“A lot of [my students] think people are obese because people can’t put down a fork . . . [In this unit] we do research about things like genetics . . . [to counter that notion].” In addition to the information about the availability of healthy food in their communities, this challenged the idea that obese and/or overweight people are just lazy: they may be responding to larger forces outside their control.

Kara supported a pedagogy of spatial justice by promoting an examination of food access and equity in students’ lives. Her students built on their urban literacies, including reading their worlds through personal reflection and neighborhood examination. They considered the global forces contributing to their local spaces and asserted agency by counter narrating as they “[fought] for their right to the city” (Soja, 2010, p. 6).

All students who were tardy were escorted by staff to their first period.

“If you treat students more professionally, then they are likely to act more professionally.”“There are many negative connotations as-sociated with the word ‘sweep’ in the media. For example, there are immigration, drug, gang, and homeless sweeps.

. The purpose was to have students share what they were experiencing, including challenges and problems, in their school environment and civic communities.

75English Journal 107.6 (2018): 75–81I began to learn about how systems worked against working communities. I wondered about the US constitutional right of innocent until proven guilty under the court of law.

Select books about Native peoples who are/were residents of your specific state. I

Education is the great equalizer in a democratic society, and if people are not given access to a quality education, then what we are doing is creating an underclass of people who will challenge our very way of life”

BlackGirlsRock

Black girl” that manifests itself in intricate ways. Literature has the power to oppose or uphold stereotypical depictions of Black girls and women.

Black girls are often character-ized as Jezebels, Sapphires, aggressive, or sexualized to the point that they are deprived of having any in-tellectual currency and curiosity. We posit that the acceptance and reproduction of anti- Blackness in in- school (through school discipline disproportion-ality, tracking, etc.) and out- of- school spaces (as ev-idenced in unlawful arrests and mass incarceration of Black communities) have contributed to the hy-perpathologization of Black people

White superiority framework, are misguided, or void the significance of race, racism, and sexism in literature.

lack girls are not seen as human, and they are being erased from class-rooms across the country.

Sandra Bland in 2015.

131Baker-Bell, Stanbrough, and Everett > The Stories They Telldents on cell-phone video, shows the girl sitting at her desk when the officer grabs her and tosses her around like a rag doll. There were many conflicting views about the nature of the incident. For example, Harry Houck, an analyst from CNN—a major force in world news and information delivery—argued: “If that girl got out of the seat when she was told, there’d be no problem. But apparently she had no respect for the school, no respect for her teacher, probably has no respect at home or on the street, and that’s why she acted the way she did” (“She Had No Respect,” 2015). Rather than seeing the girl as the victim, Houck faulted her for the attack, which is troublesome but unsurprising, given mainstream media’s coverage of brutality against Black bodies. Aside from victim blaming, Houck attempted to legitimize the brutal-ity “through a discourse of demonization, stereotypes, and objectification” (Giroux, 2015) in his assumptions about her lack of respect. Others, such as cultural critic and CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, had a drastically different perspective from Houck’s. Hill (2015) emphatically asserted in a tweet following the incident that “NOBODY would be asking what that little girl did to deserve a police assault if she were white.” Hill’s tweet problematizes media perspec-tives such as Houck’s that fail to acknowledge the intersections of race and police brutality, especially when it comes to Black youth. Despite Hill’s important critique, Houck’s perspective could carry more weight with media consumers given his role as an analyst with CNN and Hill’s as a commenter. Moreover, Hill’s critique was put out via Twitter, whereas Houck’s was broadcasted on national television. For us, Houck’s comment captures the critical role that mainstream media play in the “debasement of Black humanity, utter indifference to Black suffering, and the denial of Black people’s right to exist” (Jefferies, 2014). Furthermore, the Spring Valley incident reminds us that schools and classrooms are not exempt from assault against Black bodies. In other words, the same racist brutality toward Black citizens that we see happening on the streets across the United States mirrors the violence

he newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

of healing and critical media literacy are important, especially in the wake of racial violence when mainstream media work to stigmatize, characterize, and marginalize Black youth by projecting them as dangerous Others. In this article, we offer an overview of how mainstream media reinscribe and reinforce whit

381Garcia and Dutro > Electing to Healdoes, however, require teachers and teacher educators committing to heal-ing work within the political.Hope in Darkness: Continuing Work in and with Schools I went to sleep exhausted and anxious . . . woke up sad. Now I’m angry. I have had 3rd and 4th graders tell me they are scared for their lives, for their homes, for their parents. This election result initially made me want to leave. With my anger now, I feel a strengthened resolve to teach. What am I going to do to change things?—Elementary classroom student teacherIn light of the needs we have heard in classrooms and the opportunities we hold as teacher educators in guiding healing and civic dialogue nationwide, we are at a crucial intersection of threading several lines of educational research into pragmatic action.

At the same time, rec-ognizing the potential limits of teachers creating safe environments is also important: The sociopolitical systems beyond our schools press messages on students that cause harm even as teachers try to repair it.

Another approach that speaks to stories of trauma in post-election classrooms centers critical concerns with power and politics as always present in how emotion

I knew that the commonly held view of Black children as nonwriters and nonreaders who were disengaged from learning was false.

was characterized by some of his teachers as a disengaged learner and a “struggling” writer, created and maintained three websites and blogs each day. From his bedroom to his neighborhood streets, he wrote and composed music lyrics, uploaded audio files, and directed music videos

“For me, writing is like breathing. I need it to survive.”

hen I overcorrected. Instead of an all-white lineup, I taught almost all African American literature, which was an improvement, but still problematic. When one student in class tallied up all of the races in class and suggested I teach by the percentages present, I realized I had once again erred. As an Asian American, she wanted to be included. And then there was the graduate who returned and chided me for not preparing her with any “traditional” literature

And yes, many of my students were African American, but none of my students was “disadvantaged.” I started out teaching in a remedial rea