Recommend Strategies for Embracing Social Justice and Educational Equity

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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

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Storying youth lives: centering equity in teaching and teacher education

Valerie Kinloch, Tanja Burkhard & DaVonna Graham

To cite this article: Valerie Kinloch, Tanja Burkhard & DaVonna Graham (2020) Storying youth lives: centering equity in teaching and teacher education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33:1, 66-79, DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2019.1678779

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1678779

Published online: 17 Oct 2019.

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Storying youth lives: centering equity in teaching and teacher education

Valerie Kinloch , Tanja Burkhard and DaVonna Graham

School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

ABSTRACT We argue that youth stories are fundamental to social justice, social change, and equity in education. In our focus on stories, we ask: In what ways do youth stories encourage us to better attend, or be “answerable,” to the important work of equity in teaching and teacher education, and what does this look like? To address this question, we provide an overview of research on equity in education and storying as method and practice that connect to Indigenous and humanizing research methodologies. Then, we share stories about equity from Damya and her peers–Students of Color in New York City’s Harlem com- munity. These stories speak to their resilience, which are connected to Black people’s history of perseverance in the face of institutionalized oppression, inequalities, and inequities in this country. Together, we foreground how Damya and her peers use creative practices to engage in alternative possibilities for equitable teaching and learning.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 2 January 2019 Accepted 5 July 2019

KEYWORDS youth stories; youth storying; teaching and teacher education; equity and justice; stories as art

Schools ‘do little to nurture the souls and support the creativity of us students’ (18-year-old Damya; see Kinloch, 2010, p. 54).

In this article, we examine the valuable role of youth stories and storying and their interconnected- ness with equity and creativity in teaching and teacher education. To do so, we place primary focus on Damya, a brilliant, beautiful Black adolescent girl1 who was in Valerie’s English language arts class at Perennial High School in New York City. She was also a participant and co-investigator in one of Valerie’s teacher education research initiatives and, since that time, they have remained in touch with each other. After graduating from Perennial High, Damya matriculated to a predom- inately white institution (PWI) in the U.S. Northeast, where she majored in International Affairs. Damya’s academic trajectory and the educational choices she boldly made represent an explicit rejection of deficit narratives that were enacted onto her by some of her K-12 teachers, administra- tors, and peers. Such narratives, according to Damya, tried to ‘define my success in ways that didn’t uplift my humanity.’ She is but one of many other Black adolescents in this country whose stories – of academic struggle, perseverance, acuity, and resilience – represent conscious, critical rejections of deficit narratives that seek to undermine and minimize Black people’s cultural, intel- lectual, linguistic, and social histories. Through Damya’s stories and those of some of her peers, we (two U.S.-born Black women and a Black German woman) are able to better recognize and learn about the multiple ways they created artful opportunities to center equity in their school engagements.

CONTACT Valerie Kinloch [email protected] School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, 5609 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA � 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 2020, VOL. 33, NO. 1, 66–79 https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1678779

Specifically, Damya’s stories reaffirm for us the importance of storying as a method and a practice that encourages people to make sense of their realities, narrate their specific ways of knowing and being, and name their past and present while (re)imagining their future selves. In this reaffirmation, we build on San Pedro and Kinloch’s (2017) argument that educational researchers should ‘willingly center the realities, desires, and stories of the people with whom we work’ as we also ‘situate their stories in relation to our stories, lives, and research projects in humanizing ways’ (p. 374S). In so doing, we come to understand the valuable role stories play, particularly in the lives of People of Color, and the significance of storying as a way to capture and share the intricacies of who we are in relation to who others are in the world.

Indeed, stories are central to human life and human experiences. Stories carry and embody our pains, joys, struggles, and triumphs. They capture and encapsulate creative practices and bring into life what poet, feminist, womanist, and civil rights activist Lorde (1985) refers to as ‘possibilities.’ In her discussion of poetry and possibilities, Lorde insists, ‘poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action’ (p. 36). The possibilities that emerge from poetry, specifically, and from stories and storying, generally, signify our human capacity to ‘give name to the name- less so it can be thought’ (p. 36).

Naming the nameless

In this article, we ‘give name to the nameless’ (Lorde, 1985, p. 36) by taking a two-fold approach to understanding the valuable role of youth stories and storying. First, we argue for the import- ance of stories and storying in equity work that is grounded in care, critical listening, and inten- tional collaborations with young people. Second, we insist that storying be understood as a mode of inquiry that is creative, engaging, and humanizing. In our argument, we take inspiration from Lorde (1985), who asks us to deeply consider the ‘necessity of our existence’ as we engage in ‘survival and change’ and ‘give name to’ (p. 36). In these ways, youth stories, as with poetry and other creative, aesthetic experiences, are fundamental to the work of social justice and social change in the world, and of the role of equity in education. Our examination of youth stories and storying (e.g. storytelling, story gathering, story exchanging, story exchanges, relationships with stories) speaks to our commitment to young people and to our investment in centering equity in teaching and teacher education.

