“I’m a teacher and I cannot talk about those things.”: Reimagining Civics Education Through the Perspectives of Adolescent Black Girls (Poster 7)

• In Event: Research for Remedy: Supporting Civic Literacy Development

Abstract

Studies have shown that police brutality against Black people in the United States significantly impacts the mental health of Black children, especially Black girls (Webb et. al, 2022). Additionally, Black children are six times more likely to be murdered by police than their peers (Badolato et. al, 2020). Despite these disturbing facts, schools do not adequately address police violence in Black communities nor the negative effects of racial trauma on Black students (Anderson et. al, 2019; Love, 2024). In the face of perpetual anti-Black racism, Black teenagers are civically engaged–both on the ground and virtually–when they attend and organize protests and use social media to educate themselves and their peers. However, when schools teach about civic engagement and democratic citizenship, they often decenter race (Cohen, et. al, 2018) and do not acknowledge the civic literacies that Black students espouse (Levinson, 2010). This issue was especially evident during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

This phenomenological study explored the ways in which secondary schools in the United States addressed the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd from the perspectives of adolescent Black girls. I used the Black Girls’ Literacy Framework (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) as a way to center the experiences of the participants. I conducted qualitative interviews with six adolescent Black girls and asked them about the ways that their schools addressed the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Moreover, because of my positionality as an English educator, I also asked them about the ways in which racial injustice was addressed in their secondary English classes. The data revealed that the participants felt neglected by their schools because of the lack of attention given to the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The data also revealed that the participants wanted their English teachers to address racial injustice in real time, empathize with them, and create curricula that are inclusive of Black women’s experiences. The study ends with recommendations to English teachers to support them in beginning this work: Racial Literacy (Sealey-Ruiz, 20202); Humanizing Pedagogies (Reid, 2024); and Legacy Building (Muhammad, 2023).

Author

• Lakisha Odlum, Queens College - CUNY