Healing Methodologies: Co-creating Healing Spaces With Black Womxn Teachers Through Critical Participatory Inquiry

• In Event: Research as Restorative Practice: Reparative and Recognitive Approaches to Critical Participatory Inquiry

Abstract

While Black womxn teachers continue to be subjects of research inquiry regarding their revolutionary pedagogical approaches and unwavering commitment to students' success (Acousta, 2019; Beauboeuf-Lafontant, T., 2002; Dixson, 2002; hooks, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 2009), less is said about their methods of healing from the anti-black and sexist trauma they endure in the workplace and beyond (Lee & Thomas, 2022). Black womxn teachers make up nearly 76% of the Black teacher population and less than 6% of the total teaching population and this number is decreasing rapidly (NCES, 2022). Their refusal against politicized book bans (Tamez-Robledo, 2022), whitewashed curriculum (Hancock, Showunmi, & Lewis, 2020)), antiblack trauma (Wright & Aniefuna, 2024), and disproportionate labor distribution (Carr, 2022) all while navigating a global pandemic has situated Black womxn teachers in a predicament that compromises their access to optimal health and wellbeing (hooks, 1993) which has ultimately led to their departure from the profession (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017).). The theory of Captive Maternalism coined by James (2016) offers a language to articulate how Black womxn, girls, and queer folx are socialized to take up the labor of “stitching together communities” as an act of refusal against antiblackness. While being of service to our students and communities and acting as a buffering against antiblackness is indicative of our revolutionary love (James, 2022), this labor has left us tragically overextended leaving little space for us to tend to our own needs (hooks, 1993).

Given the unyielding anti-black gendered violence endured by Black womxn teachers, there is a critical need to foreground, prioritize, and equitably invest in the holistic wellness and healing for Black womxn teachers (Bryant, 2024, under review). The aim of this study is two-fold: first, to co-create a space of healing with Black womxn teachers, along the gender spectrum, and secondly, to explore childhood lessons about labor and wellness. Thinking along similar lines as Dillard (2008), the intention is to engage in healing methodologies which are situated, sacred, and spiritual work that happens in multiple spaces and places where African ascendants and other Indigenous peoples are committed to transformation (as cited in Dillard, & Bell, 2011). In line with the practices of ROOT Healing Cycles of Harm, I use a “non-hierarchical model that acknowledges that everyone is the expert of their own healing ” (para. 3). Grounded in critical participatory inquiry (Call-Cummings et al, 2023), the goal is to collaborate with Black women teachers as co-researchers committed to sharing their own stories about their workplace experiences and critically examining childhood lessons about labor and wellbeing as a method towards healing. The presentation will offer reflexive thoughts on the experience of co-constructing healing methodologies and methods alongside Black women teachers.

Author

• Jaminque L. Adams, University of Georgia