Community-Mindedness and Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice: Addressing Isolation With Critical Race Professional Development

• In Event: 16.034 - Attending to the Preparation and Support of Teachers of Color: Preservice Through Induction Years

Abstract

While students of color comprise almost 50% of the current public school student population, only 14% of teachers in the United States are non-white (Feistritzer, 2011). Teachers of color also leave the field at 20% per academic year, 4% higher than their white counterparts (Eddy & Easton Brooks, 2012). Teachers of color with racial justice orientations experience incredible isolation due to demographics, but also their ideological commitments. This isolation impacts their professional growth, ability to reach their social justice goals, and their retention. This paper will share data from a Critical Race Professional Development (CRPD) with teachers of color to bring insight to the complexity of their isolation, as well as the community they foster to stay engaged in the field.
Teachers of color from across the country attended an annual three-day summer conference framed through Critical Race Theory (CRT) to offer leadership development and the tools to navigate school racial climate. Varying in race, age, gender, sexual orientation and years teaching, 218 conference attendees self-selected to participate in the study. Data was collected through applications, evaluations, audio recordings of dialogue during workshops, and ethnographic observations of the process and experience of the conference.
CRT is a framework that emerged out of the law in the 1970's to draw focus to the slow pace of institutional reform as it relates to race and racism (Bell, 2004). Within education, it has been developed as a conceptual and research framework to center racism in educational inequality, as well as the immense wealth of communities of color (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001). CRPD is a form of praxis that applies CRT to the context of K-12 schools and the lives of teachers. Through this, participants were able to address their physical and ideological isolation with community building.
Teachers of color reported experiencing isolation in three main ways: 1) in their identity, 2) ideologically, 3) and in their professional growth. They also approached the CRPD open to being supported, but also ready to support others. The intentional and organic layers of community building that occurred through the CRPD was tied to their cultural and ideological wealth, which in turn promoted their professional growth, reinitiated their commitments to teaching for justice, and their retention in the field. From this study, we are able to see both the struggle and powerful strengths of community mindedness in the experiences of racial justice oriented teachers of color.

Authors

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

• Marcos Pizarro, San José State University