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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2020.1814387
ARTICLE
Critical professional development and the racial justice
leadership possibilities of teachers of colour in K-12 schools
Rita Kohlia, Marcos
Pizarrob, Luis-Genaro Garciac, Lisa Kellyd, Michael Espinozae
/
and Juan Cordovaf
a
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA; bSan José State University, San José, CA, USA; cSacramento State
University, Sacramento, CA, USA; dOakland Unified School District, Oakland, CA, USA; eCampbell Union High School
District, Campbell, CA, USA; fHighline Public Schools, WA, USA
ARTICLE HISTORY Received 16 February 2020; Accepted 20 August 2020
There is a growing body of literature on social justice school leadership that has pointed to teachers
as an important resource in rethinking static and hierarchical approaches to change (Lopez 2014,
Baker-Doyle 2017, Rojas 2018). Research has also shown that although teachers of Colour are often
overlooked for leadership roles, they are needed in this leadership work (Pizarro and Kohli 2018,
Kohli 2019, Gist 2019). Unfortunately, navigating institutional change is not something typically
taught within teacher preparation or traditional professional development. What would happen,
though, if critical teachers of Colour were actually developed and supported as leaders to collectively
address racial inequities at their school sites? How might this form of development affect their
professional growth, sustainability, and impact?
Using a framework of critical professional development – teacher development spaces that frame
educators as 'politically-aware individuals who have a stake in teaching and transforming society’
(Kohli et al. 2015, p. 9) – this article explores the possibilities of a racial affinity critical professional
development space, the Institute for Teachers of Colour Commited to Racial Justice (ITOC), which
is designed to foster the retention, growth, and transformative leadership capacities of teachers of
Colour in K-12 schools. Specifically, we share three cases of justice-oriented teachers of Colour who
build upon their experiences in ITOC as they work towards social justice in their educational
contexts: 1) on a curricular level, developing lessons that are more culturally and community
sustaining, 2) on a school-wide level, creating spaces and structures for students and teachers of
Colour to thrive, and 3) across the district, organising teachers of Colour to resist policies and
practices that foster harmful conditions for communities of Colour. Together, these narratives offer
lessons on how critical approaches to professional development can strengthen the social and racial
justice leadership capacities of teachers of Colour in their efforts for enduring change.
Context for teachers of colour
Many teachers of Colour choose teaching because they want to serve students of Colour and
transform educational conditions for communities of Colour (Irizarry and Donaldson 2012, Gist
et al. 2018). Teachers of Colour have been shown to have higher academic expectations for students
of Colour (Cherng and Halpin 2016), are more likely to embody culturally sustaining pedagogies
(Brown 2009) and, while not all teachers of Colour are politically engaged, because of their
positionalities, teachers of Colour are more likely to recognise racial inequities (Dingus 2008;
Dixson & Dingus, 2008). However, while students of Colour now comprise more than half of
CONTACT Rita Kohli
rita.kohli@ucr.edu
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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R. KOHLI ET AL.
students enrolled in US public schools, teachers of Colour make up just 21% of the teaching force
(US Department of Education 2016). Thus, with the assets that they bring to the profession, schools
and districts are beginning to focus on their recruitment (U.S. Department of Education, 2016,
Haddix 2017).
Within the predominantly White profession, though, teachers of Colour experience racial harm
themselves (Dingus 2008, Pizarro and Kohli 2020), and have disproportionately high attrition rates
compared to White teachers (Ingersoll and May 2011). While teachers of Colour need support to
navigate their racialised realities (Kohli 2019, Mensah and Jackson 2018), it has been noted that
typical approaches to teacher learning tend to neglect race, structural inequities, and the knowledge
and perspectives of communities of Colour (Cochran-Smith et al. 2015). In addition to primarily
centring White teachers, typical models of professional development pay little attention to the racial
and socio-political dynamics of schools and neglect the experiences, needs, and agentive capabilities
of teachers of Colour. In this article, we bridge research on professional development and on the
transformative leadership potential of justice-oriented teachers of Colour to explore how critical
professional development can support them in leading justice-centred change at their schools.