Thus, in this article, we take up the following question: In what ways do youth stories, and par- ticularly those of Damya, encourage us to better attend, or be ‘answerable’ (see Patel, 2016), to the important work of equity in teaching and teacher education, and what does this look like? With this inquiry, it is important to note that we agree with Patel’s notion of ‘answerability’ as a decolonial praxis in education that requires a shift from focusing on acquiring property to being ‘answerable for learning, knowledge, and context’ (p. 78). To be answerable means that educa- tional research and researchers must be responsive to and responsible for the work we do with (and not to, on, or in ways that harm) Black and Indigenous people. This responsiveness and responsibility must also extend into how we lovingly work with Students of Color in classrooms and how we prepare teacher education candidates to enter into schools.

To address the aforementioned question, we provide a brief overview of research on equity in education (Banks, 2004; Banks & Banks, 1995; Nieto, 2000, 2013). This overview allows us to discuss storying as method and practice in ways that connect to critical Indigenous (Brayboy, Gough, Leonard, Roehl, & Solyom, 2012; Kovach, 2009) and humanizing research methodologies (Irizarry & Brown, 2014; Paris & Winn, 2014). Then, we turn to some of the stories about equity from Damya and her peers as we contemplate implications for teaching and teacher education that attend to young people’s creative practices and enactments of justice. At the center of this

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discussion is our investment in, and care for, Damya, her peers, and the stories they share. These stories speak to their determination and resilience, which are intricately connected to, and inter- woven within, Black people’s history of perseverance in the face of institutionalized oppression, social inequalities, and educational inequities in this country. Taken together, we foreground how Damya and other Students of Color at Perennial High rely on artful, creative, and sophisti- cated practices to radically engage in alternative possibilities for teaching and learning that cen- ter equity in education.

Equity in education: a brief overview

Across the world, countless teachers, teacher educators, students, community leaders, and other education stakeholders have been engaging in research, dialogue, and action in order to pursue an equity agenda that counters neoliberalism and its impact on education. In the United States of 2019, the pursuit of equity and justice in education remains a site of struggle and contest- ation. This is particularly the case when we consider the widespread effects of domestic terrorism (e.g. at the Tree of Life Synagogue and Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church), the tensions between Communities of Color and those who police them (e.g. excessive presence of ICE in immigrant communities and the killing of unarmed Black people), and the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. Considering that classrooms across the country are already (and will continue to become more) increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse, teacher education must critically engage these devastating realities, among so many others (e.g. the government-sanctioned separation of children and families and their incarcer- ation under perilous conditions, immigration bans based on religion and xenophobia, etc.). This is necessary if we are committed to educating a teaching force that does not contribute to the disenfranchisement, oppression, and systemic persecution of students, families, and Communities of Color.

In order to critically attend to global and structural dimensions of inequities (Levin, 2012), we have to carefully listen to, recognize, and center the stories of Students of Color, students who identify as members of LGBTQIAþ communities, poor students, students with disabilities, and those who are at the intersections of multiple forms of structural oppression. In so doing, we must rely on equitable pedagogies, practices, and policies that support and uplift students and their teachers. One way to do this is by situating our work as Projects in Humanization (Kinloch & San Pedro 2014), which is an approach to educational research that emphasizes listening and storying in our relationships with people and that centers justice and equity in education. Somerville and Gannon (2014) contend that the foundation of equity in education – equal access to quality schools, curricula, resources, and educators – is currently under attack across the world in ways that manifest themselves locally. They note, ‘the economisation that is associated with neoliberal incursions on all aspects of life has impacted directly on the school sector and mani- fests as increased privatisation and discourses of choice that privilege those who have the social, cultural, and economic capital to choose’ (p. x). The impact of this push toward neoliberal practi- ces, such as the aforementioned discourses of choice, movements toward free-market capitalism, and efforts to privatize education (Jaramillo, 2017), has contributed to further inequities within schools and inequalities in communities that have been and continue to be purposefully posi- tioned as disenfranchised and under-resourced.

Equity and justice in teacher education

Teacher education programs, according to Nieto (2000, 2013), need to play a pivotal role in pur- suing a strong equity and social justice agenda, particularly as they are responsible for training a teaching force that serves culturally and linguistically diverse students. To learn about students’

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lives and realities, Nieto (2000) believes those who work in colleges and schools of education – those who are preparing future teachers and teacher educators – should do the following: ‘Take a stand on social justice and diversity; make social justice ubiquitous in teacher education; [and] promote teaching as a life-long journey of transformation’ (pp. 4–5; see also Nieto, 2013). To pro- mote equitable educational praxis in teaching and teacher education, an intentional shift away from, and an explicit rejection of, deficit beliefs about Students of Color to an agenda grounded in culturally relevant, sustainable, justice- and equity-oriented practices is needed. This approach should also include an explicit attention to teaching and learning that is creative, humanizing, loving, and joyful with and for young people.

