Our ancestor’s gifts: Interpreting intergenerational knowledge about developing a teaching identity

Abstract

While the Global North’s academic culture is romanced by generalizability, testimonio offers an enticing way to incorporate diverse knowledge sources into the curricular cannon. Testimonio offers a radical, critical, spiritual humanizing pedagogy for ethnic-racial socialization (Menchú, 1983). In this paper, I conduct a semi-structured interview with tía, my aunt, a Haitian native, who raised me and has worked for 30 years in special education and English language instruction in New York City and Maryland. She also served as a Sunday school teacher in our Haitian church. Her experience as a secular and spiritual educator makes her a unique voice to speak to how her experiences and identity informed her polyrhythmic pedagogies.

Keywords:

• Arts-based research
• public pedagogy
• curriculum theory
• cultural pedagogy
• critical race theory

Notes

1 South African Saying meaning "I am because we are."

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valencia Clement

Valencia Clement is a Haitian American poet from Queens, NY. She is a doctoral student at Arizona State University studying Education Policy and Evaluation. Her research interests include cultural studies, womanism, blues methodology and arts-based methodology.