Examining Teacher Narrative Vignettes of Experience to Foster Educational Equity

Demetrius

I am a Black, Christian, heterosexual male from the Pacific-Northwest region of the United States of America. I was raised by a single mother; however, I also gained a lot of influence from my grandparents. I am a teacher candidate who chose the education field to make lasting change in the system and to be an example of positive representation for students who look like me and who I share common identities with. I chose to pursue my education at an HBCU after the death of many black people at the hands of the police in 2020. I never had a black teacher before coming to the university. I believe that this experience, in part, shaped my fascination, obligation, and passion for education. As a teacher candidate, I believe that it is important to focus on teacher quality, service, and justice. My teaching style is focused on centering the students and their experiences in order to build their self-efficacy.

Maya

I self-identify as an able-bodied cisgender Black woman from the northeast. I identify as both African-American and Jamaican, and the child of an immigrant. I attended public school for K-8th grade in majority white schools in a majority white neighborhood. While in high school I attended a more diverse school, but I was constantly in conflict with white supremacy being prevalent. Throughout high school, I found myself enthralled with activism, volunteering, and politics firstly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. I decided to go into education, to use the education system as a vehicle to instill values of social justice, equity, and empathy into our society through students. I chose to attenduniversityto receive a focused education on how to help disenfranchised Black and Brown students as an educator. As a teacher candidate, I focus on equity, building relationships, and social justice. As a teacher candidate, equity is one of my core values.

Kristian

I self-identify as a Black able-bodied male from the deep south, having lived and spent considerable time in the northeast where I attended school for both of my graduate degrees. I was reared by a single mother and extended family– a family of teachers and preachers. I am a young university professor at a private Methodist affiliated HBCU in the south. I teach courses centered on and around teacher preparation and literacy. Across each of my courses, I center social markers that profoundly impact lived experiences, in an effort to prepare my student-teachers for the diverse students– racially, gendered, ethnolinguistic, etc– that they will work with inside 21st century learning spaces. My research interests lie at the intersections of teacher education, equity in education, narrative, and Critical Race Theory.

In addition to the positionality statements provided above that highlight in detail our identities and backgrounds, we want to also acknowledge our positions in engaging this work. Clandinin (2006) notes that narrative is the experience studied by narrative inquirers. Because of the nature of this collaborative written book chapter, we recognize that we are also, in this context, positioned as narrative inquirers seeking to more fully understand and articulate our teaching experiences.