Equity pedagogy

A shift to an equity orientation directly connects to Banks’ (2004) discussion of equity pedagogy. He contends that ‘equity pedagogy exists when teachers use techniques and methods that facili- tate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, ethnic, and social-class groups’ (p. 5). A pedagogical approach grounded in equity takes into account the historical, sociopoliti- cal, and racial dimensions that shape the context of classrooms and the encounters teachers have with students, their families, and communities. Furthermore, as Banks and Banks (1995) assert, an equity pedagogical approach requires teachers to co-create learning spaces with stu- dents in which they can be reflexive and critical of oppressive structures that impact their lives (e.g. racism, sexism, xenophobia, state-sanctioned killings of Black and Brown people). This is but one way to enact an equity and justice agenda. Education that is grounded in equity encourages students to see themselves as (and to really know that they are) agents of change in schools and society. Banks’ (2004), and Banks and Banks’ (1995, 2015) longstanding argument for equity pedagogies is important for understanding the valuable role of youth stories and storying in classrooms. It is significant for understanding the educative promise of centering equity along- side centering youth stories in teaching, teacher education, and beyond.

Examples of this intentional centering of young people and their stories can be found in a plethora of contemporary and critical educational research by Scholars of Color (Haddix, 2016; Kinloch, Burkhard, & Penn, 2017; Paris & Alim, 2014; San Pedro, 2017; Sealey-Ruiz, 2016). Irizarry (2017), for instance, questions some of the ways teaching practices can and should be informed by the perspectives of young people. In his discussion of equity and culturally sustaining peda- gogy by Latinx youth, he insists: ‘When given an opportunity to teach, Latinx students’ approach to educating themselves and their peers offers a framework with the potential to inform cultur- ally sustaining teaching across contexts’ (p. 96). Such an approach, for Irizarry and others (Paris, 2012; Penn, Kinloch, & Burkhard, 2016) is guided by youth stories and storying that include their ‘lived experiences,’ their ‘systems of meaning-making,’ and the ways they ‘advocate for them- selves – indeed, to sustain themselves and their communities’ (Irizarry, 2017, p. 97). Thus, the sig- nificance of emphasizing the stories and storying experiences of young people within teaching and teacher education that is guided by, grounded in, and committed to equity pedagogies.

Storying as method and practice

The guiding question of this article – In what ways do youth stories, and particularly those of Damya, encourage us to better attend, or be ‘answerable’ (see Patel, 2016), to the important work of equity in teaching and teacher education, and what does this look like? – allows us to also con- template the question, ‘How do we work against inequities and inequalities in spaces occupied by People of Color?’ As we considered both questions, we utilized a particular type of literacy-rich practice of listening that represent, for Kinloch and San Pedro (2014), Projects in Humanization (PiH). Theoretically and methodologically, PiH represent a caring and loving philosophical

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approach to educational research that is guided by ‘desires for social, political and educational change that can only happen if relationships are forged in light of, and because of, human differ- ences’ (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014, p. 28). Thus, the importance of centering Damya and Valerie’s relationship as we analyze how Damya and her peers’ stories contribute to advancing an equity agenda in and for teaching and teacher education. Frankly, this equity agenda is also necessary for how we all come to see, interact with, and care about Black students and other Students of Color across the world.

Projects in humanization and storying

Drawing on critical Indigenous (Brayboy, Gough, Leonard, Roehl, & Solyom, 2012; Kovach, 2009) and humanizing research methodologies (Irizarry & Brown, 2014; Paris & Winn, 2014), PiH, as a philosophical approach to educational research, places the realities and experiences we have with others as the central focus of human interaction and of education research and practice. This is the case because PiH offers a deliberate approach to sharing and exchanging stories in ways that allow for nonlinearity, multiplicity, and difference (e.g. various streams of conscious- ness, perspectives, voices, stories, vulnerabilities). It also lends itself to the significance of the shifting roles between researcher and participant, and the (re)positioning of researcher as lis- tener, learner, and advocate. These shifting roles are important to note because, as Freire con- tends, human beings ‘exist in and with an ever-changing world’ and are always ‘becoming more fully human’ (Freire, qtd. in Roberts, 2000, p. 41); thus, the process of humanization.

Performed through the dialogic process of listening and storying (the telling and receiving of stories), PiH does not contend with researcher neutrality. Instead, it values relationship-building between researcher and participant, between teachers and students, just as much as it values the sharing of stories and the role of critical listening. For example, as we listen to what Damya says (e.g. her stories; her ways of storying), we are able to do what Ball (2006) suggests, ‘gain insights that can be used to begin crafting a nuanced understanding’ (p. 129) of who Damya is and of her experiences in schools. In this crafting, Damya’s stories are always important. Her sto- ries always matter. They always take centerstage.

