In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education reported that Black teachers make up approximately 9 percent of the teacher workforce, of which a majority are Black women. Since this is a group that is often studied but left out of conversations, the EdSurge Research team wanted to intentionally facilitate spaces for Black women across and outside the gender spectrum to connect with and support one another—and to learn more about how they’re doing in the current teaching climate. With the pandemic’s aftermath lingering, national teacher shortages, and highly politicized book bans and curriculum restrictions in the backdrop, we focused in on areas of teacher agency and workplace experiences.
EdSurge Research often holds “teaching and learning circles” with educators where they can openly discuss concerns, challenges, and triumphs in their jobs. Similar to affinity groups, these professional learning spaces are made up of communities of educators who feel seen, heard, and valued by one another for their unique identities and contributions to the classroom.
As we began this exploratory research project, our goal was to center participants’ voices and some of the infrequently told stories about Black educators’ experiences and impact. We learned that although these educators rely on a strong sense of individual agency to heal and persevere through interpersonal and systemic discrimination, they expressed the urgency for communal healing spaces among colleagues.
The Study
The premise of the community-based participatory research (CBPR) method we used is for researchers to approach the research with collaboration in mind. We recognize that our participants are experts in their own lives and within their profession, so we analyzed research findings with Black women educators instead of doing research on Black women educators.
We analyzed research findings with Black women educators instead of doing research on Black women educators.
To help bring this research project to life, we partnered with the Abolitionist Teaching Network, an organization co-founded by Columbia University professor Bettina Love that offers resources, grants, and community for educators committed to the radical transformation of learning spaces. The organization helped us recruit a diverse group of Black women educators. Within 24 hours, 300 educators expressed interest and met the participation criteria. From that pool, 31 were randomly selected to participate in one of several small-group sessions. These teaching and learning circles were facilitated by Angela Harris, a current elementary teacher (and article co-author), who led the groups in journaling, meditation, and conversations about self-care, intersectional identities, authenticity, and communal healing.
Through these teaching and learning circles, we saw the potential of identity-based affinity groups to help forge connections between educators through communal spaces—time together that educators lost when the pandemic closed school buildings. Based on participants’ positive feedback during and after the group sessions, we believe that similar affinity groups could become healing spaces in school districts, especially for educators with marginalized identities.
In Their Own Words
As part of the study, we asked some participants to co-author articles and share their stories with a broader audience. Sarah Wright and Seph Young (also co-authors) each participated in a teaching and learning circle, then wrote about their reflections for EdSurge Research. From Sarah, we learn how her and other participants’ traumatic workplace experiences bleed into their work—for better or for worse. Seph reminds us of the diversity among Black educators and the spectrum of experiences of Blackness. Finally, Angela, our group facilitator, explains how transformative communal healing is for Black educators.
Despite the risk of negative consequences for showing up unapologetically and authentically, several research participants expressed that being a teacher is their calling, their purpose, and their joy. Most notably, it became clear that for Black women educators in this study, being a teacher is more of an identity than a job title. Recognizing the responsibility of this vocation, our participants conveyed that they rely on their agency as educators to serve their students and care for themselves.
Sarah: How trauma affects Black women educators.
When I look back over my journey as a Black educator, there are many unforgettable, challenging moments. I specifically recall a time when I was the only Black teacher on staff, and a family challenged my ability to teach their child English. I’ve also had extreme highs, like seeing a family’s face light up from their child experiencing their first Black teacher. These peaks and valleys molded me into a resilient educator and established my “why” as a teaching professional.
I discovered that having a love for children isn’t always enough to keep someone in the classroom or even the school building. If a community hasn’t cultivated a space where individuals feel seen, heard, and valued, it will cultivate dissatisfaction . . . and we will continue to lose teachers.
If a community hasn’t cultivated a space where individuals feel seen, heard, and valued, it will cultivate dissatisfaction.
After participating in an EdSurge Research healing circle and being in community with other Black women educators, I realized that others in the group had similar experiences. Specifically, I noticed a recurring theme of trauma among my peers. . . .
For example, I recall a time I was seeing a therapist weekly, desperately seeking tools and strategies to navigate my work-related experiences. There were moments when I would sit in my car before work, ridden with anxiety, trying to pull myself together before entering the school building. I felt unsupported and undervalued. I hadn’t processed the adverse impact [a] previous school had on my health until I left that school. I often wondered if other folks had had similar experiences within school environments, and sadly, I learned that I was not alone.
Seph: Navigating intersectional identities.
After transitioning from teaching adolescents to educating adults, I’m challenged to understand people in the context of their identities and workplaces, especially when that context is unclear to me and those I educate. I do this while combating a flattening double consciousness, wrestling with who I am and others’ racialized and gendered perceptions of me. I do this as a Black non-binary person with multiple chronic illnesses who is read as an able-bodied Black woman.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) originally named the experience of double consciousness in his first book, Souls of Black Folk. Double consciousness is the simultaneous experience of being Black as one sees oneself while inescapably seeing oneself through the white gaze. It gives language for the dissonance of the repeated realization of a fractured personhood and how we persistently reassemble ourselves. . . .
