I believe that we will win! Learning from youth activist pedagogies

Abstract

This article draws from a two-year youth-informed, multi-site ethnographic study, in which interracial anti-racist youth activist groups (IAYAG) amplified their own pedagogical leadership in their schools. The demand for curricular relevance in urban schools is at an all-time high, and the work of youth organizers is in direct opposition to a standardized curriculum and other controls. Not without complexity, these youth are committed to increasing critical consciousness alongside social action. There is much to learn from those bringing social movements and teaching into the schools. For this article, I used close analysis from four major events (two teach-ins and two sit-ins) in conversation with Patricia Hill Collins in her 2009 domains-of-power framework to construct a working definition for youth activist pedagogies. Youth in these groups desired to construct knowledge through collective youth agency by resisting hierarchies, uplifting multiple perspectives, and asking critical questions. I argue that pedagogies should be multiple, or collective, in order to create liberating opportunities for sharing knowledge and getting free.

Keywords:

• Youth
• activism
• interracial
• anti-racism
• pedagogy
• collective

Acknowledgments

I am indebted, as a scholar, an educator, a parent, and a community member, to youth activists and the experiences they shared with me. I am grateful to the schools and the advisors who opened themselves to the necessary journey of anti-racism and youth leadership in the school. The development of this article would not have been possible without the intellectual work of scholars in the field and the generous, critical feedback and vision from the editors of Curriculum Inquiry, the cohort and senior scholars for the 2018 CI writing fellows, and peer reviewers. The work continues.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See more information about Black Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi at Blacklivesmatter.com.

2 I am omitting the URL to preserve the anonymity of the youth participant.

3 Philando Castile was a cafeteria supervisor at a local school. He was pulled over due to racialized mistaken identity before a police officer shot and killed him with his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter in the car. His death was streamed live on Facebook. Philando’s mother, Valerie Castile, travels to school districts to eliminate student lunch debt on behalf of the Philando Castile Relief Foundation.

4 In this article, neither diverse nor urban is code for students of color. Diverse indicates a racial diversity in the schools, unique to the US context, but more common in this upper Midwest urban region, in which white students comprised 20% (Eastside) and 55% (Lakeview) in these two particular schools. Students in these anti-racist groups were diverse as well, racially and ethnically, comprised of a predominant number of Black students, white students, and other students of color.

5 Decisions were made collaboratively and with intentionality, including the time selected for the sit-in: after an officer shot unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, they left his 18-year-old body face down on a street for 4.5 hours.

6 18 minutes of silence represented the number of days that the community occupied the street in front of the police precinct next to where Jamar Clark was shot in 2015.

7 I am leaving the name of the newspaper anonymous to preserve the anonymity of a research site.

8 There is more about collective pedagogy and theories to draw from Indigenous and Latinx scholars not included in this paper (Anzaldúa, 2009; Grande, 2015; Smith, 2012; Torre & Ayala, 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abigail Rombalski

Abigail Rombalski Ph.D., works at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and in Youth Research Development at the Robert J. Jones Urban Research Outreach-Engagement Center. Her research and organizing centers on racial justice in urban education, critical literacy, and youth participatory action research. She has been a teacher in public urban K-12 schools and higher education for over 20 years.