Thus, our decision to employ storying, which is an important component of PiH, as our pri- mary unit of analysis. 2 For Kinloch and San Pedro (2014), storying is a means of engaging in ‘humanizing research in ways that privilege the co-construction of knowledge, human agency and voice, diverse perspectives, moments of vulnerability, and acts of listening’ (p. 23). As we dis- cuss in this article, Damya relies on storying, as a humanizing method and practice, to share her understandings of who she is/who she is becoming. She questions educational inequity within the context of her high school English language arts class by engaging in sense-making in rela- tion to broader inequalities (e.g. sociopolitical, sociohistorical, cultural, racial) that circulate in society. This is important, especially in work that focuses on the stories of Students of Color and, in this case, Black students in particular, and that argue for the centrality of equity in teaching and teacher education. For these reasons, storying becomes a reciprocal, dialogic process of lis- tening and being listened to, of teaching and learning that allows us to analyze the stories of Damya and her peers relative to a focus on equity and humanization.

Ethnographic data collection and analysis

In our examination, we provide ethnographic data collected from Damya’s participation in a required senior-level English class, taught by Valerie 1, at Perennial High School during the 2006–2007 academic year. At the time of this study, Perennial High, a public school that employed 24 teachers and served 330 students across grades 9–12, was a Title I and an Empowerment School founded in the early 1990s by a university professor. Such descriptors (e.g.

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Title I; Empowerment) of U.S. public schools and their intended meanings often mask the import- ant, necessary, and brave intellectual conversations students are having inside classrooms. This was the case for Damya, whose writings, interview stories, and class presentations, paired with her peers’ narratives and Valerie’s observational field notes, revealed Damya’s rejection of deficit narratives that sought to undermine her academic ability. Such narratives also attempted to jus- tify the reasons why inequities were so pervasive in some educational spaces and not in others. Damya outright rejected these narratives. To do so, she willingly collaborated with her peers and Valerie to co-create a humanizing educational space and curricula that centralized students’ experiences, honored youth stories and storying processes, and interrogated youth resistances to school.

To co-create a humanizing learning space and curriculum in which students could openly examine their discontent with school, Damya, her peers, and Valerie co-designed the course’s learning goals in ways that aligned with the state standards for 12th grade English. This involved agreeing to include a variety of texts in the course, such as artwork, biographies, essays, mem- oirs, music, poetry, political and educational commentaries, and short stories. Students made decisions about the overall nature of group projects and presentations and selected topics for class debates, journal entries, and essays (for more information, see Kinloch, 2012).

Years after this co-designed classroom experience, Valerie and Damya reconnected and revis- ited some of the many lessons, stories, and themes that had emerged from their time together at Perennial High School. Tanja, a postdoctoral fellow, and DaVonna, a graduate student researcher, engaged in theoretical, methodological, and data-driven examinations of youth sto- ries and storying; they also considered ways to situate stories of youth discontent within larger conversations about (in)equity in teaching and teacher education. Collectively, we contemplated larger implications of focusing on youth stories and storying for not only teaching and teacher education (what we teach, how we teach, and for what purposes), but also for thinking and talk- ing differently about equity in education, to include addressing opportunity gaps, understanding how ‘necessary disruptions’ (see Kinloch, 2018) are needed in schooling, and fighting against racism in schools and throughout society.

To engage in this work, we used ethnographic and narrative analytic phases. An ethno- graphic phase allowed us to code observations from field notes, transcripts from interviews, teaching materials, and archival data on the school and local community. A narrative analytic phase allowed us to evaluate student writings and stories, and to highlight processes that were used in producing written and oral texts. Taken together, these two phases involved a qualitative research approach framed by critical literacy and teacher research, which allowed us to categorize specific recurring themes such as: (1) youth stories of discontent and resist- ance; (2) youth stories of collaboration; (3) youth stories as relational; and (4) youth storying as an artful methodology and practice in equity. This framing allowed us to better understand students’ desires to actively ‘take back’ their learning, as Damya described. It also revealed add- itional themes that became central to our focus on youth stories and storying in teaching and teacher education. These additional themes, which we reference throughout this art- icle, include:

� Creating humanizing, caring, and critical classrooms grounded in educational equity. � Listening to and thinking through youth stories of educational success and educational harm

in ways that impact pedagogical practices and experiences with learning. � Attending to youth stories of resistance to being named readers and writers within unjust,

uncaring educational spaces (in juxtaposition with willingly being named readers and writers in welcoming community spaces).

� Paying attention to how youth creatively and artfully collaborate and engage with each other beyond school sanctioned spaces.

