In this essay, the author reflects on her early teaching and how she learned about the importance of student agency and voice. Then, the essay describes how the author works with both sitting principals and emerging leaders by giving them opportunities to deepen their trust of one another and to learn the importance of talking about race and…

We currently live in an era of neoliberalism where privatization and profit are held up as political ideals. The ascendency of this ideology threatens the notion that public schools can serve not only as institutions that supply credentials but also as institutions that lay the building blocks for American democracy. This essay argues that teacher…

This article highlights how two researchers started Critical Community Conversations (CCC) with a school community in an effort to learn from one another and build solidarity. The intent was for CCC to focus on some of the most pressing issues facing our nation, state, and local neighborhoods, with a special lens on racism.

For the past year, we have been co-facilitating Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) workshops across Pittsburgh, tailored specifically toward local educators and educational activists. The overarching intentions of these workshops were twofold: (a) to cultivate educators' understanding of and response to how power and privilege operate in educational…

This article shares national models of educational activism that center the experiences of People of Color but are diverse in that they serve students, parents, preservice teachers, teachers, and/or community educators and meet frequently in small groups or annually/biannually. Included narratives embody the humanization process, and situate that…

Guided by a critical race praxis for educational research lens, the authors worked individually alongside their students in a K-12 or higher education classroom, embracing spaces of tension derived from the push and pull between oppression and liberation. The authors explain how these tensions troubled the ways in which humanizing practices are…