Mutual (Re)humanization: Efforts by Early-Career Elementary Teachers of Color to Humanize Themselves and Their Students

• In Event: Rupture, Repair, and (Re)humanizing With/for Black Women Teachers and Teachers of Color

Abstract

Teachers of Color are systematically othered and excluded from the profession. Furthermore, there is a lack of space and support for teachers’ emotional health and healing, while they do the work of healing, caring, and supporting the emotional health of their students, a gap that is amplified in the contexts most teachers of Color serve. This interview study of thirteen K-5 early-career elementary teachers of Color examines their efforts to (re)humanize themselves and their students and the contexts and conditions that mediate these efforts. Findings reveal how particular conditions impacted teachers’ efforts to (re)humanize themselves and their students, and how teacher participants resisted, or utilized those conditions to engage an ethic of caring for their students and themselves.

Author

• Faith Kwon, Stanford University