Working for Racial Equity at the Margins: Teacher-Leaders Facilitate a Book Study on Race in a Predominantly White Suburban High School

Abstract

This case examines a book study focused on racial equity work at Oak Meadows—a suburban high school with shifting student racial demographics. Two teacher-leaders organize a yearlong book study, initially with the tacit support of school administrators. Book study participants approached their work with great enthusiasm. As the content of the book study shifted to heavier topics such as racialized tracking, teacher colleagues started to withdraw their support, question teacher-leaders’ intentions, and undermine their work. This case explores how teacher-leaders work at the margins for social justice with a school leader who lacks the necessary subjectivities and skill sets to adequately address these issues of racial equity at Oak Meadows.

A Systematic Review of the Literature on Inservice Professional Development Explicitly Addressing Race and Racism

“…Hyland (2005), Kailin (2002), and Lac and Diamond (2019) studied PD attempting more broadly to raise teachers’ awareness about how schools reproduce racial inequality. Hyland (2005) summarized, “The seminar was focused on examining race in the context of the Woodson School and how racism in general was perpetuated in schools and society” (p. 436).…”

“…Hyland (2005) summarized, “The seminar was focused on examining race in the context of the Woodson School and how racism in general was perpetuated in schools and society” (p. 436). Lac and Diamond (2019) analyzed how teachers, influenced by initial principal support, grappled with “the tensions of working for equity in racially diverse schools” (pp. 60–61).…”

Teacher Leadership for Love, Solidarity, and Justice: The Invisibilized and Contested Practices of Teacher Leaders of Color

“…Recruiting teacher leaders of Color for justice-oriented purposes while preserving white colonial normativity demobilizes and sabotages ongoing efforts to engage radical social change, spiritually murdering (as cited by Love, 2019) and robbing teacher leaders of Color, particularly women of Color, of their dignity and humanity as radical change agents. In fact, participation in official and formal teacher leadership roles can heighten the risk of racialized trauma; Lucia's cognitively and socioemotionally dissonant leadership experiences further illuminate why teacher leaders of Color are pushed out of institutionalized roles, work at the margins, and need critical racial affinity spaces to heal (Lac & Diamond, 2019;Pour-Khorshid, 2018). In other words, efforts to recruit and retain a diverse teacher leader population are insufficient and incomplete endeavors for educational justice: doing so without transformation of racist, capitalist, cis-heteropatriarchal ideologies, policies, structures of domination and control can result in serious racialized psychological, spiritual, and traumatic consequences for teacher leaders of Color, while simultaneously reproducing injustice.…”

“…Considering that the potential for and learning of counterhegemonic leadership primarily occurs in the margins, the practices and ways of being that teacher leaders of Color develop become marginalized and unrecognized within institutions that preserve white, colonial, cis-heteropatriarchal normativity. Teacher leaders of Color are forced to navigate the political terrain of institutions that normalize white comfort and white rage (Anderson, 2017;Hauge, 2019), resulting in racialized trauma that decreases the likelihood that these teacher leaders will participate in formal leadership roles (Durias, 2010;Lac & Diamond, 2019).…”

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“…In addition to PL curriculum barriers, researchers have identified barriers to implementation following justice-oriented PL. Such issues include a lack of support from school leadership (Lac & Diamond, 2019 ), racist institutional policies (Dover et al, 2018 ), or teachers’ “pedagogical insecurities” (Szelei et al, 2020 , p. 780).…”