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� Recognizing how young people already actively participate in their learning through proc- esses involving critical reading, writing, questioning, creating, and collaborating, and the implications of these things for collaborative arts, teaching, and teacher education.

� Honoring the creative practices young people employ to tell their stories as they work in rejection of systems of oppression.

In what follows, we share some of Damya and her peers’ stories to centralize the importance of equity in teaching and teacher education. From there, we highlight implications for storying as a creative, artful method and practice in the lives of Black youth and other Youth of Color. These stories and the implications that emerge, we believe, represent one possible way to work against inequities and inequalities that oftentimes permeate spaces occupied by People of Color.

Youth stories and storying equity

During one of our English language arts class sessions, Valerie asked, ‘Can stories influence liter- acy, not just how we teach and learn or what we read and write, but, like, who we are? Like, how we identify in the world?’ This question came on the heels of class readings and discussion of texts by W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jonathan Kozol, June Jordan, bell hooks, and others who question inequalities and inequities, and who insist on human rights. Damya responded, ‘You asking about our stories?’ and Juan, a seventeen-year-old Latinx student, added, ‘Are you?’ The point, Valerie thought, was simple: How do we think about literacy, specifically, and teaching and teacher education, generally, by thinking about stories and aesthetic experiences? By think- ing about our and other people’s stories? However, over the next few class sessions, the point proved not to be so simple.

Day three of discussing stories and their interconnections to literacy and aesthetic experiences found us sharing personal writings about voice, human experiences, and safe and dangerous pla- ces for Black and Latinx people in the world. Damya, whose writings always represented creative and artful depictions of human life, opened the discussion by reading one of her poems titled, ‘Beautiful’:

My Beautiful, beautiful America When did you become so corrupt? Why did you turn out this way? Is it because of man’s ideal society? Is it because the words American citizen Have no meaning any longer? Why do you have to close your eyes and ears To those who are really in need?

I was born here, but why do I ache? Questioning everyday. Or, saying, just another day of living in America. My children have no better future than I do. My God, my God, why?

Why must we live in a world in which cards or Little pieces of paper define us?

Why do I wake up every morning in constant fear of not seeing Every single member of my family?

Was my birth a dream? Was my birth not fit for a world such as this?

Throughout the remainder of the academic year, Damya’s poem and her reading of it led to some pointed discussion on various topics: fear of deportation, identity papers, oppression, racism, disenfranchisement, patriarchy, the falsity of ‘the American Dream,’ and the

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responsibilities of teachers to talk, think, and collaborate with students on topics of social inequalities and educational inequities.

For Juan, ‘Beautiful’ forced him to grapple with meanings of citizenship. He read aloud the lines, ‘Was my birth a dream?/Was my birth not fit for a world such as this?’ To this, Damya responded, ‘I wrote [“Beautiful”] because we all searching for a better world. Our sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, all of us.’ She continued: ‘We want to belong, but others don’t think we do.’ For us (Valerie, Tanja, and DaVonna), we connect Damya’s search ‘for a better world’ to Lorde’s (1980) insistence that we transform silence into language and action, even with the reality, as expressed by Langston Hughes, that ‘America never was America to me’ (see Rampersad, 1995, p. 189). How, then, do we come to terms with the painful reality of Damya’ poem in relation to Valerie’s initial question, ‘Can stories influence literacy, not just how we teach and learn or what we read and write, but, like, who we are? Like, how we identify in the world?’

Stories of inequity

Damya’s poem set the stage for powerful discussions on (in)equity in education. Her ‘Beautiful’ was layered as a second text within an essay that she wrote on Langston Hughes’ poem, ‘The Weary Blues.’ For Damya, when Hughes writes, ‘put ma trouble on the shelf,’ it appears as if Langston Hughes, or the person he is writing about:

doesn’t want to feel this lonely way anymore, so he is relieving himself from those feelings by singing it out to others. This language gives off a feeling of deep blues, as though his blues are not just a tune… in some way… this poem reflects what happens when dreams are no longer dreams and visions of rapture are no longer visions of rapture… Black people used blues as a means of expressing their feelings, fears, and beliefs about the world. (Damya’s essay and class presentation)

She continues by writing of her personal connections to the poem’s themes of identity, struggle, and perseverance before ending with questions about why more people do not talk against pain and injustices that get inflicted onto them and onto others. It was at this point where a focus on educational (in)equities surfaced and rightfully dominated class discussion.

