National PAR: Cohort 2
What is PAR?
For more information on participatory action research (PAR) as a methodology, please click here
Study Context & Design
Cohort 2 includes 19 Black teacher-researchers from Tulsa, Jackson, New Orleans, and Savannah.
Credit: https://ncte.org/blog/2018/01/collaborative-learning-democratic-practice-history/
Our cohort designed the following research questions:
How do systemic disinvestment and racialized accountability standards influence the professional trajectories, retention, and capacity for sustainability among new and veteran Black teachers working in underserved schools?
In what ways does systemic disinvestment in Black communities shape the working conditions and expectations placed on black teachers?
How are Black teachers navigating the burden of supporting students amid education systems that have not kept pace with the changing challenges & inequities children & families face today?
What strategies have Black teachers used to navigate or resist the additional burdens they face in schools that lack investment?
What is the relationship between the local context and the systemic disinvestment and racialized accountability standards that Black teachers experience?
How does that relationship impact their professional trajectories, retention, and capacity for sustainability, if at all?
In order to answer these research questions, teacher-researchers conducted interviews with Black teachers in each of the cities as well as story circles.
Our Findings
The impact of systemic disinvestment on education or “systemic neglect” – specifically for Black students and Black teachers across all of our sites
- It’s evident on a daily basis by the lack of resources and the amount of money that we have to take out of our pockets to supply our students with just basic supplies. Not to mention some of, for me, I’ve often had to buy a lot of curriculum resources or learning educational resources. The resources are definitely not here, but you do expect us to perform on the same level as school districts who have all of the resources.
— Tulsa Black teacher, direct quote from interview - “I think that it impacted it because it placed unwanted like stress and burden on you. It made it made you feel as if you couldn’t there was no nobody to go to at the time. So if you needed something within the classroom, I felt like you just had to make it work.”
– Educator EH from Savannah - “It makes it hard to do your work because a lot of the things that you need or would like to have, you don’t have access to it. And so it puts a lot of teachers in a position where they’re having to use their own finances to cover things that’s necessary for them to do their jobs. And our salary really does not give room for that, but yet many teachers make that sacrifice because we don’t have enough of the supplies and things that we need in order to teach the kiddos.”
– Educator CH from Tulsa - “And I think as Black teachers who kind of suffer in resources and just in the whole teaching area as a profession – especially if you teach in a rural area, majority Black kids, yada yada yada- you are the, we get the short end of the stick. We get the short end of the stick. Our days usually are longer. You know, there’s some schools that get out at two-thirty, three, three o’clock. They might have the buses, just like a simple resource, like in that. They might have the buses to make sure that that happens, um, that they can get home earlier. We don’t. We gotta stay till four, four-fifteen, four-something, some gonna stay until six.”
– Educator JH from NOLA
Too many Black students are not being served a quality education
- “It impacted my teaching the first time, in the first community, simply because I had to work with what I had. I had 30 students. Imagine having 30 students and you only have enough for 20 students. It impacted that way negatively because some students was like, “Oh, well, I don’t have it, so I’m not going to do anything,” which led to behavioral problems, which led to disruptions in the classroom.”
— Educator AC from Tulsa - “Why us? Our kids don’t deserve the cream of the crop? Why we got to get leftovers? … If we struggle with reading, why don’t we have more money?”
— Tiffany Seymour, Savannah_TS_Teacher_Nia_7.25
Many of these disparities are fixable so therefore it feels intentional
- “The expectation is still the same… teach like teachers in districts with all the resources.”
— Tawana McGee, Jackson_Group Interview - “I feel like they don’t really listen fully. And when I say they, I mean those that create the curriculums, those that are in the administrative department or in that area. I feel like they don’t take into account what the teacher is advocating for or saying. We’re not just saying it just because, it’s because we’re in the classroom with them on a daily, so we know what our students need, we know what needs to be changed.
– Educator LB from Tulsa
- “I was always taught to just roll with what you got. And so my main thing is I just make the students feel as comfortable as possible. So for instance, if we’re sitting there and we see a roach or we see a snake or we see something, I’ll go kill it and I’ll tell them, “Hey,” and I’ll try to make them feel good. And hey, almost every school has those. I’ll say something like that to try to ease it up and try to make the atmosphere feel a little better. So my main thing is just to support them and make them feel… Sorry. To make them feel like everything is okay.”
— Tulsa_ND_CurrentTeacher_Tahquai-AlyceMason_0730
In the face of this historical undervaluing and “systemic neglect” Black teachers have found ways to be innovative and resilient
- Black teachers are tired, but they are also resourceful and committed
- Black teachers navigate challenges and doing the most to serve students with deep and critical care
- “The stories and excerpts reveal a bigger paradox: although school systems have failed to provide adequate tools that Black educators need to thrive and be successful in the classroom, teachers themselves continue to remain the greatest resource within them. Their capacity to “do more with less” sustains students—but it should not continue to be the framework or foundation of public education.”
– from doing more with less memo - “We shouldn’t have to do this, but we do… Disinvestment has made us resilient… Victories are hard‑earned.”
— Educator, Jackson_Group Interview - “I have to make a lot of adjustments and be a little more creative… resources should be made readily available.”
— Amanda Terrell, Jackson_Group Interview