By Gregory K. Tanaka, Roshawnda Bradford, Irene St Roseman, Paul St Roseman, Edward Miamee Salce, and Robyn T. Fisher

I.

INTRODUCTION

In early summer, 2022, “Step Up Academy” was launched to test whether identities could be formed and celebrated by African American and Latina trainers of teachers based on ethnicity rather than race. Twenty such teacher trainers were asked to tell stories in small groups about their family’s ethnic history and values. In doing this, the project took on the very stubborn problem of race and racialization—especially hurtful to African Americans—and demonstrated it is possible to develop a model for minority teacher training based on the positive meanings of teachers’ family ethnic histories rather than being limited by the strictures of race victimization.

II.

LITERATURE

Since colonial times people of African descent in America have sought to maintain a sense of agency, bonding, and kinship for the greater good of their communities (Hitchner, Schelhas, and Dwivdei (2021). One question examined in the present study was whether this notion of bonding and kinship could be confirmed empirically with African American teachers in the present day.

In addition, the question of bonding and kinship surfaces the question of how relations might play out when African Americans interact with each other. Would this be a subtractive outcome—where the speech of one speaker blocks or undermines the messages of other speakers—or might there instead be an additive effect in which each speaker helps other speakers to gain confidence, find voice, and express their own views?

Philosopher and literary theorist Mari Ruti (2006) provided a definition of what happens when speakers honor the voice and agency of others in a group. She termed this “intersubjectivity” stating that, “One of my objectives is to transcend the conceptual poverty of (individualism), and to depict self-sufficiency as a matter of the subject’s ability to develop a relationship to itself that is multidimensional enough to sustain both meaningful intersubjective ties and periods of solitude” (at p. xvi, emphasis added).

It was in this vein that Ruti (2006: p. xvi) exhorted thinkers to depart traditional Western ways of knowing where there is “…a strong tendency…to hear the call for self-sufficiency as a call for individualism and Emersonian self-reliance.” In lieu of this, Ruti urged people to work together rather than in solitude—and in this project this would mean locating one’s own ethnic identity development and meaning making within a larger effort of helping others to do the same. 

III.

METHODS USED

Designed by Dr Robyn T. Fisher of RTF Educational Enterprises, Inc., this applied research project was conducted on weekends in May-June, 2022. Observations were conducted of African American and Latina trainers of schoolteachers as they described their family ethnic meanings through storytelling in small groups. The focus was on trainers who were African American.

A primary reason for the focus on African Americans was that historical delays had been reported among African American kids in southwest Berkeley, California, where—

Only 1/3 of all African American kids were reading proficient by 3^rd grade and

Only 1/5 of African American kids were at the math benchmark by the 8^th grade.

and where—

Latino youth were projected not to catch up to white students until 2080 and

African American youth were projected not to catch up to white students until 2096.

In light of these data, a goal was formed to turn trainers of teachers into “forensic educators” who would ferret out the sources of the above delays—and then develop and test solutions directed at ending those disparities. It is for this reason that the project was named Strategies To Enrich and Prepare students for Unlocking Potential, or “Step Up Academy.”

It was further hypothesized that there might also be a “multiplier effect” where African American school teachers—trained by the project’s teacher trainers—would themselves learn how to celebrate and share with each other meanings derived from telling each other their family’s positive ethnic cultural meanings and histories (Fisher, 2022). In turn, they would teach their students how to research and share with each other their family ethnic cultural meanings. 

In this way, it was hoped that positive family ethnic meanings might one day displace and diminish the negative meanings associated with race that for years have harmed hundreds of working class African American families and their children in southwest Berkeley, California—and replace those meanings with the positive norms and values of their families’ ethnic histories.

The strategy chosen was to ask the teacher trainers to learn about six broad content areas in which their ethnicity-based training could be directed:

1. Cultural, Social and Scientific Contributions from the African Diaspora
2. Numeracy
3. Literacy
4. The Scientific Method
5. The Engineering Design Process
6. Eight Mathematical Processes

On the last day of this program, parents joined their children and the trainers in a cafeteria space, sitting along two rows of tables in the back. It was clear from the looks on the faces of the parents that many were overwhelmed by the sudden development of new behaviors and identities by their own children, specifically behaviors that were no longer governed by what they had themselves come to know in their own lives—race and racism. 

The parents were told how the project’s emphasis on creating positive African ethnic identities was achieved through repeated exercises and frequent use of rituals. Dr. Fisher explained how weekly field trips enabled their children to connect up what they were learning in class to tangible examples in the real world.

Dr. Fisher (2022) added that the reach of Step Up was by design broad and far-ranging: 

1. One small group of students went up to the front of the room and presented a story about how a girl with polio, Wilma Rudolph, could go on to win a Gold Medal in the 1976 Olympics and three Gold Medals altogether. She was African American.
2. A second small group of students told parents how they achieved “creativity in the arts,” pointing to large posters they drew of children engaged in various activities.
3. Still other small groups of students presented examples of their success with math, language arts, science, liberation, dance, and music.
4. So rather than perpetuate individualism, these groups themselves modeled learning behavior in teams.