‘What does this have to do with us,’ Juan asked, to which Rosa, a Latinx student in the class, added, ‘Girrrrrlll, that was gooooooooddd…how you focus on struggle.’ Damya used her poem and essay to artfully raise important topics (about identity, struggle, and perseverance) that con- nected to stories of inequities and the realities of oppression. During discussion, she shared:

We tell our stories and imagine what could be different. In here, we talk about what’s wrong and needs to be changed. But year after year, nothing changes. It’s engrained into this place. We need to write, to share our stories about what school is and what it should be for us. If schools won’t change and give us what we need, we gotta change it. From how we taught, what we’re taught, and what we allowed to write and share. If we do that, it forces the teaching and curriculum to change to meet our needs. (Damya’s class discussion)

Juan was intrigued with Damya’s sentiments, and he wanted some deeper connections: ‘How does what you said connect to your essay on Mr. Hughes? Help me out.’ Damya responded: ‘Langston Hughes wrote about the world. School is part of the world. I take what he said about being weary and connect it to how we weary in school, but do we know it? Are we getting what we really need to be successful?’ She continued: ‘Does it compare to what students at “other” schools get? Is it fair we don’t talk about these realities? It’s unjust, and we need to address these things in school. Question why schools for us are like this. That’s what I’m saying.’

When Valerie added into this conversation, ‘We should be talking about inequities and inequalities in schools. That’s what you saying?’ Damya agreed and said, ‘Yes, that’s what I’m say- ing. And if we use Langston Hughes’ writing, then that’s where we start.’ Damya was sharing sto- ries of change – she wanted to have time and space inside school and in her schooling experiences to interrogate educational inequities and social inequalities that confront many

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People of Color. This was revealed when she questioned: ‘Are we getting what we really need to be successful? Does it compare to what students at “other” schools get?’ Additionally, Damya storied some of the reasons why schools, generally, and teaching, particularly, need to be trans- formed in ways that focus on equity as connected to youth stories and storying. This was evi- denced by her statements, ‘If schools won’t change and give us what we need, we gotta change it. From how we taught, what we’re taught, and what we allowed to write and share.’ Here, Damya was not only seeking change from others, but asserting her right and responsibility to be an agent of change.

Stories of ‘changing it’

During another class session, Rosa asked her how to ‘change it,’ and Damya responded with another story:

Changing it by being proactive in class. Don’t wait for things to get done or changed. We insist teachers respond to our needs. Being motivated for one, being proactive for two, and having consciousness for three. Raising consciousness to higher levels and saying, ‘we have the power to do something different.’ In this class, we’re doing that. Sharing stories about our failures in school resulting from how some of us been pushed out of classes, even when we know we’re smart. The story Christina [an Afro-Jamaican student] told us about being teased by peers and not taken seriously or even cared for by teachers. That feeling of [Christina interjected, ‘not being wanted and feeling alone, and teachers allowing it to happen’]. That’s right, and that’s hard to not have teachers protect and care for us in school when no one else does. That’s an example of injustice in school. (Damya’s class discussion)

By sharing her stories and through the process of storying, Damya encouraged her peers to not ‘wait for things to get done,’ but to be ‘motivated,’ ‘proactive,’ and to have ‘consciousness.’ Equally important is how she shared stories about educational inequity. Just as much as she con- nected inequity to what some students are not learning and not being afforded in comparison to students at ‘other’ schools (the discussion involving Langston Hughes), she also connected inequity to patterns of behavior that negatively infringe on others (Christina being teased by peers and not cared for by teachers). If, as Banks (2004) contends, ‘equity pedagogy exists when teachers use techniques and methods that facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, ethnic, and social-class groups’ (p. 5), then youth stories and storying are signifi- cant to this work. Undoubtedly, it is important that we listen to the stories (of inequities and inequalities, of hope and resilience) of young people and centralize them in teaching and teacher education. This is but one way, to use Damya’s words, of ‘changing it.’

Storying as ‘entering into creativity’

A few years had passed since the Perennial High School experience, and Damya had just grad- uated from college. Valerie and Damya decided to spend some time reflecting on their under- standings of the power of stories and storying. To begin, Valerie shared with Damya one of her favorite passages written by poet, educator, and activist June Jordan (2002): ‘I am always hoping to do better than to collaborate with whatever or whomever it is that means me no good’ (p. 3). To this passage, Damya replied, ‘OK. That’s a place to start! What does that have to do with sto- ries?’ They laughed before Damya said, ‘I agree. Don’t collaborate with people not wanting what’s best for you,’ to which Valerie said, ‘It reminds me of you. How you’d always story possi- bilities for a better world.’ Damya added, ‘A better world, a better school. I thought about those things. Not the actual school, itself, but the experience with how we were learning. What I mean, why not examine the reality we know exists?’ When Valerie asked her to name some of those realities, Damya responded: ‘In our class, I remember writing stories about racism, unjust, a lot about our realities… Those stories were important to write and share. They helped me, at

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least, make sense of my feelings and who I was at that time. They helped me take a side against the unjust we wrote about.’

