Inside and Against: Abolitionist Educators as Mitigators, Refusers, and Protectors

• In Event: Teacher Educators of Color Under Attack

Abstract

This paper examines how abolitionist educators navigate institutional complicity and resistance, illuminating the everyday labor of critical reflexivity and pedagogical refusal. Grounded in abolitionist educational theory, teacher identity formation, and radical consciousness, it explores how educators cultivate identities rooted in justice, care, and liberation. Drawing on Mariame Kaba’s framing of radicalization as a pursuit of justice, this study traces the personal, professional, and historical experiences that shape abolitionist educator identities. Using narrative interviews and feminist methodologies, it reveals how teachers act as mitigators of harm, protectors of student dignity, and cultivators of abolitionist futures. Abolitionist teaching emerges not as a fixed practice, but as a politicized, embodied identity committed to resisting, reimagining, and transforming schooling—not for reform, but for liberation.

Author

• Estefania Rodriguez Sanchez, Stanford University