IV.

RESULTS

Several themes appeared in the observational data and in statements made by participants:

1)The Sharing of Family Ethnic Cultural Meanings Was Found to Be Liberatory. In this study, the act of sharing one’s family ethnic meanings was found to be liberatory as each learner had the opportunity to tell her or his own story and be supported. Participants reported it was important to have: support of their siblings in their personal and academic success; their own duty as parents to care for their children; and how to treat others they encountered in their lives. By eliciting positive meanings, the storytelling approach moved participants away from relying on pre-existing societal meanings deriving from race categories—and replaced those meanings with ethnic norms and meanings that were positive and unique to each storyteller. 

2)The sharing of family ethnic meanings led participants to feel like they had their own meanings and the voice to express them. The data showed over and over again that each participant was willing to help others in their cohort to become “subjects” of their family meanings and report their own family meanings and “agents” who could act on those meanings in real life (become “agents”). So in creating and sharing their family meanings with others in the cohort, these trainers were not only “self-reliant” but also mutually interdependent on each other for their learning, thus enacting “intersubjectivity.”

3)Storytelling was found particularly effective in cultivating family ethnic meanings. It was storytelling in small groups that seemed ideally suited for surfacing and sharing family ethnic meetings. This gave participants the confidence to learn and discuss the diaspora, numeracy, literacy, the scientific method, engineering design, and eight core principles of mathematics.

A secondary result of the storytelling was that it diminished the harm caused by the pre-existing conditions of racialization. Joy and relief could be seen in the eyes and faces of participants who had gone through training aimed at replacing racialized identities with family ethnic identities. 

4)Several daily rituals further strengthened the participants’ family ethnic meanings:

1. Morning Circle: Every morning and closing of the session, participants would gather in a large circle and briefly report what has been happening in their lives. This was called “Habari gani” (Swahili for asking “What’s the good news?”). Then, with eyes closed they would then perform deep breathing. 
2. Movement Breaks: Throughout the day, participants would be asked to take breaks by standing and swinging the arms, or lifting one leg, then the other, etc.
3. Affirmations and Chants: Participants were often asked to yell in unison, “I am brilliant, you are brilliant, we are brilliant…I am, you are, we are brilliant!”
4. Today in Black History: Each morning, the group would discuss events that had occurred in black history in the U.S. and abroad.
5. Word of the Day: Every day the group would be taught a new word that was positive and added impetus to the importance of having an African American ethnic history.
6. A Mathematical Concept: A new mathematical concept was presented every day. 
7. Positive Family Meanings: To further promote ethnic culture, the pedagogy and curriculum focused on identifying the positive family meanings in each of the participants in relation to the above.
8. Becoming Exhausted: Teams were reminded that they will get exhausted by the end of each weekend, so they should all plan on that.

5)The curriculum was very rigorous and enriching and therefore not perceived by participants to be in remediation or to erase deficit. We offer a number of examples here with the aim of helping others to apply this framework of ethnic identity creation in their own communities. For example:

1. Reading Comprehension. The kids were asked in small groups to string together complex words like…“The bees use their five what?” Answer: “5 senses”
2. Complex Readings: The kids were also questioned after reading a complex reader: “What did we just learn?”
3. Tough Concepts: The kids were asked, “What is ‘a summary’?”
4. Peer-to-Peer Tutoring: There was a wide range of abilities but teachers used strong

students to pull along the weaker students.

5. Field Trips: Each week, the group would take a field trip and the children were asked how they could connect their new thinking with the everyday real world. 
6. Black History on This Day: Examples of important figures presented included writer Margaret Walker (1915-1998) and WNBA star Lisa Leslie.
7. Math: Teachers made sure every child was listening by circulating around the tables

and making sure kids raised their hands to be called on to speak. Question: when

making a pizza, if 6 oz of cheese are required to make one pizza and you have 5

pounds of cheese, how many pizzas can you make if there are 16 ounces in a pound?

8. Spelling: 8^th graders were asked to spell difficult words like “negativity,” “assignment,” “character,” “community,” and “gentrification.”
9. Other activities included journaling, making pencils, and building solar ovens to make S’Mores.
10. Student/Faculty Ratio: The grant for this project subsidized a low student-faculty ratio—19 students to 8 teachers. To approximate this level, public schools could place graduate and undergraduate students in classrooms allow parents to be teacher aides.
11. Marcus Garvey Bookstore: Four students practiced making their reports to parents about the 4^th grade field trip to the Marcus Garvey Bookstore.
12. Six students practiced making reports to parents about their trip to the Tech Museum.
13. The whole group sang “Black People Are Beautiful!”

Notwithstanding earlier cynicism directed towards Euro ethnic identity development reported by Steinberg (1981), Waters (1990) and Alba (1990), we now believe that with the success of African American ethnic identity development, Euro Americans might now be invited to end their racializing practice by researching and cultivating ethnic family meanings of their own. 

