More Than an Ally. Michael L. Boucher Jr.

      ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

      Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

      Published by Rowman & Littlefield

      An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

      4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

      www.rowman.com

      6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

      Copyright © 2020 by Michael L. Boucher Jr.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Boucher, Michael Lee, Jr., author.

      Title: More than an ally : a caring solidarity framework for white teachers of African American students / Michael L. Boucher Jr..

      Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “White teachers in multiracial schools are looking for ways to understand how to make a difference with their students of color in their classrooms. This book will help teachers make that difference”— Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2020004843 (print) | LCCN 2020004844 (ebook) | ISBN 9781475826531 (cloth) | ISBN 9781475826548 (paperback) | ISBN 9781475826555 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: African American youth—Education. | Teachers, White—United States. | Race awareness—United States. | Teacher-student relationships—United States. | Academic achievement—United States.

      Classification: LCC LC2717 .B584 2020 (print) | LCC LC2717 (ebook) | DDC 370.11/5—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004843

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004844

      For Karen, who made everything possible.

      Acknowledgments

      There are so many people who guided me over the years and have made it possible for me to produce this book. First, I want to thank my brilliant, amazing wife, Karen Burgard, for her unwavering support and willingness to read and edit every word that went into, and came out of, this book. It would not have been possible without you, Dollface. Second, I want to thank my hero and mentor, Robert Helfenbein. Rob, you are my model for how professors in the academy should approach research with communities and someone who truly understands the impact of centering those communities in that research. I will be forever grateful for your counsel and encouragement, especially when I needed it the most.

      I want to thank Lynne Boyle-Baise, who offered me the opportunity to study at Indiana University, and Jesse Goodman, Mary McMullen, and Crystal Morton, for their support throughout my dissertation. The questions you raised and the support you provided were invaluable. My excellent teachers at IU and IUPUI provided me with a different approach to discussing the complex issues raised in this work, and I appreciate the perspectives they provided. I want to thank the teachers who participated in the study on which this book is based. Their commitment to working in the community allowed me to see that solidarity comes in stages and in different packages but is crucial to successful teaching across the color line.

      There are so many people in Minneapolis who have made this work become a reality. My life there in classrooms shaped me as an urban educator. Minneapolis will always be at the foundation of my understandings and worldview, and the lived experiences of my students will always be with me. I want to thank my students from Folwell and Sheridan, who taught me so much as a young teacher, and I now have the privilege of seeing them grown up with kids of their own and accomplishing so much. I am proud to call them friends. To our cadre of once-young teachers—Jeff Sommers, Amy Strickland Johnson, and Laura Yost-Manthey—we set out to change the world, and we succeeded.

      My students from South High School in Minneapolis continue to inspire and teach me as doctors, activists, artists, writers, parents, and academics. They taught me the meaning of solidarity and created it with me. Each student I taught at South still holds an important and special place in my heart, but I would like to take a moment to identify a few: Isiah Edwards, who helped me see solidarity when I wasn’t looking, and Sha’Dasha Whitner, who taught me so much about myself as a White teacher and that solidarity is needed at all times. I also want to acknowledge my student and friend Vince Moniz for his poetry, friendship, jokes, and encouragement. Vince, your words bring me home in so many ways.

      I also want to express my deep appreciation for my colleagues at South High School. They laughed with me, encouraged me, and challenged me over the years, especially Doug Berglund, Diane Manley-Bagley, Tiffany Moore, Phyllis Hayes, Melinda Bennett, and Brian Fitzgerald. Thank you all for your belief in me and your abiding commitment to students. I still tell the stories about you in my classes and hold you all as examples of what great teaching can be.

      I am so grateful to my students and colleagues at Texas A&M University–San Antonio, especially Dean Carl Shaperis and the provost, Mike O’Brien, for their support and advice as I finished this project. Their commitment to encouraging and supporting junior scholars and their passionate commitment to the community of San Antonio’s South Side is very exciting. I am so proud to be part of this work. With their continued support, I intend to extend my research and advocacy to the communities in this city.

      I want to thank the editors with whom I have worked at Rowman & Littlefield. Suzanne Canavan, Tim Koerner, and Carlie Wall have encouraged me along the way and did not give up on me, even as the world seemed to do everything in its power to keep me from finishing. Mil gracias to Sara Eiranova for her great design work on the diagram for caring solidarity, to South alum Greta McClain for her work in Minneapolis and for allowing me to use images of her murals on the cover, and to Courtney Perry for allowing the use of her amazing photographs of Greta’s work.

      I want to thank my family, Vicki and Mike Boucher, and my sister, Beth Edgar, and her family. Thank you all for always taking an interest in this work and supporting me throughout its completion. Your questions about the process and the book’s progress these past two years have touched my heart. Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank my son, Joshua Boucher. Joshua, you know that our long talks about supporting communities and being an activist for equality and justice have meant everything to me. They helped shape and mold this work, and you will hear our conversations throughout the pages. You make me so proud every day as you work in solidarity with your community as a journalist. You get it, Buddy. You always have.

      Introduction

      Great Teachers Need a Framework to Talk about Race

      Race has moved from a taboo topic to the center of political and social discourse as people of color have continued the long tradition of advocating for themselves and their children. There was a move into public consciousness that was accelerated after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2013 (Love, 2014), with the use of social media and the Twitter hashtag