Beyond Surviving – Toward Thriving – in Suburbia: Narratives of Two Early Career English Teachers of Color

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Strength of Voice: Narratives of Persons of Color in Education

Abstract

Scholarship on the early career teacher (ECT) is deficit-based, framing the educator as underprepared or ineffective. In efforts to examine what is working with early career teachers, specifically ECTs of Color, this scholarship centers two cases of ECTs of Color, who, through their own and other accounts, are thriving in their suburban teaching environments. Drawing on data from a year-long, qualitative multi-case study that examined how early career ELA educators teach about race, analysis revealed that these teachers’ approaches were filtered through their lived experiences with and learning about race and racism. Receiving this relational instruction, students showed little evidence of reluctance or fragility, which resulted in the ECTs going beyond surviving toward thriving, despite other institutional, white supremacist barriers.

Author

• Kelli Ann Rushek, Miami University - Oxford