. This paper recognizes the importance of community, and Black communities specifically, for Black families who are searching for quality education for their children. The findings in this paper encourage families, educators, policymakers, and scholars to center the experiences and insights of Black home educating families in education theory and practice.

Author

• Rachel A. Johnson, School Mental Health Collaborative