Critical professional development
Traditional approaches to teacher professional development (PD) often focus on technical notions
of teaching (i.e. grade level planning, literacy growth, classroom management). And while growth
along these aspects of teaching is foundational, critical educators rarely have access to professional
growth opportunities that centre their political visions. Out of a need for this learning, there has
been an increase in critical professional development – development spaces that support the
political orientations and critical pedagogical needs of justice-oriented teachers. Built upon models
of community organising and teacher inquiry groups (Ritchie and Wilson 2000, Rogers, Kramer &
Mosley, 2009), critical professional development centres teachers’ roles in transforming schools and
society as they are ‘designed to provoke cooperative dialogue, build unity, provide shared leadership, and meet the critical needs of teachers’ (Kohli et al. 2015, p. 11). Critical professional
development ranges in structure and purpose – from regular meetings of a small contingent of
teachers to larger annual convenings – but they all afford space for complex reflections about
structures, policies and practices that guide social and school based in/equities. In this article, we
use the case study of ITOC to explore how teachers of Colour have taken up racial justice leadership
in their schools when engaged and supported towards their critical visions.
Institute for teachers of colour committed to racial justice
The Institute for Teachers of Colour Committed to Racial Justice (ITOC) selects participants
through an application process that assesses their racial justice leadership capacities and potential.
The space is structured to attend to the impact of racism that teachers of Colour experience through
models of self- and community-care, to address their racial and ideological isolation by facilitating
a sense of collectivity, and to provide opportunities for culturally sustaining professional growth.
For three intensive days, teachers of Colour are exposed to theory, models of practice, and leadership tools to strengthen their ability to name and disrupt institutional racism. They are cultivated as
a professional community of critical educators poised to challenge policies, practices, and belief
systems that marginalise communities of Colour (Kohli and Pizarro 2016). Over the past ten years,
approximately half of the attendees have been Latinx, approximately 20% Asian American and
Pacific Islander, 20% Black, and 12% of participants have identified as multiracial or other.
Reflective of the teaching force, 78% of participants were women, and 22% were men.
Approximately half of participants have been novice teachers, having taught less than 5 years,
one quarter have taught 6–10 years, and one quarter were veteran teachers having taught more than
10 years. They ranged in age from their early twenties to mid-sixties and have taught subjects across
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION
3
the spectrum, from elementary through high school. In a given year, an average of 30% of ITOC
attendees are alumni to the programme.
Methods
In previous studies, we have explored the impact of the three days of ITOC on teachers of Colour,
focusing on how feelings of isolation or racial stress are addressed by the convening (Pizarro and
Kohli 2020, Kohli. et al. 2020). Here, we extend this exploration to understand the impact of ITOC
on the leadership practices of teachers who attend and, in turn, on their contexts. We are a collective
of: 1) two educational researchers who are also former teachers of Colour – one a Chicano former
elementary educator and the other a South Asian former middle school teacher – and are codirectors of ITOC, and 2) four teachers of Colour – a bi-racial Afro-Latina middle school teacher,
two Latino high school educators (one who was transitioning into the role of a professor/academic),
and a Latino elementary educator – who have attended ITOC at least twice. After the 2017 or 2018
convenings, three of the teacher-authors applied and were selected as Racial Justice Teacher
Innovation Grant recipients, receiving a small stipend and support to build upon their learnings
at ITOC work towards a transformational vision in their classroom, school, or district.
For this article, we engaged in a method of narrative self-study (Clandinin and Connelly 2004).
Narrative inquiry builds upon participants’ experiences across time, interaction, and location.
Narrative self-study allows the data to extend beyond what was experienced and observed by
allowing participants to frame their narratives through their personal insight and knowledge
(Kitchen, 2009). This has been an increasingly utilised method to centre non-dominant teacher
experiences in research (Endo, Reece-Miller, Santavicca, 2010), and as a pedagogical tool to raise
critical issues with other teachers (Milner 2010). We use this approach so teachers of Colour,
through their own standpoint, can be understood as central to the transformational work of schools,
and in the knowledge-creation of educational research.
The teacher-authors were tasked in this collaboration to write a short narrative of their professional experiences, guided by the question, ‘how has the critical professional development of ITOC
supported the racial justice leadership capacities of teachers.’ We co-designed the prompt as
a written reflection where they were to pay attention to their vision, professional struggles, what
they gained from ITOC, and the impact of their leadership work. We also wanted each narrative to
include specific moments and details, as they grounded theory in their practice.