V.

DISCUSSION

Several larger patterns, or generalizations, also appeared in the data. These findings potentially offer a new sense of direction for research on race and ethnicity for African Americans.

1)First, it was found that African American students could learn about and celebrate the meanings of their ethnic culture here in the U.S. 

Each participant in this study was found to challenge the others in their small groups to find new life, new air as a person who could break free from her or his race-based oppressions and begin to remake her or himself through an ethnic identity. This is in line with the notion offered by Griffin, William and Bryan (2021) who had suggested that partnerships in a Black community should be built on four foci that better address their needs: democratic collaboration, empowerment, social justice, and individual academic strengths. 

This finding may signal a kind of “paradigm shift” in educational research in that it demonstrates how applied researchers can shift their positionality away from being a “critical researcher” who deconstructs oppressive regimes—to being an “agent of social change” whose family ethnic meanings can then be used to trigger a concrete social transformation (after Freire, 1970).

2)Second, the training and ultimately the presentation to parents demonstrated an inside-out approach to learning, meaning-making and sharing by each child and teacher, rather than a “top-down” and “totalizing” view of what counts as knowledge or meaning.

This workshop also took the breakthrough theoretical work of Mari Ruti and set it in motion. Ruti (2006: p. xv) had written people should conduct themselves “…in active rather than merely passive ways—as creators of meaning rather than as helpless dupes of disciplinary power.” Step Up Academy empowered the teacher trainers to do just that.

Since colonial times people of African descent have maintained this very sense of agency, bonding, and kinship for the greater good of their communities (Hitchner, Schelhas, and Dwivdei (2021). What this study does is showcase a modern incarnation of community building and maintenance by African Americans in the U.S. since their arrival in North America. In effect, there has occurred “among black Americans a heavy sense of nostalgia for a community that has become fragmented through land loss, outmigration, and general assimilation into mainstream American culture” (id at p. 6).  

2)Second, the impact of this programming broadened it’s impact at each stage to reach even more people—demonstrating there was indeed “a multiplier effect” that allowed

the project to touch many more people than originally anticipated.

The inside-out pattern of the project “triggered layers of liberatory growth”—from teacher-trainer, to teacher, and thence to the pupils. This broadened the reach of the project by adding larger numbers of individuals impacted at each step.

The project thus gave rise to a kind of “multiplier effect” where people could treat each other “intersubjectively” and everyone could learn their own family meanings as they helped others in the cohort to do the same. This intersubjective approach to learning proceeded from trainer to teacher and then to each 5^th through 7^th grader. 

So rather than viewing personal growth in individualistic terms, each participant came to rely upon and support each other’s actions in mutually interactive and intersubjective ways, “where each person had voice without taking voice away from others” (Tanaka, 2009). 

3)In an unexpected outcome, the pupils themselves began to cultivate a reinforcing sense of agency in each other. 

On a regular basis, the participants were asked to yell out loud, “Scholars, scholars, yes we are!” In this way, the learners began to think tentatively how they would act to put their dream ideas into effect—and each participant began to cultivate her or his own sense of agency and think about how to act on those dreams by helping others in their cohort to do the same.

Experiencing this form of shared agency—in which each participant created and celebrated her or his own social identities as part of a larger process of helping others to do the same—is the very definition of “mutual immanence,” where each person “comes into being” by listening to and supporting others’ efforts to come into being (e.g. Sean Hand, 1988; Mari Ruti, 2006; Tanaka, 2009, 2018). This concept of “mutual immanence” remains a work-in-progress and so we hope that other writers and thinkers will respond to, assess, and further develop this conceptualization.

Viewed expansively, training of this nature in K-12 schools could prove to be a precursor to a decolonizing relations between privileged American leaders and less privileged leaders from other nations.

CONCLUSION

In place of racializing behavior, Step Up Academy successfully supported the development of ethnic identities by African Americans who “came into being” as vibrant, meaningful selves by supporting others as they also came into being (see e.g. DeCerteau, 1986). Working this way in concert with others, each participant magnified her or his capacity to learn from others.

By applying an ethnicity-based pedagogy for teacher trainers—the teachers they train, and their pupils—this project also demonstrated it is possible for African Americans to eschew the kind of self-oriented, individualistic personal growth so deeply criticized by Ruti and arrive at a new place of intersubjectivity and mutual immanence. 

In closing, we want to note that it was a former university student worker who taught us it is indeed possible for European Americans to (re)discover their ethnic identities. Born in the U.S., this European American student made it a practice of visiting Germany every summer between years in college to stay with distant relatives. Each time, he returned to our highly diverse campus with a sense of joy and a feeling of being grounded. So we owe a debt of gratitude to this student for showing us it may become possible for large numbers of European Americans to re-discover their ethnic family histories by visiting one country in Europe—and potentially become a more skilled participant in the coming world of “mutual immanence.” 

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