Introduction to the special issue: Homeplace and Black Joy in K-12 education

ABSTRACT

The current sociopolitical climate in the United States has increased pressure in K-12 schools while limiting resources and opportunities to support students fully. This climate renders students, especially those who were already at the margins, more vulnerable than before. There is a need to approach education through a framework that not only recognizes the challenges students are facing, but also their joy. As such, authors discuss the ways that cultivating Black joy and homeplace address these needs and should be foundational as a part of education. Further, authors discuss the unique contributions of 10 different articles around this topic for this special issue.

Although anti-Blackness and White supremacy are ever present and interwoven in the fabric of the United States, the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic shined a light on its insidious nature. Disparities across all systems in the United States made it clear that minority individuals were even more vulnerable in the middle of the global pandemic. For example, in the healthcare system, BIPOC individuals, especially Black patients, were more likely to be mistreated and underserved resulting in disproportionate death rates (Dorn et al., 2020; Hoffman et al., 2016). The pandemic also disproportionately impacted individuals living in poverty as they were more likely to be underemployed, underpaid, and to hold jobs with less access to healthcare and greater exposure to COVID-19 (Do et al., 2019).

To be clear, these are not examples of how the onset of COVID-19 created disparities, but how this global pandemic exacerbated and exposed what has been in existence since the beginning of the United States (Hannah-Jones, 2019; Ladson-Billings, 2021). For example, policing of BIPOC, especially Black people, has roots in the enslavement of Africans that existed in the United States since its inception in 1619. This policing legally humiliated, terrorized, raped, murdered, and lynched enslaved Africans, often publicly. This same policing paved the way for Jim Crow laws after slavery was abolished. This same policing justifies the rage of White vigilantes who falsely accuse and murder Black people for “crimes” against whiteness (Anderson, 2016). This same policing allows police officers to kill unarmed Black people without accountability.

Present-day examples of the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and White supremacy exist across all contexts including K-12 schools. These contexts continue to be shaped by Anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT; Georgia HB 1084), Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and/or Queer (LGBTQ; e.g., Florida HB 1557), and Anti-Socio Emotional Learning (SEL; Oklahoma SB 1442) legislation that is packaged as protecting all youth, but actually serves to protect whiteness while dehumanizing minority students (Kearl, 2023). The rise of harmful legislation along with increased exposure of systemic and institutional failings that have occurred in the continuing wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear the present and pervasive nature of anti-Blackness and White supremacy. As a result, many K-12 educators have made commitments to antiracism, that is, to intentionally disrupting the educational canon which centers whiteness (EdWeek Research Center, 2020; Love, 2019; Washington et al., 2022). More specifically, educators, school counselors, and administrators have committed to engage in specific activities that challenge how institutional racism continues to police, surveil, and dehumanize Black and Brown youth (e.g., zero-tolerance discipline policies; enrollment practices for rigorous courses, identification practices for special education, etc.; Love, 2019).

In addition to challenging institutional racism, antiracist educators are charged with creating new systems and structures which humanize Black and Brown students. This may include promoting asset-based approaches aligned to support and celebrate the joy and brilliance of all, using antiracist and antibias curricula, healing-centered engagement, and integrating restorative justice as a part of individual and whole school practices (Dancy, 2014; Ginwright, 2018; Holcomb McCoy, 2022). To do this, Mayes et al. (2022) call for a radical imagination of education that centers Black joy, creativity, and love as the foundation and proposes that educators, including school counselors, work to “love and protect” students through practices that create and build homeplaces (hooks, 1990). Said differently, educators should work to build spaces of respite that center humanity, resistance, and joy, while simultaneously cultivating healing, empowerment, and growth (Mayes & Byrd, 2022). Homeplaces acknowledge the pain of oppression while also understanding that students are always more than their pain (Love, 2019). Further, it allows a level of protection from the world to explore the strengths within each student and intentionally recognize that creativity, power, radical love, and joy can and do exist for Black students in spite of the existence of anti-Blackness and White supremacy (Love, 2019; Mayes et al., 2022).

The call for antiracist practice in the current political context is clear. However, what is absent are often approaches that indicate how to build a homeplace across school contexts that center both joy and resistance. Although educators indicate a great commitment toward antiracist practice, what is missing are specific resources and training opportunities around such (EdWeek Research Center 2020). This special issue features 10 manuscripts that engage in the affirmative possibilities of homeplace and Black Joy across different educational contexts, spaces, and disciplines. Within each manuscript, readers are able to garner important information on the unique context in education but also glean considerations and tangible actions toward cultivating homeplace and Black Joy. This special issue intentionally speaks to a wide audience, including teachers, administrators, school counselors, and families as each has a vested interest in the creation and sustainability of homeplace and Black joy to support the success of Black youth.

In “Teaching Homeplace: How Teachers Can Cultivate Black Joy through Culturally Responsive Practices in the Classroom,” Lawson (2024) makes a compelling case for a multifaceted approach to cultivating Black Joy in education. This includes sustainable, responsive, relevant, and equitable teaching practices. There is critical attention paid to the historical emergence of CRT in education and a succinct and practically helpful distilling of this academic literature. The authors effectively argue that culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) in education requires that racially and ethnically minority (REM) students can engage with their environment. Lawson effectively demonstrates that CRT is a way toward Black Joy and that current efforts to stymie CRT have the effect of preventing expressions and realizations of Black Joy in the classroom.