The research-authors of the paper read all the drafts, providing feedback to the teachers focused
on moments of leadership and themes that cut across the narratives. After several rounds of reading
and analysing the narratives through the lens of our question, key themes began to emerge related to
the impact of the critical professional development on their efficacy as transformational teacher
leaders in schools, and we formed the narratives into three case studies, which we include in the
next section. The research-authors then reflected on the collective lessons of the case studies, which
is included in the discussion.
Strengthening teacher of colour racial justice leadership
To demonstrate how ITOC serves the agentive possibilities of teachers of Colour, we present three
cases. In the first case, we share two narratives – the first written by Luis, an arts educator who
taught high school in his own community and worked to affirm and sustain the cultural and
linguistic strengths of his students (Paris and Alim 2014, 2017). An experienced critical educator, he
shared his pedagogical approach and arts lesson at ITOC in a workshop for other teachers of
Colour. The second narrative in the case study was written by Lisa, an educator from an entirely
different context and discipline who attended the workshop and was inspired to adapt the
curriculum in her classroom to help build community with middle school students in authentic
and relational ways. The success she experienced with the lesson then led to her teaching the
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R. KOHLI ET AL.
approach to other educators. In the second case study, Michael, a high school English teacher,
narrates his response to the school’s alienating school culture by re-centring Latinx students; and in
the third case study, Juan, an elementary school teacher, reflects on his leadership work organising
with teachers of Colour across the district to challenge racist policies and practices. Overall, we saw
that teachers of Colour served as relational and community-engaged knowledge creators, shifters of
school culture who demand spaces of belonging for students of Colour, and as collective learners
and organisers towards district change. Representing different layers of the work of K-12 teachers –
at the curricular, schoolwide, and district levels – the narratives demonstrate how a critical professional development space supported the collaborative leadership development of teachers of Colour
as they enact change in schools.
Curricular leadership: developing culturally sustaining classrooms
La Lotería in an arts classroom
While art teachers traditionally are guided to draw on the resources of privileged museums – spaces
often irrelevant or disconnected from the lived experiences of students of Colour and their
communities – I (Luis) have always understood that some of the most impactful art movements
have developed from the political circumstances of communities of Colour. Teaching in the school
I once attended, and wanting to provide an education I wish I had as a young person, I aim to use
the arts as a way for students to understand their world and explore how historical systems of
oppression have affected the well-being of our communities.
My school is in South Central Los Angeles, an Industrial section of the city that before 1948 was
the only place in the area where African Americans were allowed to own property, and thus became
a cultural and artistic hub that maintained rich African American history. In recent years, with the
growth of large im/migrant populations, the region is now a shared Latinx and African American
space.
Several years ago, I was teaching a unit on family that included students creating portraits
focused on their parents’ occupations. On my way to work one day, thinking of different ways that
I could extend the unit, I drove past my old home and the bench where my mother would catch the
bus for work each morning at 4am. As memories flooded back of my single, working mom and my
experiences as the eldest of my siblings, I remembered the time my Spanish teacher used the game
of La Lotería in class (a game similar to Bingo often played in Latin America, that displays cultural
images with titles and riddles instead of numbers). The rules of the game are explained by
Zambrano (2013, v):
There are fifty-four cards and each comes with a riddle, un dicho. There is a
traditional set of riddles, but sometimes dealers create their own to trick the
players. After the dealer “sings” the riddle, the players cover the appropriate
spots on their playing boards, their tablas, with either bottle caps, dried
beans, or loose change . . .. You can win by filling a vertical line, horizontal,
a diagonal, the four corners, the center squares, or blackout.
Seeing La Lotería in school was one of the few times I felt a clear connection to home in school, and
I wanted my students to experience that same authentic connection. I knew that teaching students
about European artists or centring technical learning was not going to help them navigate the sociopolitical dynamics of their marginalised community. So I decided to build upon the game in my
class in a way that challenged systems of power and reflected their community cultural wealth –
forms of ‘capital’ traditionally unrecognised by school that are the foundation upon which Latina/o/
x students and their families successfully navigate hostile systems (Yosso 2005).
