Inservice Educators Sustain and Grow their Humanizing Critical Sociocultural Knowledge

• In Event: Educating Toward Social Justice

Abstract

AESA's call names multiple forms of oppressions that are taking place in real time in our P-12 institutions, including legal mandates that harm our young Black, Brown, Indigenous, Queer, and Trans people and communities with policies that intentionally work to erase their existence. At the same time, in the face of these violent state policies, teacher and education activists in P-12 schools across the nation maintain hope through their ongoing efforts towards the pursuit of liberation. In our paper, we offer narratives of inservice educators who persist in their enactment of critical pedagogies despite the state mandates that aim to control their practice and stop their pursuits of equity in education. These educators are committed to unlearning and learning critical sociocultural realities that shape our school contexts to develop and teach anti-oppressive curriculum.

Authors

• Saba Khan Vlach, University of Iowa

• Keffrelyn Brown, The University of Texas at Austin