Black Writeousness

Reimagining education begins with enlisting pedagogy that centers on students' needs. Multiple researchers have stressed the importance of student-centered teaching, which incorporates students’ cultural backgrounds and prior knowledge and honors and values their input and voices (Anyon, 2014; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Delpit, 1988; Gay, 2000, 2002; Irvine, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2022; Paris & Alim, 2014). A critical element of reimagining education is rethinking how we teach and assess students of historically marginalized cultural backgrounds (Taylor & Nolen, 2022) by how we engage with them and provide spaces of care, comfort, and joy (Muhammad, 2023). The proposed research combines three areas of research centering on the needs of Black and Indigenous students of color (BISOC) to address and redress deeper levels of understanding in the areas of ability (Bradford-Humphrey), literacy (Darian), and language (Joseph) centering Blackness as a system of oppression. Black Writeousness gives us the space to talk about our research and write about ways to reimagine a more inclusive and equitable curriculum to support students who are culturally and linguistically marginalized, as well as students with diverse abilities. The three researchers utilize narrative inquiry, phenomenology, and autoethnography as qualitative methodological choices to encompass stories from the lived experiences of students and educators in education research.