"Because I Care About Them, Like, Whatever": A Successful White Teacher's Complicated Possibilities in Her Emotional Labor

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Racial Complexities: Institutional and Personal Possibilities

Abstract

This ethnographic case study examines the emotional labor of a female White teacher in a segregated school to describe the day to day interactions intertwined with the self-interrogation of whiteness that allows for successful teaching in urban secondary classrooms (Author 1, 2016; 2017). This study found that this teacher worked to implement culturally responsive pedagogy and through the research process examined her own complicated motivations for love and acceptance in the process of developing an understanding of her own positionality and emotional labor. This study is useful to teacher educators and trainers to aid teachers in their journeys to make a difference across the color line.

Authors

• Michael L. Boucher, Texas A&M University - San Antonio

• Meagan Hoff, Texas State University - San Marcos

• Amber Sarker, Texas State University - San Marcos