Damya’s recollection of ‘the experience with how we were learning’ connects well to educa- tional philosopher Greene’s (1991) belief that ‘the idea of making spaces for ourselves, experienc- ing ourselves in our connectedness and taking initiatives to move through those spaces, seems to me to be of the first importance’ (p. 27). This is what Damya and her peers were doing when we were in community at Perennial High – they were questioning the purposes of schooling while simultaneously ‘making spaces’ (p. 27) inside school for their stories to take centerstage. They were storying their realities and creatively imagining possibilities for what it means to ‘take a side against the unjust.’

Quickly, Damya and Valerie continued to fall into the past, and they returned to moments from their English language arts class at Perennial High. ‘We read a lot. We wrote a lot. A lot. I still got some of my journals from then,’ said Damya, to which Valerie replied, ‘Would you believe I still got one of your journals? You want it?’ Damya laughed before turning more serious:

Damya: You know, I wrote a lot! Writing was a way of expressing my ideas and questioning the wrongs of the world. Writing was my art.

Valerie: Your art? Like your art told through stories?

Damya: Right. Looking back, I wrote or created art or told stories, which are the same thing when you think about it. I did that to remind myself I was capable. I knew there was more to being in school besides sitting in a classroom writing one essay after another after another. And for what? Nothing. Writing, that was a way in and a way out. In, in terms of entering into creativity to imagine something more and sharing it with others. Out, in terms of writing myself out of narratives that didn’t represent my brilliance. I had to write myself out of that oppression. My stories did that for me.

Valerie: Your stories?! [intentional emphasis]

Damya: My stories, that’s right. With my stories, it became my responsibility to search for my depth, be creative and…Wasn’t one of your favorite words ‘critical?’ [Author 1 and Damya laugh] I wanted to be critical.

The above exchange between Damya and Valerie speaks to the power of writing. Even more, it also speaks to the power of creating and sharing stories that respond to inequities and inequalities by, to use Damya’s words, ‘entering into creativity to imagine something more.’ It is through such imaginings that we are able to talk about injustices. Damya’s reflections of, and stories about, her time in our course return us to Jordan’s (2002) declaration that we must always ‘do better than to collaborate with whatever or whomever it is that means me no good’ (p. 3). In doing this work, we also recognize that the power of youth stories and storying, in part, is with determining who ‘to collaborate with’ (Jordan, 2002, p. 3), which is connected to choosing ‘a way in and a way out.’ It is our hope that all Youth of Color will be fully supported by a community of educators (e.g. teachers, teacher educators, administrators, researchers, com- munity members, families, friends, etc.) to collaborate with those on the side of justice who understand how to meaningfully, artfully story their way ‘out of that oppression.’

Storying youth lives: discussion and implications

Damya’s assertion that ‘we need to write, to share our stories about what school is and what it should be for us’ highlights the importance of this work. That is, young people are already active participants in their learning and they are already aware of the many educational harms that proliferate within the context of schools. The role played by stories and storying is directly con- nected to: (1) a focus on equity, (literacy) teaching, and teacher education, and (2) an increased emphasis on the interconnectedness among creativity, equity, and teaching in relation to the

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eradication of oppression in the schooling experiences of young people. Recall Damya’s senti- ments that open this article, that schools ‘do little to nurture the souls and support the creativity of us students.’ For us, her statement and above-mentioned assertion beckons us to consider how inequities manifest themselves in schools, in teaching, and in teacher education programs. This is especially the case when discussing with students ‘what school is,’ and hearing that they believe school is a place full of rejection, disempowerment, inequitable practices, and, for Christina (one of Damya’s peers), ‘not being wanted and feeling alone and teachers allowing it to happen.’ When we juxtapose these beliefs with stories of ‘what school should be,’ then stu- dents and teachers have opportunities to focus on stories of access, creativity, equity, and power that should be central to the curricula and in instructional approaches. This is particularly the case for students who have been historically marginalized and who continue to be underserved in schools.

Addressing the question, ‘How do we work against inequities and inequalities in spaces occu- pied by People of Color?’ requires us to focus on Damya’s insistence that students be encour- aged to tell and exchange stories as a way to be heard, recognized, and as a way to learn. Her insistence requires a community of educators to critically, lovingly, and attentively listen to and uplift students as they share their stories and, in so doing, respond with action (e.g. through equity pedagogies and policies, culturally relevant and sustaining practices, by centering youth stories in practice, and by seeing stories as art/artful) that can lead to systemic change. Teachers and teacher educators can take up this work inside schools by situating stories at the center of our pedagogical practices, especially if we understand the power of the arts, according to Greene (1991), as the power of being moved ‘into spaces where we can create visions of other ways of being and ponder what it might signify to realize them’ (p. 27). Then, it becomes pos- sible for us to understand the power of ‘emancipatory pedagogy’ (p. 27) that focuses on creativ- ity, stories, and the arts. It also becomes necessary for us to openly grapple with how young people, such as Damya and her peers, engage with each other inside learning environments in ways that reject the very systems that seek their oppression. Doing so encourages the creation of ‘other ways of being’ (p. 27).

