Creating Spaces That Matter: Teacher-Coaches’ Collaboration in Black Affinity Groups

• In Event: Building Emancipatory Spaces: Black Educators and Transformative Pedagogies in Social Studies Education

Abstract

Regardless of centuries of educational mandates meant to impede the progress of Black education, Black teachers have bonded together using resistance, common experiences, critical reflection, and courageous conversations to enrich instruction. Collectively, Black teachers share the responsibility of preparing Black youth to attain a better life, and such preparation has been developed in self-created spaces where Black people matter. Drawing from a conceptual framework of collective Black identity and communalism, this qualitative case study examined six teacher-coaches’ collaboration in Black affinity groups at two predominantly white high schools in the wake of anti-CRT legislation. Collectively, they demonstrated responding to fear, attempts at resisting interest convergence, and the importance of diversity in within the construction of Blackness in such contentious times.

Author

• Alex E. Chisholm, Clemson University