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION
5
As we discussed the history of La Lotería, I prompted students to critically analyse the images,
unpacking stereotypical representations of race, class, or gender. I then asked students to re-create
a Lotería card in a way that honoured their parents’ occupation. By doing this, I was acknowledging their
home and communal knowledge as a form of capital and used it to challenge the images in the game.
For example, students made references to El Valiente (see image 1) as someone that is courageous or brave. Others talked about how the image reflected someone that was a macho, critiquing
machismo because it reinforces gender stereotypes that some students lamented were reflected in
their homes. One student felt that the image of El Valiente was not aligned with his interpretation of
being brave. He thought his dad was an authentic Valiente and wanted to challenge this visual
narrative of a macho looking man with a knife. He explained:
In my eyes, my parent – the mechanic – is the Valiente for the long hours he works, sometimes with no days
off, to make sure we can pay the rent and have something to eat. I titled my card, “The Workingman,” because
the working man is the tough guy and the only weapon he needs are his mechanic tools.
El Valiente from the game of La Lotería. Student re-created Lotería card.
By Don Clemente, Inc.
This family unit allowed students to challenge current stereotypes, gender roles, and issues of
race and class that shape their environments, while also enabling them to acknowledge their
parents’ occupations as a valuable source of capital in their lives. Through this method, we
developed an understanding of the socio-economic circumstances and strength of their parents,
even when their occupations are often undervalued by society.
I wanted to share this model with other teachers of Colour, so in 2017 (and again in 2018)
I facilitated a workshop at ITOC called ‘La Lotéria and Art Education as Creative Resistance:
Embracing Working Class Occupations in our Classrooms.’ While most of the participating
teachers were not arts educators, my emphasis was on how the arts could build upon the cultural
wealth that students bring into their classrooms to facilitate critical thinking and cultural affirmation. I wanted critical teachers of Colour to experience recreating Lotería cards as essential tools for
themselves and their students, so I encouraged them to draw from their students’ knowledge to
build their own curriculum. This is exactly what we achieved. Several teachers who attended this
workshop have adapted this lesson and approach into their own context, sharing a heightened
understanding of the vitality of the arts in developing culturally sustaining practices that foster the
critical consciousness of students of Colour. Through my own growth as a school leader and by
being centred as an expert in ITOC, I was able to support the leadership development of many other
teachers of Colour.
La Lotería to build relationships
When I (Lisa) began teaching middle school English and English Language Development three
years ago in the Fruitvale neighbourhood of Oakland, I was excited to be teaching a population that
reflected my identity. In World War II, African American and Latinx immigrants came to the port
town to benefit from war-related work. During a period of ‘urban renewal’ in which a major freeway
was built through the primarily African American portion of West Oakland, East Oakland became
Black and Latinx and was a centre of both Black Panther and Chicanx Revolutionary activist group
activity in the 1960s and 1970s. The Fruitvale, now primarily Latinx, remains a site of Latinx and
Chicanx pride and activism, even as Oakland is increasingly gentrified.
When I started at the school, as a mixed Black and Columbian person, I just knew I was going to
connect with my Latinx students. I couldn’t wait to show off the Spanish I had been bettering through
summer trips to Latin America. I knew I needed to learn about my students and their families, but
I thought I had a special head start as a Latina. I was shocked to find myself completely disconnected
from my students’ experiences as recently arrived (or the children of recently arrived) Mexican and
Central American immigrants. I was not surprised that students were reluctant to share their
6
R. KOHLI ET AL.
migration stories with me, but I was disappointed to see that even in my classroom, students seemed
ashamed to speak Spanish despite growing up in a primarily Spanish-speaking area of Oakland.
After that tough first year, I realised that while supporting my students’ growth in reading and
writing English, I had to change my curriculum to also affirm my students’ identities, languages, and
experiences. I knew what I wanted: a language-, reading-, and writing-curriculum that valued their
experiences as Latinx immigrants. I had no idea how I was going to do that.
