Integrating Extraordinary Literacies And Rest Rituals Into Science Teacher Education: Teaching From The Nap Ministry

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Rest as an Extraordinary Literacy: Black Women Educators Reclaiming Power Through Stillness, Silence, Silliness, and Refusal

Abstract

This paper examines the persistent and insidious role of whiteness in science education and the ways it obstructs the embodied presence, pedagogical innovation, and spiritual wellness of Black women and girls in these spaces. Science, as Mensah & Jackson (2018) argue, has long been treated as “white property”—a domain of cultural exclusivity that inhibits access and narrows the scope of who can teach, learn, and thrive within it. In today’s volatile political landscape, these dynamics are exacerbated by increasingly oppressive educational policies. Curriculum censorship, the dismantling of DEI initiatives, and executive actions (Roy, 2025) reflect a systemic tightening of control that targets racialized knowledge production and erodes the well-being of Black women educators in K–12 and higher education.

Drawing on Staples-Dixon’s (2023, 2024) theory of extraordinary literacies and Hersey’s (2022, 2024) rest as resistance framework, this paper proposes rest as a radical pedagogical act and decolonial literacy within science teacher education. Extraordinary literacies—those soulful, somatic, spiritual, and sociocultural practices that deconstruct interior oppression and cultivate embodied power—are positioned here as essential technologies for reclaiming space, voice, and sovereignty in white-dominated scientific contexts. Rest rituals such as deep breathing, sacred journaling, meditative silence, and communal reflection are presented as insurgent pedagogies that resist grind culture, challenge scientific elitism, and restore holistic wellness to both teachers and learners.

These practices, when integrated into teacher education coursework, do not merely soothe overburdened educators—they function as empyreal dialectics: sacred logics that return Black women to their own cosmologies, ancestral rhythms, and spiritual truths. Within this framework, rest becomes not a retreat but a recalibration; a site of knowledge generation, narrative reclamation, and classroom culture-building that counters the dehumanization endemic in science education.
Ultimately, this paper argues that rest rituals, when understood and practiced as extraordinary literacies, protect the inner lives of Black women and girls and activate liberatory pedagogies in STEM spaces. Teaching from the Nap Ministry, then, is not just theoretical—it is spiritual activism.


Hersey, T. (2022). Rest is resistance: A manifesto. Hachette Book Group.
Mensah, F., & Jackson, I. (2018). Whiteness as property in science teacher education. Teachers College Record, 120 (1), 1-38.

Roy, K. (2025, July 17). 300,000 Black women have left the labor force in 3 months. It’s not a coincidence. MSNBC. https://www.msnbc.com/know-your-value/business-culture/300000-black-women-left-labor-force-3-months-s-not-coincidence-rcna219355

Staples-Dixon, J. M. (2023). Extraordinary literacies & empyreal logics: regarding the everyday praxises of Black girls and women in schools and society. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1207–1211. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2203100

Staples-Dixon, J., Sealey-Ruiz, Y., Griffin, A., & Price-Dennis, D. (2023). Exploring extraordinary literacies and empyreal logics through the t/terror narratives of three Black women in the academy: a roundtable transcript, study notes, and guiding questions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1285–1297. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2214983

Staples-Dixon, J. M. (2023). How Black girls hurt: noticing and naming the t/terror narratives accumulated in schools and society [or, a call for a third wave new literacies education for all people, based on the dynamic, triumphant literate lives of Black girls and women]. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1298–1318. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2203106

Author

• Jennifer Jackson, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education