The broad aim of my research
examines how schools and communities sustain each other to engage youth and advance equity. In doing so, my work serves to uplift pedagogies rooted in abolitionist teaching and designs for schooling that fuel students’ communal resilience toward the collective uplift of their communities. To expand the work of cultural and critical pedagogues, my research explicitly focuses on teaching and learning through a framework that centers, sustains, and draws knowledges from community as a mode for sustaining schools and their surrounding community, creating a bidirectional relationship. Particularly, my work has involved students who identify as one or a combination of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, dis/abled, economically less advantaged, and multilingual. It has situated itself in urban geographies plagued by over-policing, the lack of healthcare, fresh food, and more. Yet, my work also highlights the strength of people that were “never meant to survive” (Lorde, 1978). I draw on the intersections of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, and Youth Participatory Action Research while centering principles of Community Oriented African Epistemologies, such as “Ubuntu” (I am because we are).
Black High School Students Social Emotional and Academic Experiences Post COVID-19 Outbreak
This is a community based and youth participatory action research project in partnership with the Santa Maria-Lompoc National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), LUSD, and LUSD participating students. The proposed project was initiated by the Santa Maria- Lompoc NAACP after receiving several reports of anti-Black racist incidents since the COVID 19 outbreak in Lompoc and surrounding Santa Barbara North County area. The Santa Maria-Lompoc NAACP seeks to better understand the schooling experience of Black students in LUSD in order to support this underrepresented group. Given the participatory action nature of this project, the youth participants will be actively involved in data collection, analysis and recommendations for policies and practices for a more equitable education.
Community Centric Pedagogy
This work focuses on a Freedom School and its surrounding community across the processes and sites of learning in the South Bronx. Curious about collective resistance and uplift as forms of pedagogical and educational practice, I grasp how community and school exist in dialogical exchange to sustain each other for the benefit of student and community growth. My brilliant student participants helped me see how the reciprocal partnerships between school and the surrounding community fostered pedagogies that encouraged students to use their voices and advocate for their communities and themselves. The youth in this study, as well as educators and community members spoke of centering community—a philosophy that remembers and reclaims Africanist and Indigenous principles of the collective well being.
Youth Organizing and Leadership
I assisted in two longitudinal projects (funded by William T Grant Foundation and Institute of Education Sciences) to understand the relationship between youth organizing and critical consciousness and developmental competencies. Through the Policy, Research and Evaluation team at the NYU Metro Center, this research found that student activists and leaders across the country gained a greater sense of self efficacy, critical knowledge, and academic skills while advocating for social justice issues in their communities.
Read more: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/revolution-hands-young-youth-organizing-and-leadership-spaces
Interrogating and Disrupting Educational Disproportionality through Youth Participatory Action Research.
In partnership with NYU Metro Center and youth, educators, administrators, and other stakeholders across the New York City Department of Education, I formed a YPAR group with high school students where we collectively examined discipline data in the students’ schools using school and city level data, validated peer surveys, and interviews. We found that students were aware of and deeply impacted by NYC’s racially and economically segregated schools and preferential treatment of privileged groups. Since the founding of this collective, 30 high school students have presented our research findings at various nationwide, statewide, and local practitioner and research conferences.
Young Guerilla Filmmakers
I conducted an ethnographic research project in an after school filmmaking program, Young Guerilla Filmmakers, where non-traditional high school students produced a documentary on teenage pregnancy. The group engaged in teaching and learning practices that relied on each other for knowledge and outside community members to tell a story to disrupt dominant narratives of unintended teenage pregnancy. The community was central to their learning, and the purpose of learning was deeply tied to sustaining their community.
YTACD Manual Release Webinar
Interrogating, Interrupting and Eradicating Educational Disproportionality through Youth Voice & Action: A Guide for Youth - Adult Partnership in Pursuit of Educational Equity
Coalition for Community Schools Research Practice Network Webinar
“Community School, Racial Justice and Equity”