Looking for Trouble and Causing Trauma

The purpose of this paper is to examine the genuine but misguided efforts to address the behaviors of Pre-K students in a Texas public school. After espousing the concept of building strong children through correction, evaluation, and intervention in my role as assistant principal, I began to question how these methods tended to lead to pathologizing the behaviors of Black pre-kindergarteners in my school. In an attempt to find solutions to the children\u27s perceived misbehavior, Pre-K teachers were charged with utilizing PBIS strategies and the RTI process for behavior. Social and emotional learning (SEL) was also considered. We discovered that SEL programs were too cumbersome and expensive and that all the approaches only seemed to reinforce teachers\u27 deficit thinking. This paper concludes by making the case for the cultural practice of othermothering as a different approach to address the behavior and learning needs of Black children

A Critical Exploratory Analysis of Black Girls\u27 Achievement in 8th grade U.S. History

The purpose of this study was to utilize an ethnically homogeneous design to examine Black female student U.S. History content-specific knowledge. The study aims to elucidate the importance of single-group analyses as an alternative to between-group comparative designs. The present study utilized a critical, quantitative, descriptive research design to examine the achievement of Black girls in U.S. History from a strength-based and growth-focused perspective. The study contributes to the literature on Black girls’ achievement by applying a quantitative approach to intersectional research. This study utilized two subsamples of Black 8th grade girls from the 2006 and 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (N = 4,490). Mean differences in Black girls’ specialized U.S. History content knowledge were assessed using both descriptive statistics and an analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicate statistically significant growth overall, and on the democracy and world role domains. Data also indicate that scores on the democracy and culture domains were statistically significantly higher than scores on the technology and world role domains. This study provides implications for middle grades U.S. History achievement and the specific needs of Black girls

Unpolicing Childhood: Cultural Approaches to Anti-Child Disciplinary Violence in the Elementary Setting

Nineteenth century western beliefs about race and gender ushered in the concept of othering, in which non-white individuals were viewed and treated as subhuman and dangerous. Concurrently, the shifting concept of childhood buttressed the notion that innocence and purity were qualities most associated with and demonstrated by children from the dominant culture. As organizations tend to reflect societal values, beliefs and fears, school became a major institution designed to mold children into responsible and moral citizens. This symbolic social contract between society and school has come to reinforce childism--a form of oppression against children who have been othered. We assert that in schools, childism is evidenced as anti-Blackness and anti-Black child sexism. In this paper, we examine childism and share the narratives of Black elementary educators who resisted anti-Black childism and disrupted disciplinary violence in the elementary setting with cultural approaches

First World Domestication of Critical Pedagogy: Unveiling the Ruse of Social Activism in American Classrooms

Paulo Freire, the renowned founder of critical pedagogy, used his own personal experience with poverty and his work with adults in literacy programs to forge a Third World pedagogical paradigm so dynamic that it is subject to inappropriate domestication in the First World. Some of the misalignment of Freirean theory comes from educationists and activists trying to solve First World education problems with a theoretical framework that was specifically designed to activate transformation, consciousness, and revolution among oppressed peoples in the Third World. Most of the domestication is a product of individuals not thoroughly reading and understanding Freire’s work, not acknowledging or even being aware of his ideological evolution, and using shallow or specious applications of his theory’s constructs in the classroom, education courses and programs, and even peer discussions. His legacy, like many indigenous foreigners, while still celebrated, is often permeated with misappropriations, misconceptions, and misuses of his ideas. Most importantly, in regards to Freire’s theory, there is the risk of spreading it too thin or stretching it beyond its narrative. Freire cannot be everything to everybody because his work cannot be turned into something it is not. When scholars and activists use his ideas, they have reduced his pedagogy to a set of techniques, skills, or methods, which is only one part of the program. They fail to take into account culture, humanism, and the enhancement of consciousness. To him, pedagogy involved a complex philosophical and political practice of education, not the North American obsession with teaching methods

Even Cinderella Is White: (Re)Centering Black Girls’ Voices as Literacies of Resistance

The authors describe using counter fairy tales to (re)center the voices of Black girls as literacies of resistance in English education