A revolutionary love story in teacher education and early childhood education

ABSTRACT

Guided by Kalamu ya Salaam’s Revolutionary Love poem, this article theorizes 3 tenets of revolutionary love in education: (a) self-examination, (b) interconnectedness, and (c) liberation. The authors, a teacher educator, educational consultant, inservice, and preservice teacher will conceptualize how they enact these tenets in teacher education and early childhood education and provide implications and recommendations for practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional Resources

1. Baines, Tisdale, & Long, S. (2018). “We’ve been doing it your way long enough”: Choosing the culturally relevant classroom. Teachers College Press.

This book lays a strong theoretical and pedagogical foundation for the importance of culturally relevant teaching. It provides vivid examples of how to engage students in learning activities that honor and celebrate their lives. The voices of scholars, practitioners, community members, and students are brilliantly woven throughout and will charge all stakeholders to better serve our students.

2. Wynter-Hoyte, K. & Smith, M. (2020) “Hey, Black child. Do you know who you are?” Using African Diaspora literacy to humanize Blackness in early childhood education. Journal of Literacy Research.[A26]

This article examines the partnership between a teacher and teacher educator disrupting a colonized early childhood curriculum that fosters a dominance of whiteness by replacing it with the beauty and brilliance of Blackness. A Sankofa methodology revealed that African diaspora literacies fostered (a) positive racial and gender identities, (b) community, (c) and positive linguistic identities in the work to help children to love themselves, their histories, and their peoples.