That summer, I attended ITOC and participated in a workshop by Luis in which he presented
how he had used the traditional Mexican game of chance, La Lotería, to teach high school students
to celebrate, critically interrogate, and re-write their culture. I was inspired. After seeing how Luis
used La Lotería to teach students about community cultural wealth and funds of knowledge through
arts integrated teaching, I realised this is what I was looking for to make my curriculum more
culturally sustaining for my students.
I gathered with a group of other educators from my school who were also at ITOC and planned
a 3-week unit that would serve as an introduction to my class, to middle school reading and writing,
and to identity sharing through Lotería. In this unit, I wanted to purposefully highlight and use
Spanish in my classroom. I made sure students were reading grade level texts about the history and
cultural significance of Lotería. I engaged students to examine the Lotería cards – which have issues
of colourism and sexism prevalent in them – with a critical eye and lens, and write about their
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION
7
analysis of the cards. Lastly, building from Luis’ lesson, I asked students to create a brand new
Lotería card related to their personal identity and write an essay comparing and contrasting that
Lotería card to a traditional Lotería card in the deck.
This unit is now a highlight of the school year. Playing the game with students brings an element
of joy and fun to the classroom that is so necessary in building relationships, and it allows for organic
moments of students sharing family histories. Supporting them to critically examine a game that was
an important part of childhood for some can be eye-opening as they: realise that they do not have to
blindly accept the world around them, and reflect deeply on the messages that are contained in
seemingly innocuous games and media. Most importantly, this process encourages students to be
engaged in reading and writing through topics that are culturally and personally significant to them.
I asked a few current students (two 6th grade boys and one 6th grade girl), how they felt about the
Lotería unit. Kathy explained, ‘I really liked the curriculum. I wish we could have played black out to
take longer, but I feel like the unit connected to my Mexican culture.’ Jaime said, ‘Oh yeah, I liked it,
because that game is from many parts of the world. And since one place was from Mexico and I’m
from Mexico, I like it. And my family plays it.’ Lastly, Steven, who identifies as Black and is not
Latino said that he enjoyed playing the game and learning about a culture different than his own.
After teaching the curriculum for a year, I presented this work at the next ITOC, and my fellow
educators of Colour were encouraged and inspired. A colleague asked me to present the curriculum
to her graduate class at a nearby university, and I was excited to share my learnings and lead other
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R. KOHLI ET AL.
educators in creating their own Lotería cards. I also heard from a colleague in Southern California
who adapted the curriculum for their classroom in Southeast Los Angeles, where they learned about
cultural wealth in their community and created Lotería cards to represent that wealth. This teacher
stated that the Lotería project was their ‘favorite project of the year.’ I was grateful to have the
opportunity to learn from and with Luis and then, growing as a leader, to be able to apply that
learning and pass it on to others in the ITOC community. I am extremely proud of this work and
have immense gratitude to ITOC for creating the space that allowed opportunities for leadership
development between and among educators of Colour to be the fertile ground for the blossoming
and continued nurturing of this work.
Schoolwide leadership: reframing school culture
I (Michael) attended ITOC for four years, the first time being in between my credential programme
and my first year teaching. It has been the professional development I needed as it thoughtfully and
critically acknowledged race issues I had experienced and continued to witness in education.
Although just three days each summer, I have learned far more about racial justice education
than I did my entire college career, and ITOC has continued to influence my approach to resist and
reimagine a school culture that is responsive to my students.
I am an English teacher at a high school in San José, California that serves predominantly White
and middle class students, with little support or spaces for its growing emergent bilingual and
Latinx students. In this multi-racial community, students have experienced racism throughout their
education. One of my students gave an example,
My 3rd grade teacher once told me that I needed to be quiet or I’d turn out like them. She was pointing to my
friends in the corner. She had separated me from them in order to help me “not go down the wrong path.”
I knew they weren’t bad kids, so it didn’t make sense. Eventually, I got in trouble for hanging out with them,
and ever since I always just assumed that we were bad. I still feel that way sometimes here at this school, the
way they target us.
