Codifying Systemic Repair: Policy Possibilities Toward Black Educator Healing

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Our symposium aims to co-strategize how Black educators and their allies can heal from anti-Blackness and demand systemic repair. Despite policy actors’ recognized importance of Black educators, efforts to recruit and retain them face turnover and attrition due to systemic inequities rooted in anti-Blackness and white supremacy. Existing policies often fail to address these systemic issues, resulting in psychological stress and burnout. This symposium seeks to center the collective healing practices of Black educators as a pathway to considering systemic repair. We bring together dynamic and fluid perspectives on Black educator healing, emphasizing experiential and art-based methods, and connect these approaches with educational policy literature. The session fosters an authentic co-learning space to develop policy solutions for remedy, repair, and renewal.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 04: Transformative Justice in Teaching and Teacher Education

Chair

• Ashira Mothersil, Teacher's College, Columbia University

Papers

• Communal Healing: Finding Reprieve through Black Educators’ Acts to Support Each Other - Nathaniel D. Stewart, University of Minnesota; Iman A. Mohamoud, University of Minnesota

• Exploring the Vastness of Ourselves: Using Endarkened Poetic Inquiry to Witness Black Women Educators’ Radical Healing - Meghan L. Green, Erikson Institute

• Healing the Past, Imagining Future(s): A Literature Review of Systemic Repair towards Black Educator Thriving - Aditi Rajendran, University of Minnesota; Nathaniel D. Stewart, University of Minnesota

Discussant

• Darrius A. Stanley, University of Minnesota