Cultivating a Black Ethos: Designing for Justice, Solidarity, and Educational Transformation

• In Event: We Gon' Be Alright: Teaching, Healing, and Resisting with Black Youth

Abstract

Teaching in a diverse, urban high school in the Northeast, where Blackness is nuanced and complex, presents both challenges and opportunities. Rooted in socio-cultural theory and justice-oriented solidarity, this project aimed to provide empirical evidence demonstrating the importance of teacher-created antiracist curriculum units that affirm Black identities, and pedagogy that values collaboration, storytelling, and the cultural practices of diverse communities. In this project, I (a teacher-researcher) and a diverse group of English Language Arts teachers and teachers of multilingual learners worked collectively to center Blackness and cultivate a Black ethos. Preliminary results from the project indicate that working together created valuable learning opportunities to better understand how to support the development of Black students’ literacies and experiences.

Authors

• Davena Y. Jackson, Boston University

• Ashley Houston-King, Boston University