I struggled to hold back tears of anger as the student shared this story, knowing that this type of
behaviour from adults in positions of power was something I too had once endured as a young
person. I went to this same school, and as early as my first few weeks on campus, I felt the full weight
of the oppressive educational system thrown ruthlessly back upon me. It was traumatising to walk
the same halls, enter the same classrooms, and see the same populations of teachers and students
that I had 15 years earlier. Although I had changed drastically since then, it seemed as if nothing else
had, and thus I felt as I did when I was in 9th grade: marginalised. That feeling was still all too
common at our school; many Latinx students on campus have said that they feel disconnected from
the school and their peers, expressing that they feel ‘alone’ on campus and that their teachers ‘didn’t
understand them.’
I was wrestling with how to be a teacher that centres belonging and cariño (love and care) in an
environment that is as alienating to Latinx students as my own education was to me. Although
a new teacher, knowing that there were few spaces for students of Colour to feel like they belong
outside of my classroom, I agreed to advise the Latinx Student Union (LSU). I wanted to grow LSU
into a club focused on racial justice, specifically for Latinx students and so I drew from my
experiences organising in college and what I learned from ITOC, and the students and I focused
on using LSU to shift our campus culture so Latinx students felt welcomed in school.
My first year at ITOC, I attended a workshop that was run by teachers and students together,
presenting their work using Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) strategies. It was
inspiring to see what these high school students were able to do, and most importantly the projects
all came from the students. One student had done her project on complex post traumatic stress
disorder and how it had affected her neighbourhood in Los Angeles. To witness students doing
research not for the sake of skill-building, but to understand important aspects of their own lives
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION
9
and their community was amazing. Building upon this learning, I knew I had to include the
students as equal stakeholders in the club to make LSU an effective support for Latinx students
and myself.
During my second time attending ITOC, I learned about Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, and in
my third summer, I attended a workshop with Luis on La Lotería. With all of the theoretical backing
of ITOC, I have been able to shape LSU into a space that serves Latinx students at my school
through student-led initiatives, reflection, and consistent growth.
Two years ago I was selected as a Racial Justice Teacher Innovation Grant recipient. With the
support of ITOC, LSU developed a district-wide Latinx conference and leadership programme, and
we have garnered awards and recognition for helping other Latinx students in the district to build
their own LSUs. Most importantly, by creating an active community that has become central to
student life and engagement on campus, we have shifted our campus culture so that Latinx students
do not feel as invisible as they once did. Teachers have seen and even acknowledged the impacts of
LSU, letting us know that it has created a sense of safety for students, and also referring students to
us so that they can benefit from the sense of belonging and leadership development LSU provides.
Staff have also seen this shift and have sought to become involved in LSU, while also clearly learning
from our work. The ASB Leadership advisor, for example, has been making a concerted effort to
include more students of Colour, and has on more than one occasion reached out to us to ask for
assistance or recommendations. Of all the ways we have shifted the culture on campus, it is the fact
that the students themselves tell us they now feel safe and accepted in LSU that matters most. School
can oftentimes be hostile towards people of Colour, so I am most proud of the work that has gone in
to create this space of belonging. Our numbers have grown each year, and with that so has our
presence. With my own cycle of racial justice growth through teaching and ITOC, I have been able
to bring back my newfound knowledge to my community and LSU, and together we have grown
into a respected club on campus that is built on a foundation of racial justice. This leadership
development model continues to grow and benefit an expanding circle of students, staff and
teachers.
District leadership: organising sustainable teacher collectives
On the day I (Juan) started my Masters in Teaching, I entered a room packed with mostly white
women, which sent me on a flashback to my days as a middle school student just learning to speak
English. Once again, I was one of the few students of Colour, yet this time in a teaching preparation
programme that boasted a focus on culturally responsive practices and social justice. There were
bright spots in my training, like the few instructors that saw our needs as students of Colour and
supported us in weekly lunch gatherings where we caucused and shared our experiences. However,
we were navigating spaces that were filled with aggressive colleagues, oblivious instructors, and
a curriculum that dismissed our value as emerging teachers of Colour. Our literacy instructors used
mentor texts that had rich content from Latinx culture, however they focused on teaching the
strategy for reading and content without providing context or connection to Latinx authors or
characters that reflected Latinx community cultural wealth.
