Author(s): Hayes, Cleveland, Brenda Juarez, and Veronica Escoffery-Runnels
Published: January 2014 in Democracy and Education
URL to article
Research Focus Area: Asset-based best practices for serving Black and Latinx teens
Abstract:
Applying culturally relevant and social justice–oriented notions of teaching and learning and a critical race theory (CRT) analysis of teacher preparation in the United States, this study examines the oral life histories of two Black male teachers recognized for their successful teaching of Black students. These histories provide us with a venue for identifying thematic patterns across the two teachers’ educational philosophies and pedagogical practices and for analyzing how these teachers’ respective personal and professional experiences have influenced their individual and collective approaches to teaching and learning.
Research Question(s):
What are the guiding philosophies behind these exemplary teachers’ approach to teaching Black students?
Methods:
Interview, Ethnography
Setting:
Mississippi teachers who had attended Jim Crow schools as well as had taught pre– and post–Jim Crow. The exemplary educators examined here were chosen by community nomination.
Key Findings:
- The ethnography follows two black male teachers, Jonas Crenshaw Sr. and Cleveland Hayes Sr.
- Crenshaw sees and uses education as a tool for improving the surrounding social conditions by explicitly acknowledging and taking on the inequities that characterize students’ daily lives. To him, education is an antiracism tool to be applied by students toward ending racial discrimination and other inequities and thus improving not only their own life conditions but also the life conditions of those around them.
- Crenshaw sees himself as “facilitator and coach” in this mission, expecting students to assume an autonomous role in challenging the dominant negative views of Black people and improving social conditions.
- Mr. Crenshaw wants his students to learn to read the world around them specifically so—in other words, he wants his students to understand that they must not take for granted or simply ingest and mindlessly consume what is presented to them as natural, good, true, and beautiful by dominant White society. He wants them instead to have the skills to think critically about what is being presented to them
- Neither Crenshaw nor Hayes draw on deficiency perspectives of Black students or the Black community to inform his teaching as is typical in dominant understandings of education.
- Following in a long tradition of Black educators, Mr. Hayes accepts where students are when they enter his classroom and helps them to build from that point toward their goals even as he recognizes the realities of the race-based discrimination that he knows his students will and do face
- Hayes knows that dominant White society expects Black students to be pushed out of the classroom. Mr.Hayes sees his role as one of helping Black students resist that dominant, business-as-usual expectation in public schools that they be pushed out of classrooms.
- Positive relationships between Mr. Hayes and his students are a priority. Mr. Hayes has to know his students well to help them to expand toward fulfillment of their dreams and goals. He uses his teaching as a way to help students to take the appropriate steps between articulating a life dream and making that life dream a reality.
- In a practice he refers to as “damage control”, Mr. Hayes places emphasis on mentoring and advocating for Black students in particular.
- As he puts it, Hayes is interested in not only academic content and test scores but also in “the souls of kids”.
- Hayes attempts to break the cycle of Black youth being funneled out of school and into the streets and into prisons by talking with them and helping them to develop strategies for the disrespect he recognizes as legitimate.
- In both Crenshaw’s and Mr. Hayes’s teaching approaches is the day-to-day engagement of students with issues of social justice, race and racism, and educational equity.
Implications:
- The authors state, “We caution against reading these narratives as a recipe cookbook, how-to guide, or other kind of magic bullet formulas on how to successfully teach Black and other racial minority students and thus “fix” our schools. There are no recipes provided herein. As we define it, the teaching-and-learning cycle is cultural work, a way of thinking about and thus approaching life and its many domains, not a technocratic, rational, objective, and mechanistic process or procedure. We already have a plethora of narrow curricula, scripted pedagogies, and standardized assessments that are proven failures despite the good ntentions that may have produced them”.
- The authors repeat, “the experiences of these two men are not meantto be used to develop checklists and rubrics for others to follow, as we believe that teaching cannot follow a how-to guide. It is our intent for others to use these experiences as a way to begin to think about their teaching.”.
Limitations:
- This study follows only two teachers in only one location.