Seeing Their Light: Toward an Understanding of Black Boy Joy in the Literacy Classroom

• In Event: Centering Hope, Joy, and Love in Literacies Research With Youth of Color

Abstract

Based on an ongoing community partnership between a teacher-researcher and a high school for students with learning differences, this paper explores how Black boys’ literacies are enacted and expressed in a predominantly white urban independent school context. In this highly scaffolded learning environment, Black boys are over surveilled for concerns around academic success, socialization concerns, and involvement with extracurricular activities. This study seeks to examine the dimensions of “Black Boy Joy” that emerged over the ten months of the ethnographic research, both across the participants in the partnership and within their broader school community.

Author

• Abdul-Qadir D. Islam, Teachers College, Columbia University