There is a tremendous need to enhance the cultural competency of teachers working in PK-12 schools. Research indicates that culturally competent teachers who utilize transformative and justice-oriented curriculum and pedagogy provide classroom spaces that are more welcoming and engaging, and that showcase diversity, inclusion, and democracy in…

The article critiques two cases of cultural appropriations and explores how educators can pedagogically counter practices that normalize cultural appropriations. By examining the visual representations of Cinco de Mayo and Sherpa communities, the article illustrates how cultural appropriation often takes place through marketplace and race-neutral…

While there are many difficulties faced by world language educators, both teachers and students of certain languages--languages commonly identified with countries and cultures deemed to be hostile to the United States--often find themselves in uniquely paradoxical situations. This article begins with a brief anecdotal description of the personal…

Much of the literature on professional development offers disembodied, secular, detached and technical approaches to teaching and learning. Born of a collective need for healing, meaning and co-inquiry, I joined justice-oriented educators to explore our overlapping experiences as liberatory practitioners and spiritual seekers. We met for over a…

Black women currently enroll in graduate school programs and earn doctoral degrees at higher rates than all other demographic groups in the United States. Nonetheless, Black women remain noticeably underrepresented in educational leadership positions in public education. Research explorations of Black women who lead in public education primarily…

Relationships, such as the advisee/advisor relationship, in academia are typically taught to be used as a resource (a commodity) for the advancement of one's career. Problematizing the advising relationship draws attention to the inherent hierarchies and violence an advisor may perpetuate. In this article, we explore our resistance and healing…

I first describe the Black scholarly dilemma to set up the reader for how spirit murder happens subtly and the ways, I argue, centering Black life can restore our spirits. Through meditating on the existing literature, I argue that exclusion and marginalization are not the primary indicators of spirit murder in the education field or the academy.…

This essay examines Patricia William's concept of spirit murder (1991) as she details the ways that racism and other forms of discrimination have devastating spiritual and emotional long-term impacts on the individual and collective psyche of Black people and other marginalized people in the U.S. I connect William's concept of spirit murder to two…

"Sis, but how is your spirit, though?" This is a question we ask each other often, an inquiry that grounds us in the spiritual restoration that is necessary for our survival. We are women of color (WOC) academics trying our best to be well. As sisters first, and scholars second, our Critical Sisterhood Praxis demands that we show up on…

Spirit murdering in the academy is pervasive and the impacts on racially minoritized populations are far-reaching and lasting. As Love (2016) notes, spirit murdering is built upon an academic culture that openly embraces racism, at the expense of the minds, bodies, and souls of racially minoritized faculty and students. Over time the spirits,…

Black, Indigenous, and other students of color (BIPOC) are selecting to attend community colleges more than any other post-secondary school setting. However as the author argues, community colleges have, since their inception, served as exclusionary spaces for labor extraction that murders the spirits of BIPOC students. This article explores…

As a mother, daughter, and educator in Compton, California, the author writes a letter as an episolary offering/love letter for adjunct professors. The author offers these brief words as an act of gratitude, as an act of daily survival, and as an act of abundant defiance against the elimination of Women of Color (WoC) adjunct professors, writers,…

Christian higher education uniquely marries neoplantation academia with the practice of religious jawboning, using persuasion rather than the exertion of vehement enforcement, to engage Black faculty of faith in upholding white supremacy ideology. These institutions can and do use faith as a tool of oppression through their policies and practice,…

Violence has been a prevalent issue within the African American community for the last two decades. This research study seeks to supplement the plethora of research around this area. Particularly, this study is concerned with what variables impact an individual's tendency to react violently within the African American community. Utilizing…

Whiteness is more than a racial identity. It is a concept that is deeply embedded into the structures and histories of many institutions of higher education. Due to the pervasiveness of Whiteness, institutions are likely to have campus climates that are hostile and unsupportive of students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.…