So many people I admire have received this award so it is a deep honor to share in such prestigious company! Receiving the award the same year as three Berkeley friends feels extra special.
I first learned that I had won this award when I was visiting my parents. They have been generous learners and supporters as I've gone through my PhD, but I often struggle to explain the ins and outs of grad school to them. It was such a delight to learn of the exciting news with them in person and share in the celebration.
I'm interested in teachers as critical and constrained actors for justice. Given education’s potential to reproduce or disrupt social inequities and hierarchies, teacher antiracism preparation and development is crucial and, at the same time, we cannot lose sight of how teachers are positioned and constrained within dynamic systems, schools, and policy landscapes. During my decade of teaching/coaching in public education, shifts in federal, state, and local policies, and local response to it, highlighted tensions between the possibilities and constraints of positioning teachers as the primary, and at times singular, intervention for justice in education. These tensions and the questions that followed inform my research into teacher antiracism learning today, generating a multilevel inquiry around constraints, affordances, contradictions, and transformative possibilities.
Being a researcher at Berkeley
The BSE's reputation as a place where students collaborate more than compete has rung true for me. My colleagues-turned-friends have sustained me and strengthened my work. They are brilliant and generous, and I continue to learn so much from them.
The mentorship of my professors has also been foundational to my research and growth. My interdisciplinary grounding has been nurtured at the intersection of the professors on my committee (Dr. Zeus Leonardo, Dr. Janelle Scott, Dr. Thomas Philip, and Dr. Tianna Paschel). Likewise, Dr. Kris Gutiérrez and Dr. Dan Perlstein continue to push my thought development. Opportunities to teach in the undergraduate minor and Berkeley Teacher Preparation program (BTEP), and to conduct research through California School Leadership Academy have strengthened my interest in teacher learning. Additionally, Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender and the School of Education's Research-Practice-Partnership and Community Engagement Program have also provided small grant and partnership support respectively.
Yet, no institution is perfect. Thus, I am both filled with gratitude for the opportunities I have had through Berkeley and join my colleagues and mentors to strive to create more just futures.
Teachers as Critical and Constrained Learners and Actors for Racial Justice in Schools
Persistent racial injustice and a continued white demographic and epistemological dominance in teaching underscore the urgency of initiatives focused on teachers’ antiracist development across the country. However, scholars still know little about how teachers’ antiracist learning and enactment unfold in practice, as co-mediated by their organizational and sociopolitical environment. In response, this qualitative research study investigates the co-construction of antiracist discourses and how teachers interactionally learn, negotiate, and enact these discourses. Data include ethnographic observations of professional development (PD), focal teacher-mentor pairs’ meetings, teachers’ classrooms, and school board meetings, and interviews with PD facilitators, mentors, and teachers, through a partnership with a new teacher equity-oriented mentoring program. Bridging critical theories of race with the learning sciences, sociology of education, and education policy, I examine instantiations of whiteness, specifically as supremacist ideologies reproduced in institutions. This analysis attends to how power, ideas, and their dialectical relationship with enactment, perpetuate racial injustice, even when not in majority-white spaces. I find that teachers navigate a contested terrain as they learn, and that prevalent antiracist discourses converge with evolving neoliberal reforms, district and school structures, and the organization of learning environments. Moreover, my research captures moment-to-moment transformative opportunities that arise, which offer promising direction for future research and design as potential levers for change. This work expands current understanding of teacher learning, underscoring the critical and constrained role of teachers even within robust efforts aimed at social justice.