Sis Is Tired: Counteracting the Pushout of Critical Black Women Teachers

• In Event: For Us by Us: Sustaining Black Girls and Women in Education

Abstract

Purpose and Objectives
Historically, BWTs have demonstrated active involvement in the political struggle for educational equity (McKinney de Royston et al., 2021). The pedagogical frameworks utilized by many BWTs illustrate how they interrupt the racialized trauma perpetuated in schools, which increases the academic experiences, trajectory, and performance of their Black students (Egalite & Kisida, 2016; Lindsay & Hart, 2017). However, BWTs must lead this charge while also navigating their own experiences of macro- and micro-level misogynoir, which increases their levels of stress, psychological distress, and other forms of trauma (Acosta, 2019; Bailey, 2010; Hancock et al., 2020; Pizarro & Kohli, 2020). Further, BWTs are often not equipped to be able to “identify the shifting manifestations and consequences of racism” (Mosely, 2018, p. 272), which ultimately pushes them out of the profession (Kohli, 2018; Lisle-Johnson & Kohli, 2020). Accordingly, the present study aims to identify measures to protect BWTs and their impact in the urban classroom.

Theoretical Framework
This study is framed by Black feminist thought (BFT), which centers the lived experiences of Black women in order to foster their empowerment and social justice (Collins, 2000). Central to BFT are several themes that expose the intersectional layers of oppression faced by Black women and highlight the many ways they resist and confront those oppressions. The BFT themes highlighted in this analysis are intersectionality, the power of self-definition, acts of resistance, controlling images, and unpaid labor (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989; hooks, 1981).

Study Design
The data used in this analysis derived from a larger study that utilized sista circle methodology (Johnson, 2015) to explore the reflective professional experiences of post-service critical BWTs. The participants each engaged in one individual interview and one of three sista circles, both of which allowed space for them to provide context and meaning to their attrition. The participants included a national sample of 15 post-service BWTs who served in urban schools and self-identified as critical teachers. In this study, ‘critical teachers’ and ‘urban schools’ were operationalized and included as criteria in order to ensure a sample that reflected the BWTs who teach “as part of a legacy of Black feminist activism that has sought to maintain cultural practices, address racial and economic inequity, and facilitate the development of youth” (Dixson & Dingus, 2008, p. 832).
Among the themes that emerged from the data was a struggle for the participants to maintain their mental health while serving as critical teachers. Several participants discussed the exhaustion that resulted from their constant resistance, and how it was so great that no level of intervention could have kept them in the classroom once they reached their tipping point and made the decision to leave. This finding illuminates a traumatic reality experienced by many critical BWTs, which clarifies why their attrition rates are consistently higher than national statistics (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017). Thus, sustaining critical BWTs in urban schools means establishing pre-service and in-service structures that psychologically prepare and systematically protect them from being pushed out of the profession.

Authors

• Shanique Lee, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Stephanie Thomas, Lenoir-Rhyne University