Relatedly, we must also fulfill Nieto’s (2013) call for social justice to be central in teaching and teacher education in ways that motivate all educators to view teaching as a lifelong quest for transformation and justice. In this way, we become better skilled at listening to youth stories, understanding youth storying experiences, facilitating learning opportunities with them about access, inequity, and inequality, and co-creating spaces to examine justice in teaching and learn- ing. This bears implications for how we teach, what we teach, why we teach, and also for who gets to teach in the first place.

If we value Damya’s call for ‘teachers [to] respond to our needs,’ then with teaching and within teacher education, we must ensure that who gets to teach are people who already have a commitment to, and disposition toward, social justice. They must know how to facilitate responses to the ingrained inequities to which Damya and her peers refer. They must also recog- nize that listening to as well as centering, exchanging, and honoring stories by and about young people have significant implications for the sustainability of educational equity within classrooms and schools. One way to engage in this work is by emphasizing storying as a classroom and community practice that supports investigations into (and responses to) oppression. For Damya and her peers, stories and storying encouraged them to share their histories, fears, and aspira- tions with others inside culturally relevant and sustaining learning environments. In this way, they were supported to not ‘wait for things to get done or changed,’ as Damya insists, but to understand the power of stories, storying, and humanizing practices that can facilitate equity and justice in teaching and teacher education, especially for People of Color.

When it comes to Damya’s description of writing as creating art or telling stories, we contend that writing is more than putting words to paper. Writing as creating art and telling stories is also about engaging in processes of discovering, uncovering, and recovering parts of self that

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may have been made invisible, silent, and neglected within oppressive institutionalized spaces, including schools. As argued by Damya, writing represents creativity that allows one to connect to self and to others. Thus, if we are not tapping into, cultivating, and harnessing the creativities of young people through stories, poems, essays, music, spoken word, performances, and other artful means, then we are not making space and embracing possibilities.

To return to Lorde (1985), possibilities allow us to ‘give name to the nameless so it can be thought’ (p. 36). Possibilities allow us to understand stories and storying as method and practice, and as writing and art form. In this way, stories are art and storying is a form of cultural produc- tion that represents and speaks to everyday forms of sense-making. Whether for healing our- selves, speaking our truths, working against social inequalities, and/or eradicating educational inequities, stories and storying are necessary creative expressions of who we are in relation to other people. Stories as art and as artful are important to human life. They have impactful roles to play in discussions about ‘collaborative arts, creative research and youth engagement in social justice practices’ (the theme of this journal issue). They also have significant roles to play when it comes to teaching and teacher education that is committed to centering youth lives, youth sto- ries, youth art, youth creativities, and youth-driven social justice movements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Elsewhere, Valerie identifies Damya as a Black adolescent girl and not a Black female or Black woman, given the problematic, racist, and criminalizing connotation the terms female and woman denote for Black girls under the age of 21, particularly when compared to White girls” (see San Pedro & Kinloch, 2017, p. 392).

2. It is important that we distinguish between stories/storying and narratives. While narratives are important in education research and practice, and while narratives and stories/storying are deeply connected, we situate storying as a significant component of PiH. Storying is both humanizing method and humanizing practice. Storying is a reciprocal, dialogic process of hearing and being heard, of listening and being listened to, of learning and teaching that results from human interactions and relationships. Storying does not only represent the telling of stories (or the artifacts that emerge from the telling of stories), but a necessary way of listening to, learning about, engaging in, honoring, and exchanging stories of self and of/by/from others, meaningfully and vulnerably. In these ways, storying leads to relationships between people (e.g. researchers/participants; students/students; students/teachers; teachers/teachers; etc.). According to San Pedro and Kinloch (2017), storying allows us to reject “the exploitation that can occur when sharing the stories of others” and to “challenge the tendency of empirical research to separate rigor and inventiveness from relationships and humanization” (p. 376S).

Notes on contributors

Valerie Kinloch is the Ren�ee and Richard Goldman Dean of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. Author of various publications, her most recent edited collection is, Race, Activism and Justice in Literacy Instruction. Currently, she is working on a book on literacy, equity, and community engagement.

Tanja Burkhard is a qualitative researcher and Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work explores the racialized, gendered, and linguistic experiences of Black transnational women from a transnational Black feminist and anticolonial perspective.

DaVonna Graham is a doctoral student in Language, Literacy and Culture, a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow, and Graduate Research and teaching associate at University of Pittsburgh's Center for Urban Education. She is also an experi- enced youth advocate and scholar activist.

ORCID

Valerie Kinloch http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1623-371X

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 77

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