This narrative inquiry highlights the experiences of self-identified Soka educators in a PreK-12th grade school in São Paulo, Brazil, as well as volunteers through a program called “Soka Education in Action.” Through their narratives, the role of care in value-creating education is explored as a critical aspect of education that supports students’ academic and personal growth and development, as well as educators’ professional identity and self-actualization. This study clarifies the essential qualities of Soka educators as understood and articulated by practitioners in the field.  The narratives shared by study participants illuminate Soka education as a catalyst that fosters global citizenship by encouraging students to recognize their roles as agents of societal change and instruments of social justice.

This article employs narrative inquiry to illuminate how teachers’ embodied culture of care, or lack thereof, effects African American students. The majority teacher (young, White, female) often struggles to counter the cultural mismatch and connect with her diverse student population. This study highlights narratives of African American students who attended both segregated and newly integrated schools during the 1950s to 1970s, and offers an exemplar of teacher practices and behaviors that lead to a culture of care, which is possible, regardless of race and laws, when educators engage in the act of caring for the overall growth and development of their students.

We are in a time and place where the lives of Black women and girls have to do more than "matter" in education; they must be researched, understood, and enhanced through transformative educational praxis. The Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education (JAAWGE) issued a call for papers for its inaugural issue that sought to elucidate Black women and girls' educational experiences across a variety of disciplines, contexts, and geographic settings. Through this work, the constituency of JAAWGE aims to illuminate Black women and girls' brilliance and resilience by placing their voices at the forefront of educational research and discourse, while leading and creating pathways that are not only attainable, but sustainable. This inaugural issue highlights research from various fields that speak directly to the multiplicity of these women and girls’ experiences in education across disciplines that utilize a vast array of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that are humanizing and centered on Black women and girls.

In one year, I moved from a diverse school where I felt pretty and smart to a predominantly White school where I felt ugly and dumb. This autoethnography examines how a little African American girl’s transfer from an urban to a suburban school resulted in a paradigm shift that had and continues to have profound consequences on her identity development and subsequent choices and practices as a marginalized student struggling to succeed academically, a teacher grappling with professional identity, and a doctoral student hoping to help preservice teachers prepare to meet the needs of diverse students. The research question that prompted this exploration is How does teacher-student (dis)connection impact the identity development of students of color in U.S. schools, and these same students’ professional identity development should they later become teachers themselves? In a larger social context, this work examines the impact of a culture of care, or lack thereof, in the milieu of teaching and learning, especially as it relates to the academic and personal growth and development of Black and Brown students in U.S. public schools. The inquiry aids in unpacking, storying, and restorying the school-related lived experiences of the researcher. The narrative exemplars that are illuminated reinforce the personal, relational, and professional significance of creating a school and classroom culture of care; and the “truths” revealed may offer new knowledge that encourages today’s teachers to develop behaviors and practices that lead to safe, productive, culturally solicitous learning environments.

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