Enactment of Care, Labor & Devotion: Black Women Teaching for Liberation

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Refusal, Care, and Justice: Educators Challenging Structures in Teaching

Abstract

Since the desegregation of schools, Black children have been punished for not assimilating to White supremacist, heteropatriarchy in their traditional U.S. school context. For those Black children who grow up to become teachers, there is a synergy between their teaching experiences and (mis)treatment of Black children. In a qualitative study of 7 Black woman teachers (BWT), I explore the creative approaches used to conceptualize a loving gaze and politicized praxis towards Black children who are often punished for not assimilating to White supremacist, heteropatriarchy. In a community with a long history of activism like the Bay Area, California, I question how they conceptualize their teaching practices and positionality as ways of enacting freedom and resisting anti-Blackness.

Author

• Makaela Jones, University of California - Berkeley