Let's Talk about Race: Black Doctoral Students' Reflections on Teaching Majority White Preservice Teachers

Introduction

This paper highlights the personal experiences and reflections of two Black graduate students attending and teaching at a predominantly white institution (PWI). The graduate students each taught a section of the same mathematics methods course that focused on equitable teaching practices for students in urban schools.¹ In this article, each author describes her individual positionality, the course she taught, personal tensions experienced while teaching, and her sense of a greater responsibility to counter deficit narratives of K-12 Black and Brown students, whom her current students could one day teach.

Researcher Positionality

Kelly Ivy

My name is Kelly Ivy, and I am a Black woman who is a lover of mathematics and teaching. My positionalities draw from my experiences as a Black student in predominantly white schools, a high-school mathematics teacher in an urban school, and a Black female in a mathematics education doctoral program. Growing up in St. Louis, I never saw mathematics teachers who looked like me. I attended a school district located in a suburb of St. Louis that had recently acquired a culturally diverse student population. I was involved in a desegregation program that included bussing students who lived in the city of St. Louis to schools in the county to diversify the student population and also to diversify parent choice in schooling. This experience and others, such as being the only Black girl in my elementary school's gifted and talented program, made me used to being the only Black student in my early schooling experiences. Therefore, I have always been interested in culturally diverse schooling experiences, having never experienced an urban city school education, despite living in an urban city.

My early education experience influenced my dream of attending a historically Black college or university (HBCU). I not only wanted to but needed to experience schooling with more of my people. I decided to attend a historically Black university as a mathematics major. There I became used to being one of the few females in my male-dominated mathematics content courses. This gender dynamic often impacted my mathematics identity, and in my first semester, I struggled in Calculus One. Growing up in a very Black-andwhite St. Louis, I was not prepared for my calculus professor's heavy African accent and could not understand the mathematics past our language barrier. I ended up trying to teach myself calculus and ended the course with an F on my transcript. Being a first-generation college student, I was unaware of how to seek on-campus support to help me succeed in the course. In my second semester, I learned how to navigate the campus and discovered resources at the math tutoring center and the library to help me attain a passing grade in the course. I also retained the necessary grit to continue as a mathematics major.

Attending an HBCU allowed me the opportunity to develop my craft teaching in urban schools. Ultimately, I decided not to return home to St. Louis, opting instead to teach in DC public schools. Throughout my three years as a high-school mathematics teacher, I thoroughly enjoyed teaching Algebra One, Algebra Two, geometry, and probability and statistics. Still, my favorite part of being in the classroom was the community of learners in whom I saw myself reflected. I worked hard to build positive mathematics identities in my students. I also sought to build positive relationships with them, their parents, and the surrounding community. Due to these relationships, students labeled as low performers, often socially situated as the problem students, were placed in my classroom. I refused to let deficit narratives of such students exist in my classroom and worked hard to build their mathematics self-efficacies and identities, just as I would with other students.

Although as a student I never experienced culturally responsive teaching, I developed an interest in the advocacy of equitable teaching practices that engaged culturally diverse students in the mathematics classroom. I also gained an interest in pursuing a doctorate degree to better support...