Authors Lowery, Johnson, and Spearman (2024), in “There’s No Place Like Homeplace: School Principals’ Roles in Developing Student Belonging as Resistance Against Oppression,” provide a helpful discussion of how homeplace is inextricably linked to Black Joy. Principals, through the implementation of culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL), are centered as foundational to building and maintaining homeplace. This centering resonates across the authors’ personal introductions, but especially in the following reflection: “I am an educator today because of homeplaces created for me along the way.” This connection is furthered through an acrostic, which is wonderfully creative and distills a depth and breadth of experiences and research into an accessible and innovative pedagogical tool: Holistic Opportunities for Meaning, Expectations on high, Purpose, Love, Achievement, and Community Engagement. This acrostic will hopefully inform education leaders and those who teach education leadership. Indeed, it should find its way onto the office walls of every school principal.

In “Educators of Gifted and Talented Students Must be Formally Trained for Homeplace to Become a Reality: Recommended Theories and Paradigms,” Ford and Moore (2024) engage in the radical imagination of what gifted education could be when homeplace and Black joy are centered. More specifically Ford and Moore discuss the need to be a coconspirator to create an inclusive, culturally responsive homeplace for gifted Black students. To be a coconspirator means specific engagement with theories to identify and address discrimination, support and protect the racial identity development of Black youth, and intentionally centering Afro-centric cultural styles as foundational to the learning environment.

The authors Levy, Edirmanasinghe, and Ieva (2024), in “The Intersection of Hip Hop and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to Create and Sustain Homeplace,” detail how integrating hip-hop and YPAR in K-12 supports the affirmative possibilities of Homeplace and Black Joy. Hip-hop and YPAR both support students’ propensity to speak back to and disrupt the hierarchies that exist in their schools and communities. Thus the integration of YPAR with hip-hop creates a critical space in which students use their agency to identify and address challenges in the respective spaces they exist. Authors share how the creation of a studio space in school can be used to create a homeplace where students can engage in a joyful resistance of homeplace.

In “Affinity Groups to Build Homeplace and Cultural Humility Practices of White School Counselors,” Mason et al. (2024) discuss how White school counselors are more likely to be better at building homeplace for Black and Brown students if they engage in activities such as affinity groups that help them grow in their racial identity development and cultural humility. Authors discuss recommendations on how these affinity groups should focus on antiracist content, have checks of complacency, be led by those who are adequately prepared for the task, and be made up of members from the same local context in order to be effective. Additionally, authors amplify the notion that White school counselors must realize that involvement in an affinity group is not an end in itself but rather one step in a larger process of creating homeplace.

In “Affirming Black Joy & Homeplace: A Call to Action for Practitioner Preparation Programs,” Kearl et al. (2024) highlight that more attention is needed for practitioner (educator and counseling) preparation programs as training sites for building out education as a location for Black Joy. The authors provide tenets of Black Joy and homeplace that can serve as guideposts for reflection. Each of the tenets is an invitation to reflect on how Black joy can guide current and future practitioner preparation programs while inviting future practitioners to dialogue with their respective faculty about how to build homeplace.

Mims et al. (2024) discussed ways to cultivate Black girls’ true, most powerful selves in “‘Black Girl Magic is Everything’: Recommendations for Cultivating Supportive Spaces for Black Girls.” The authors center the voices of Black girls who share how they make meaning and draw strength from #BlackGirlMagic. More specifically, Black girl magic does not necessarily mean that Black girls stumble into their excellence magically, but that there are intentional actions and efforts that Black girls and the community around them engage to support their success. In knowing this, authors engage their own experiences to detail strategies for creating loving and supportive spaces where #BlackGirlMagic can thrive.

In “Beyond Single-identity Spaces of Black Mattering: Homeplaces for Black LGBTQ+ Identities in K-12 Schools,” Reid (2024) reminds readers that Black Joy must be inclusive of all of Blackness including Black queer and trans youth. The author calls for educators to not only understand the intersectional experiences of Black queer and trans youth, which are often silenced as White queer and trans stories are centered. As educators work to understand these stories, it is important to not only see pain and sorrowfulness, but to see their whole humanity, which includes both joy and pain. Recommendations for creating these intersectional spaces in K-12 schools are provided using the knowledge and strategies that exist outside of K-12 schools, particularly that of New York City’s Ballroom Culture.

Hines et al. (2024) discussed how homeplace can be cultivated by educators and practitioners in both K-12 and higher education to assist in cultivating STEM identity for Black males. The cultivation of homeplace, then, curates space for their freedom-dreaming and the centering of their brilliance and joy. It is within this safe and empowering context that a STEM identity can be further developed through various pathways and intentional strategies. Authors provide specific recommendations such as social emotional learning and suggestions for practice, research, and policies that can work in tandem to cultivate homeplace for Black males to build STEM identities.

Using their own lived experiences, Hannon and Hannon (2024) effectively argue for school partnerships as a way of building homeplace in “Family and School Partnership to Build Homeplace and Protect Black Autistic Joy.” This is especially important for sustaining Black Autistic Joy. The framework the authors provide works to deepen hooks’ original formulation of homeplace. The four ways to engage Black parents and the four conditions of culturally responsive engagement are both theoretically and practically helpful toward furthering readers’ understanding of homeplace as well as special education diagnoses/placements. This framework has specific implications for the racial demographics of the teaching profession, how school personnel listen, and how school personnel affirm intersecting identities. These recommendations call for a much-needed reorganization of schooling toward homeplace.

Acknowledgments

We recognize and acknowledge the labor upon which our country, state, and institution are built. We remember that our country was built on the labor of enslaved people who were kidnapped and brought to the United States from the African continent and recognize the continued contribution of their survivors. We also acknowledge all immigrant and indigenous labor, including voluntary, involuntary, trafficked, forced, and undocumented peoples who contributed to the building of the country and continue to serve within our labor force. We recognize that our country is continuously defined, supported, and built upon by oppressed communities and peoples. We acknowledge labor inequities and the shared responsibility for combatting oppressive systems in our daily work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).