Divergent Values: A Family Critical Race Theory Analysis of Families of Color and Their Perceptions of Teachers and Teaching as a Profession

In seeking strategies for diversifying the U.S. public school teacher workforce, education policymakers and teacher education programs need to meaningfully consider input from the families of PK-12 Students of Color. Using a Family Critical Race Theory (FamilyCrit) analysis, this article examines the educational experiences and related perspectives of Families of Color about teachers and the teaching profession. Findings reveal that Families of Color perceive teaching as a form of caring and teachers as extended family members. Families of Color wrestled with a divergence of values in encouraging their children to pursue their passions, while concomitantly confronting economic injustices. Findings challenge dominant narratives that Families of Color do not have college or career aspirations for their children

Sowing Seeds of Justice: Feminists\u27 Reflections on Teaching for Social Justice in the Southwest

Forming the basis for a provocative dialogue and written to illuminate teaching stories often pushed to the margins, this chapter provides a counter-narrative to the discourse surrounding leaky teacher-of-color pipelines and the national teacher crisis. Employing a critical race analytical lens, critical autoethnographic approach, and narrated through prose, five female educators committed to social justice share how they rely on unique and intersecting identities to sustain themselves in contested school spaces, while simultaneously exploring the cultural wealth they and their students bring into those spaces. Their collective stories reveal important lessons essential to our understanding of how to develop teachers for social justice. They also provide insight for those who teach in schools and classrooms meant to educate our most vulnerable and under-served students, and may answer the question, Why doesn’t anyone want to teach anymore