Black Mamas Teach: Leaning on, Learning From, and Centering Black M(other)work as Educational Praxis

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

There is an educational imperative to design new opportunities for Black learners that reflect their lived experiences. Heading this call, educational research needs to encourage connections and understandings of Blackness that are rooted in the collective experiences of those in the African diaspora. Black mothers have always been responsible for creating these opportunities for their children when and where none existed. Collins (1990) named this the motherwork of women of color; “work for the day to come,” acknowledges the intergenerational layers of labor taken up for the survival of children of color. This panel provides insight into how Black mothering practices and the Motherwork of women of color can be leveraged to do meaningful and consequential work in educational contexts.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Chair

• Wintre Foxworth Johnson, University of Virginia

Papers

• Black Motherwork as Activist Stance: #BLM Mothers Cultivating Developmentally Responsive Activism in Children - Janay M Garrett, The University of Pennsylvania

• ​​P’alante y pa’tra/Forward and Back: Afro-Boriqua Mothering as Black Activist Practice - Krista L. Cortes, University of Pennsylvania

• Harvesting Seeds: Engaging Black and Brown M(other) Work in the (Re)Imagining of Educational Leadership - Whitneé L. Garrett-Walker, University of Toronto

• Collective Mothering as Radical Imagings for Black and Brown Children - Victoria Duran, ESUHSD