Teacher Truth Perspectives — Reflections From the Research Team
“TEACHER TRUTH IS ANCHORED IN THE IDEA OF HUMANIZING RESEARCH…
AND HONORING STORY AND VOICE.” - DR. TAMEKA MCGLAWN
In the words of Teacher Truth researcher, Dr. Britte Cheng, “We want to take leadership to help folks think about how to support those self-formed communities in educational systems so that we can actually provide successful, sustained supports for Black educators.” To that end, we’re sharing out resonant reflections from our research team. Whether or not you were in attendance at our 3rd annual Perspectives event, and whether or not you’re a Black educator yourself, we hope you’ll find value in what we’ve been learning.
Dr. McGlawn: Even with all the dynamics that we're up against, whether it's the recent ruling on affirmative action, the assault and attack on Black history, Black bodies, C R T, and beyond, we're here to tell you there are highlights within the pain. There are victories in the dynamic of what we endure on a day-to-day basis inside of the experience in our communities on a social level, on a psychic level, on a spiritual level.
Dr. Cheng: The surveys and the research that we do, there's a strategic research panel that gets together. So that's Dr. Micia Mosley, Dr. E'rika Chambers, Precious Stroud, Dr. McGlawn, and myself. But these surveys actually have had the input from all of the BlackFemaleProject team over the years. This is truly a collective effort.
In 2021, we started off thinking about what we would like to do with this research arm of the Teacher Truth Project. We wanted to document some of the challenges—but also the celebrations—of Black educators. We thought about what was going on with COVID, but also what was going on in the context of Black educators’ work. We decided to focus on experiences of race and racism in the workplace by elevating the voices of Black educators and honoring their lived experiences in that effort. We started to explore how educators are navigating and healing by conducting a survey of 206 Black educators, teachers, leaders, administrators, and folks in all roles in schools across the country, with about 100 respondents from California. We've had a very similar response sample across all of our surveys since then.
In 2022, we followed up by documenting some of the conditions and celebrations of Black educators’ work. We had 177 respondents who answered our original survey in 2021. We wanted to understand what resources and supports are available and working well for Black educators. What are the strategies to support them? Our goal was to explore some of the ways to successfully and permanently provide support for educators—and this is forecasting some of the work we want to do with educational leaders and administrators going forward.
In 2023, we combined the two surveys and then trimmed it down a little bit so that individuals could get through it more easily. That survey will be conducted on a regular basis, so the 222 responses we got so far begin a longitudinal research program for the project.
A few quick challenges, conditions, and celebrations from the data:
One thing we wanted to show you is the prevalence of the forms of racism that have been experienced by those taking the survey. The two highest reported types of racism—which both increased from 2021 to 2023—are assumptions of similarity between people of the same race and workplace isolation. In 2021, we contextualized these findings by sharing that these rates are actually double what we see in other sectors—double what we might see in the medical field or other industries—and yet they have risen in the past two years. That is a significant finding for us.
We have seen decreases in some of the other types of racist experiences from 2022 to 2023.
One thing to celebrate is that educators are reporting that they’ve been able to access available supports, including:.
Professional affinity groups
Participation in self-formed community within workplace, school, or district
We're seeing the continued importance of rooms like this, spaces like this, projects like this, communities like this that are both formed by others, but also self-formed by educators to support their own needs. This affirmation continues to be a shining star in our data.
