Thriving in Troubled Waters: How Young People Work to Resist School-Based Oppression and Flourish

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Schools are sites of discovery and learning. Yet far too often,schools have been sites of violence and erasure for Black and Brown youth and their communities. And yet, youth have endeavored to learn, dream, and create liberatory movements inside and outside of schools. We examine how young people resist oppression and thrive. We center the voices of our nation’s youth and consider how their resistance serves as paths to and practices of remedy and repair. We examine how young people have insisted upon and manifested access to their educational and civil rights across our nation’s histories of white supremacy. In-so-doing, we make explicit the direct impact racist policies have had on the lives of young people and the ways in which young people have responded as learners, teachers, activists, and policymakers. To do so, the papers in this symposium utilize a range of research methodologies and investigate historical and contemporary examples.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Simona Goldin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Papers

• Pedagogies of Youth Organizing for Educational Justice - Camille M. Wilson, University of Michigan; Naomi Mae W., University of Wisconsin - Madison

• 'If we will hear them they will teach us”: Learning (and policymaking) in oppressive schools - Michaela Krug O'Neill, University of Michigan; Simona Goldin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Fashioning Space for Black Girls’ Transgressive Leadership - Courtney Mauldin-Jones, Syracuse University

• Learning Alongside & From Black Children: Methodological Considerations for Studying Race and Teaching & Learning - Maxine McKinney de Royston, Erikson Institute; Natalie R. Davis, University of Michigan

Discussant

• Makeba Jones, University of California - San Diego