My experience during my teacher training was revealing in the ways that teachers of Colour were
sought for the diversity we bring to the classroom, while our actual funds of knowledge were
undervalued as we were not provided culturally sustaining practices to develop as teachers of
Colour. In addition, there were no spaces or resources that would help us maintain our health in
this predominantly White profession. But our commitment was tied to the communities in which
we were teaching, and thankfully, we had parents and students who expressed their love and respect
for our presence. We brought experiences and identities that reflected their lived experiences and
had expertise that could better support the growth and development of their children. And
reciprocally, they offered us authentic support by affirming our value in the classroom.
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R. KOHLI ET AL.
Building on the power of community, when I started teaching, I sought out a network of teachers
of Colour that more closely shared my commitment to culturally sustaining teaching and organising for change. I facilitated monthly gatherings where teachers of Colour drank tea, unpacked our
experiences, and shared our expertise and resources. Being in community with other like-minded
educators invigorated me and gave me the understanding and hope that allowed me to come back to
teach the next day. Our time together was validating, and yet, we also struggled to find ways to
support each other. As the school year continued, our capacities decreased and priorities shifted.
Our gatherings were less frequent and our attendance decreased as well. While I knew these
connections were essential to lasting in the profession, I realised how difficult it was going to be
to have a group of teachers of Colour who were available to support each other consistently. This
pattern continued for a few years, with educators of Colour appreciating the space but finding it
hard to commit. I was looking for support and models for coordinating this work.
The first time I heard about ITOC was from a professor that I met during my teaching
preparation programme, after I shared with him the ways in which I wanted to organise with
racially reflective peers. He said, ‘You should apply for this conference in California, dedicated to
supporting teachers of Colour.’ I was fortunate to be accepted in the summer of 2015. The
professional development I experienced at ITOC was unexpected. Up to that point in my career
I had normalised sitting and listening to speakers talk about everything teachers had to do to be
successful. This was the first time I felt that the presenters, concepts, and language were giving
voice to what I was feeling and had not previously been able to name. Learning about the
secondary trauma teachers of Colour endure, and how we feel greater exhaustion and hurt
because we more closely empathise with our students’ experiences was validating and helped
me make sense of what I was experiencing as a teacher. I was learning the concepts, framing and
tools that I had been missing. I left ITOC that year feeling energised, seen, and knowing that my
feelings and experiences were valid. I felt that I could speak up and push for change. When
I returned to ITOC two summers later with a small group of colleagues, we were inspired as
a group by the power of a space filled with teachers of Colour who were developing critical
consciousness. We engaged in conversations with other teachers of Colour who had developed
workshops for colleagues that encouraged critical thinking in welcoming spaces, and we committed to working together to mirror that work in our own community. That summer we applied
for the Racial Justice Teacher Innovation grant with the goal of setting up meetings for teachers of
Colour to come together and build a community and grow as critically conscious educators. Our
goal was to create a space where we could feel the same ways we felt at ITOC, building on the
ITOC tools and leadership development strategies. We felt that replicating this space would be
invigorating to our work.
ITOC provided a template through its comprehensive model of developing teacher-leaders of
Colour, including culturally sustaining community building, tiered professional development,
focused growth, and a working group model of building racial justice action plans. Through support
from the leadership team and the network of educators, we designed and facilitated monthly home
meetings where we shared food, stories, engaged in scholarly readings, increased our capacity, and
left with validation and new knowledge and skills to combat racism and hostility in our workplaces.
The personal/professional connections we built at ITOC helped us maintain our collective passion
in the different projects we were leading. As teacher activists, we were all involved in some sort of
organising within our schools, unions, and communities. We recognised the urgency of taking
action in making sure our students, teachers, and families had agency in decision making, learning,
and teaching. We knew the power of the system and so we also knew we had to take action, even if it
meant longer days and shorter weekends; and ITOC provided us a model and the tools to grow as
leaders who could support each other.
