Black Women Educators Storying Healing and Reclaiming the Work Their Soul Must Have

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Research on Black womxn educators have predominantly focused on praising their innovative pedagogical approaches and commitment to students' success with little regard for how their optimal health and wellness is compromised by doing the work within an anti-black project of schooling. Our presentation invites researchers to move beyond the seductive inclination to reproduce narratives of trauma and into a more life-giving approach that centers inquiry around Black womxn educators' well-being and healing. The authors, emerging scholars in the field of education, share their experiences to illuminate the relationship between their labor, refusal, and healing. We weave together healing narratives of Black womxn educators through autoethnography as a method to tend our wounds, restore vitality, and remind us of our humanity.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

Chair

• Kiana Willis, University of Georgia

Papers

• Quiet As It’s Kept: Black Women Teachers, Personal Healing and the Tension of Community Uplift. - Jaminque L. Adams, University of Georgia; Kiana Willis, University of Georgia

• Waiting to exhale: Undoing Black linguistic trauma and healing of a neurodiverse Black woman - Amelia Quonyelle Rivera, North Carolina State University

• Who Will She Turn To?: Black Woman School Counselor Healing and Wellness Experiences - Paris C. Pruitt, Pennsylvania State University

Discussant

• Laetitia Adelson, University of Georgia