"Yes, Everything Shifted . . .": Entanglements of Teenage Motherhood Identities as Waste-Value Productions Within Schools

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Perspectives on Difference and Power: Exploring Academic Experiences and Outcomes

Abstract

In the United States, schools act as a site for perpetuating explicit, hidden, and null curricula that impacts the perceptions of students, including those who have been marginalized due to their multiple identities (Basch, 2011; Milner, 2015). This paper deeply explores the experiences of seven teenage mothers participating in a community-based organization as they construct counter narratives around identities such as race, gender, sexuality, motherhood, and social class. Several of the teenage mothers both challenge and reinscribe dominant curricular practices and discourses in negotiating their schooling experiences. From this study, I argue that antioppressive education (Kumashiro, 2002) and liberatory practices (hooks, 1994) disrupt binary discourses, resulting in the ability to hold multiple trajectories and routes of being and learning.

Author

• Jana LoBello, University of Minnesota