Black Women Professors' ART for Well-Being in Teacher Education

Introduction

Within the academy, Black Women have cultivated theories and practices for well-being, utilizing memoirs as a vehicle for theorization and social movements. However, Black Women’s theories and practices are valued less within the literature on holistic or healing pedagogies and teacher education (Muhammad et al., 2020). Historically, Black Women’s theories and practices, such as culturally relevant teaching (Ladson-Billings, 2021), intersectionality (Collins & Bilge, 2016), and abolitionist teaching (Love, 2019), have innovated teacher education. Yet, Black Women receive less recognition and respect from their colleagues for their work in colleges and universities. In this chapter, I explore how Black Women professors who desire to be well, liberated, and culturally authentic maintain well-being in the academy with its history of hurt and harm toward Black Women (Perlow, Wheeler, Bethea, & Scott, 2018; Winters, 2020; Walker, 2020; Njoku & Marshall, 2024). Therefore, this chapter aims to inform professors, teacher educators, and educational leaders about Black Women’s healing practices as creative expressions of their activism, research, and teaching (ART) (Tyson, 2001) and ways of well-being as a call to action to center Black Women’s educational theories in the teacher education curriculum. In this way, I also aim to move Black Women’s healing theories and ways of knowing from the margins to the center of knowledge production in the context of teacher education.

According to a report on teacher well-being conducted by Rand Corporation, teachers recorded their intentions to stay or leave the profession based on different factors contributing to their well-being (Doan et al., 2023). Some key findings from the Rand teacher well-being report found that female teachers discussed feelings of burnout and were less likely to mention emotions related to resilience. Black teachers reported experiencing stress due to low salaries associated with teaching. Black teachers were found more likely to intend to leave the profession due to the impact of stress on their professional lives due to the culture and environment of schools in the U.S. context (Doan et al., 2023). Limiting curriculum that impacts the historical, political, and social conversation in K-12 and higher education in the classroom also affects the well-being of educators. “Despite very public efforts to promote “diversity” teacher education remains largely white supremacist in orientation, often “othering” People of Color in these programs and pushing them to the margins within the curriculum” (Player & Irizarry, 2022, p.592). In turn, teachers' well-being impacts students' whole (mind, body, and spirit) (Fu-Kiau & Lukondo-Wamba, 1988). Therefore, it is imperative to consider the impact of societal norms that shape our school cultures and negatively affect the well-being of Black Women professors as they navigate systems of oppression in higher education spaces.