Becoming a Black Educator: Identity, Place, Space, and Belonging

• In Event: Stories That Shape Us: Educators Weaving Culture, Identity, and Belonging

Abstract

This paper emerged from a larger Endarkened Emancipatory Action Research study using video-cued ethnographic methods at a CDF Freedom School® to explore how liberatory school ecologies might be cultivated for Black and Brown children. Focusing on six early-career Black educators, we ask: What becomes possible when Black teachers, shaped by experiences that nurture critical consciousness, are present in schools? Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and video reflection, we examine how their lived experiences, preparation, and pedagogies challenge dominant norms and enact liberatory alternatives. Their narratives and embodied knowledges reveal what Black educators make visible, nurture, disrupt, and imagine into being. This study underscores the urgent need to recruit, prepare, and sustain Black teachers through justice-centered, critically conscious approaches to teacher development.

Authors

• Natacha Ndabahagamye Jones, University of North Texas

• Zutella Holmes, University of North Texas