Contemporary concepts explain what double consciousness might feel like when multiple marginalized identities collide in one person’s lived reality. Almost a century after Du Bois wrote about double consciousness, in 1982, Audre Lorde asserted that we do not live “single-issue lives,” and in 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality.” Intersectionality has become a well-known framework for conceptualizing how oppression and discrimination affect Black women with multiple marginalized identities, and this explains my experiences navigating my identities when I was teaching. Ultimately, I could no longer negotiate parts of myself to remain in the classroom because my life and health depended on my wholeness.
Although my experiences related to my race, gender, and disabilities have been a source of contention and misunderstanding in the spaces I occupy, including with other Black folks, the reflections from the other participants in this research project show common themes in our experiences. We all agree that in some ways, we’ve had to negotiate parts of ourselves in our classrooms and with our colleagues and supervisors. But in an effort to resist the negative consequences of double consciousness, we’ve engaged in survival strategies to celebrate our identities introspectively and in community.
This [EdSurge] research project shows how these Black women educators reclaim agency to combat being othered. Each of the participants expressed ways they negotiate, celebrate, and occupy fragmented intersectional identities, describing a contemporary iteration of what Du Bois, Lorde, and Crenshaw theorized in their respective eras of Black activism and scholarship.
Many of us, whose perceived identities don’t always reflect all of who we are, may withhold versions of ourselves for safety or peace. When we aren’t supported as our full selves, our students and the entire school community suffer. When is it safe to just be?
Angela: A call-to-action to make teacher affinity groups permanent.
For many Black womxn educators, the reality is that they don’t feel respected or empowered in their school communities. Healing affinity spaces represent safety for Black womxn educators to emote about their experiences with racism, whiteness, and white privilege. “It was a safe space” and “It was a space for real and raw conversations” were just two participants’ responses about our discussions around our intersectional identities in a predominantly white profession. We drew connections between unhealthy narratives we were taught about being a Black womxn in predominantly white spaces. Teaching is an already stressful job and when we combine the intersectional identities that Black womxn teachers hold, it can become unbearable. Identifying and healing the wounds of intersectional oppression allows Black womxn educators to then begin to work to dismantle those same oppressions for their students.
When we heal ourselves, when we restore ourselves, it opens us up to compassion for others, especially our students.
Education is a field that barely allows time to do the essentials related to the job, let alone time for Black womxn teachers to restore their minds and bodies. Self-care is nothing more than a buzzword when it is used by our districts. It’s not possible to care for yourself in the space that is causing you harm. My facilitation of this space came at a time when I had experienced physical harm at my previous school. I was keenly aware how meaningful this restoration was for me as well as the students, staff, and teachers who are directly impacted by the participants in this affinity space. When we heal ourselves, when we restore ourselves, it opens us up to compassion for others, especially our students.
Feeling Seen and Heard
The EdSurge Research team is hopeful that these insights contextualize data about teachers leaving the profession, educator well-being, and why many of these Black women stay in education despite the manifestations of racism, sexism, and systemic intersectional discrimination in their workplaces. As important, they demonstrate the power of affinity groups.
Several participants shared during the teaching and learning circles that they’ve never or rarely had the opportunity to be in community with other Black women educators, even those working in schools with diverse staff and student bodies. A sense of feeling seen and heard facilitated the respect that reverberated through each virtual room as participants vulnerably shared stories of persevering in the teaching profession. As they noted, because their professional and personal identities can be intertwined, regular spaces that are safe to remove code-switching masks could be invaluable.
Based on Sarah, Seph, and Angela’s reflections and feedback from several other participants, the EdSurge Research team recommends that schools and districts consider creating identity-based affinity groups that regularly meet virtually and in person. Some educators are already organizing such groups themselves, as one participant based in Atlanta reported, but limited time and funding tends to stifle the scale of these efforts. Building on the momentum of one of our teaching and learning circles, several participants organized a book club to continue their conversations and nurture their new relationships.
Partnerships between schools and districts and education organizations can help launch affinity groups without adding an unnecessary burden to the teachers themselves. Schools and districts have unique opportunities to fill administrative gaps that will allow educators to just show up without the obligation to organize, plan, and execute the groups.
Of course, there are some limitations to affinity groups, some of which we observed in our teaching and learning circles. Balancing existing obligations and scheduling conflicts, unestablished or broken trust among participants, perceived biases and social hierarchies, and limited or no funding are some potential barriers that we noticed or predict may arise when developing identity-based affinity groups for educators.
Affinity groups cannot solve systemic issues that burden school communities and educators. But what affinity groups can potentially do, when co-created with educators who share marginalized identities, is bridge siloes, facilitate organic bonds, and ease some of the stress that often pushes educators out of the profession. Our conversations with these Black women educators show that affinity groups can be spaces where educators can recharge to reclaim their agency and show up authentically for themselves and for their students.
Editor’s note: Read the first article in this series about EdSurge's research project.
