My Latest Study

So everyone knows I am writing a book, yeah? Here's a little more background. I did not know what to expect in 2019 (when I first started my work following and studying teachers at four specific inner-city schools). At that point, I had consumed hundreds of well-written books on teacher pedagogy, teacher burnout, strategies for teaching kids with trauma, and related works. Through timeless works like “Other People’s Children” by Lisa Delpit and more recent tomes like “Teachers’ Stories of Burnout” (in volume 45 of the edited series, “Advancements in Research on Teaching)", I understood then, as I do now, that teachers confront obvious challenges, many of which are well known and well documented.  

Most of the results and observations found in such literature communicated truths that I knew well - first, as a former secondary school teacher and current college professor, and second, as a researcher and teacher of human development and family studies. For years, I depended on well-known theories to help me underscore the complicated and significant relationship between adverse experiences and youth development to my students. I discussed young people in conjunction with their caregivers, extolling the strength and vulnerability of teachers and parents who were often villainized for failing to pass purity tests and meet impossible standards.  There were gaps and biases (especially against Black and Hispanic communities), but I knew that much of the research I had consumed, beginning in graduate school, and continuing in the years after, helped me develop these understandings.

And yet, in my work with urban teachers during the COVID years, it became evident that something unnamed and difficult to grasp was left unexplored. What I found compelling—and what seemed vitally important—was a more focused exploration of the identities and practices of teachers serving Black students. Spending time with them, ideas began to ferment. A subtle yet palpable undercurrent emerged. I began to appreciate that teacher narratives were being shaped not only by urban challenges and trauma that many in society mistakenly assume they fully grasp, but also by systemic conditions culminating in George Floyd's tragic demise and the pandemic's disproportionate impact on Black urban communities. Following teachers over a period of three years, these conducive structural conditions (and the narratives they were generating about teaching, boyhood and girlhood, and the future of urban populaces) were reshaping teachers' approaches to their work rather than altering the fundamental nature of teaching itself.

Beneath layers of fatigue and anxiety lurked a new, interesting, and possibly alarming story of what it meant to be a teacher in a society increasingly divided by race, by partisan political identity, by social status, and by association with social movements. Over three years, these structural conditions altered teachers' perspectives on their roles, prompting questions on race, political identity, and empowerment. Can I talk about race? Should I? Am I woke enough to teach Black history? Is it appropriate for me to be the one to reach out to this child? Am I an ally or a colonizer? Should I help these students or empower them? Is it possible to do both concurrently? Am I even qualified to work with urban Black youth? What does it mean to be a teacher in a post-pandemic context? Am I still what my students need? I began then to realize that my book may be less about who teachers think they are, as it is the profound transformations of teachers over the last few years, and the impact of conditions often overlooked by many. In addition to sharing some explosive (and likely controversial) findings, what I hope to accomplish with my book is to urge us all to listen closely to teachers' expressed needs. I hope, also, to illuminate the potential educators hold if given the attention they deserve.

During my study of these teachers, I observed the spectrum of their human experiences. They, like all people, could sometimes be vainglorious or unhelpfully modest, distracted and offering little or fully attentive and bombastic, recklessly optimistic or unapologetic catastrophizers. Sometimes our interviews were affected by their weariness with me, their careers, or their lives.  Occasionally, we were stymied by teachers' fears of being beset by pinned-up emotions.  There were even times when I suspected that teachers were particularly alarmist or reassuring out of fear of having nothing interesting to say. My approach was to listen to teachers, drawing from their narrative expertise to help gain a fuller understanding of the challenges and aspirations of Black children; and then to explore how the master narratives of teachers are influenced by the master narratives teachers hold of Black youth.   That's it. That's the book. And in the coming weeks, I will begin sharing lessons and tidbits from the book. Ready to hear from the teachers themselves? Cool. If this interests you, definitely subscribe.

If you don't care about the book, just remember that I intend to use this blog to share a lot of random and hopefully interesting thoughts on the world. Stay tuned for all of that. I'd love, for instance, to offer commentary on the"Who TF Did I Marry" TikTok going viral (Fingers crossed, I can finish it while it is still relevant, lol).

Thanks, friends. Stay woke.