Liberatory school counseling practices to promote freedom dreaming for Black youth

Abstract

The American School Counseling Association calls for professional school counselors to support the holistic development and success of all students. However, the field of school counseling is riddled with practices that have harmed and dehumanized Black students. For example, school counselors engage in practices (e.g., social–emotional learning and vocational guidance), which work to reinforce white supremacy and dehumanize Black students. Further, school counselors may also contribute to the ways that the basic and unique needs of Black students are overlooked, leading to the continued systemic adultification of Black students. What is needed is a radical imagination of school counseling, which centers on homeplace as the foundation in order to engage in freedom dreaming. In this article, the authors engage this radical imagination to detail an antiracist view of school counseling practice that embraces freedom dreaming and homeplace through healing and Indigenous educational practices, youth-led school counseling, and critical hip-hop practices to promote joy, creativity, power, love, resistance, and liberation.

Antiracist school counseling: A consensual qualitative study

“…School counselors can do this by pushing back against school and district policies that dismiss, dehumanize, or harm the Black body (i.e., disciplinary codes that criminalize Black hair, language, expression, and kinship). School counselors can also initiate or promote ongoing programing that authentically centers Black joy, emphasizing all the accomplishments of Black students and ways they bring joy to their families, the school, and the larger community (Mayes & Byrd, 2022, Mayes et al., 2022). The use of Youth Participatory Action Research in group counseling (Edirmanasinghe, 2020, Levy, et al., 2018) is one example of action toward procedural justice that provides opportunity for Black joy and collective kinship.…”

Cultivating Homeplace for Black Girls Through Tier 2 Group Counseling Experiences

“…Black joy, homeplace, and freedom dreaming are critical in antiracist practice and embrace the true liberatory possibilities of the present and the future (hooks, 1990; Kelley, 2003; Mayes et al, 2022). Homeplace (hooks, 1990) is a physical, mental, and even emotional location of holistic joy and resistance where students, especially Black girls, experience their full humanity despite the oppression they may encounter outside of such a space.…”

“…In particular, we highlight the role of school counselors and school psychologists because they are positioned with the skills needed to help Black girls academically and emotionally become college and career ready through social and emotional agency. We emphasize that interventions must engage antiracist frameworks that center on the creation of homeplace (hooks, 1990) and engage the radical imagination of Black girls while also working to dismantle oppressive policies and practices in K–12 schools (Kelley, 2003; Mayes & Byrd, 2022; Mayes et al, 2022).…”

Reclaiming the System: Group Counseling Landscape in Schools

“…School counselors can play a vital role in promoting healing-centered engagement and antiracist school counseling (Ieva et al, 2021). To do this, Mayes and Byrd (2022) discussed the need for critical consciousness informed by critical race theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) and ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1992) to understand the ways in which intersectional racism is pervasive across multiple systems and subsystems and how such can impact the development of children, adolescents, and their families (Mayes et al, in press). Specifically, school counselors can utilize a critical empowerment lens and group counseling knowledge and skills to promote the intersection of healing-centered practices, antiracist education and practices, and social/emotional learning to support students and create equitable learning environments (Ieva et al, 2021).…”