Having a space where we can share the work we are doing and get feedback and support has
been tremendously valuable and we continue to seek each other out. The resources and space we
shared have helped us become stronger advocates in our individual projects and we have
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION
11
networked to make connections across schools and districts. We find each other in union
gatherings and hold space together to learn collectively. We lean on each other to advocate for
resources and call out injustices within our teaching spaces. There are barriers to achieving our
goals in this work: we are in different districts, our priorities vary, and our differences (such as
years of experience, as well as shifting and distinct emotional, psychological, and professional
needs) limit our organising and ability to provide mutual support. Still, our work is evolving as
we use our monthly gatherings to continually reflect the needs and wants of the participants, just
as ITOC taught us. We are now planning activities that re-energise us and help us connect with
our humanity. We have organised gatherings to: make art in collaboration with a local art
museum, participate in restorative circles, practice yoga together, and continue home get
togethers. Building on what we learned and how we were supported through ITOC over multiple
years, we are developing authentic relationships based on a shared racial justice vision and the
need to be in community with each other so that we can continue the work individually and
collectively for the rest of our professional lives.
Discussion
These four teachers had racial justice visions for education that built upon the assets of students and
their families and were culturally sustaining. Unfortunately, their leadership skills, as is the case for
so many other teachers of Colour, are often neglected by limited definitions of school leadership
and change work (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016). At ITOC, however, they were able to engage in models of
collaborative leadership development that valued their insights, knowledge, skills and creativity in
building transformative schooling for students of Colour.
Because they rarely have like-minded colleagues, critical teachers of Colour are often left to
develop curriculum in isolation (Martinez 2017). Building upon his childhood experiences, memories of the cultural responsiveness of his own teacher, and his own critical approach to arts
education, Luis developed curriculum attending to his students’ critical consciousness (Friere,
1970) – something uncommon in high school Arts education. When he was provided an opportunity to present his work at ITOC, he was excited that the transformative impact of the curriculum
could be seen and adapted by like-minded peers. Lisa, who attended his session, saw power in Luis’
work – not as a ‘best practice’ to be implemented ‘as is’ for student achievement (Patel 2020), but
instead as an approach that could strengthen the humanisation, joy, and cultural sustainment of her
pedagogy. Through contextually responsive coaching, Luis supported Lisa as she adapted the unit to
her middle school English class and to her students’ needs. Similar as it had been for Luis, the
success of the curriculum and the opportunity to then present on her process developed her
confidence not just as a teacher, but as a leader and expert among her peers. ITOC provided
space for racial justice leadership through collective peer learning/teaching.
Critical scholars have argued that a teacher’s role is political and agentive, and the reach of racial
justice teacher leadership can extend across and even beyond schools (Giroux, 2012 2010). ITOC
offered a community of support, tools for racial justice leadership, and space for critical teachers of
Colour to dream. Although isolated at his institution, Michael met educators at ITOC who not only
shared his vision for education, but had engaged in justice work through YPAR and culturally
sustaining pedagogies. He learned of the transformative possibilities of working alongside students
to create systemic change (Cammarota and Fine 2010). This exposure influenced what he believed
was possible on his campus, and fuelled his leadership to build a space of belonging and activism
with Latinx students that quickly shifted the culture of his school. Seeking a similar approach with
teachers in his district, after attending alone, Juan invited other colleagues to attend ITOC. By
returning together, they developed shared racial literacies and leadership tools to combat their
isolation and numerous racialised obstacles as they built a collective and enduring vision for
activism across their district.
12
R. KOHLI ET AL.
Conclusion
School leadership is often narrowly defined and prescribed, and is typically understood as
individualised or hierarchical work. Additionally, teachers of Colour are profoundly undervalued in a predominantly White profession and schools steeped in institutionalised racism.
This can limit their ability to create the cultural shifts they know are needed at their school
sites. The leadership-efficacies of teachers of Colour flourish, however, when their culture,
language, and epistemologies are valued, and they are supported to collectively reimagine the
boundaries and possibilities of education. While each teacher-author in this article embodied
racial justice in distinct ways, together, their narratives show the transformative power of
critical professional development for teachers of Colour when collaborative approaches to
learning and visioning racial justice are at the heart of school change. When communityoriented teachers of Colour are centred as leaders, they support other teachers of Colour in
developing as leaders, and there is great power in collectively reimagining what schools can
look like – in the curriculum, in school culture, and through teacher organising. ITOC
demonstrates how critical professional development can be designed to circumvent the isolating and silencing of critical teachers of Colour, and can both re-inspire and support them to
work together towards racial justice in their classrooms, schools, and across their districts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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