Solidarity and Autobiographical Identity: A Successful White Teacher’s Complicated Notions of Her Emotional Labor

• In Event: Autobiographical Occasions: When I Allow Myself to Remember

Abstract

This session will discuss the autobiographical understandings of a White teacher in an urban, Midwestern school. As a teacher dedicated to antiracist action in solidarity with her students, (Author 1, 2016), she describes her complex and, at times contradictory, understanding of her emotional labor (Holschild, 1983) as a function of her life story as a daughter of a teacher and a White ally dedicated to social justice. This paper arose from a larger ethnographic case study of White high school teachers of largely African American students from a Midwestern urban district and the contradictions inherent in her narrative informs and troubles the narratives of White teachers as monolithically race evasive (Jupp, Berry, & Lensmire, 2016). The question that guided this study was: How do successful White high school social studies teachers negotiate their teaching relationships with their African American students?

Authors

• Michael L. Boucher, Texas State University

• Meagan Hoff, Texas State University

• Amber L. Sarker, Texas State University