Humanizing Professional Development: Prioritizing Teachers' Curricular Power Within Cultures of Deprofessionalization

• In Event: Perspectives on Humanizing and Antiracist Teaching and Professional Development

Abstract

Solutions to educational inequity in urban schools have included policies and curricula that redistribute pedagogical and curricular decision-making from educators to central office staff. Over the course of a nine-month humanizing professional development (HPD) where we cultivated what we call, humanizing distance learning (HDL) pedagogies with/in an intergenerational community of practicing educators, we found that despite the ways that teachers are deprofessionalized and dehumanized our HPD supported educators going beyond cynicism and distrust to developing hope, seeing possibilities, and realizing their agency. Informed by Projects in Humanization (PiH), this case study draws upon focus groups and teacher artifacts. Implications from this study demonstrate the urgent need for long term HPD that facilitates transformation.

Authors

• Kindel Turner Nash, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Keisha McIntosh Allen, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Kyla Thomas

• Sakeena Everett, University of Connecticut