“Community Is Wherever I Am”: A Sista Circle on Othermotherwork in Teacher Education

Abstract

As an exploration of potential support structures for Black women teachers, this study elicits the wisdom of Black women as othermothers who serve in an array of urban instructional settings. Using a Sista Circle Methodology as framed through Black Girl Cartographies and Radical Mothering, we found that through the dual healing processes of (re)membering and (re)fusal, these women became one another's homeplaces. Implications include a need to activate potentials of carework within communities of Black women teachers via unstructured opportunities to gather or to convene in culturally conducive spaces free from institutionally driven norms and expectations.

Black women educators’ lived experiences and ways of knowing (Dillard, 2021) are essential to understanding how they engage their teaching practices as well as their engagement in the academy (Boveda & Allen, 2021). Amidst longstanding harms perpetuated against Black women, girls (Butler, 2018; Morris, 2016), boys (Dumas & Nelson, 2016; Warren & Coles, 2020), and Black communities (Love, 2019) in general, Black women draw upon these life experiences as a way to resist an educational system that, in addition to physical and emotional harm enacted against them, devalues (Austin et al., 2021) their knowledges. The role of place as contributing to the lived experiences of Black women and their sense of community merits attention as Black women in the U.S. context have been educating and creating communities within and outside of schools since the antebellum era. Further, according to Lee (2023), teaching in urban areas for Black women is, “based in activism, and Black women teachers are positioned as freedom fighters and the act of teaching Black children as a form of resistance” (p.7).

Literature on Black women teachers reveals that both informal and formal educational experiences led by Black women impacted their greater communities. These communities of learning range from the development of hush harbors (Muhammad, 2020), pit schools (Goings & O’Connor, 2024) and Sabbath schools (Anderson, 1988; Willis, 2023) to the instruction offered by Mary Church Terrell and Anna Julia Cooper at the well-established M Street High School in Washington, DC (Muhammad et al., 2020) to the pioneering higher education work of Mary McLeod Bethune's Bethune-Cookman University in present-day Daytona Beach, Florida. Importantly, while these notable women had ambitions to (or, indeed, did live and) study abroad, they felt compelled to carry out their work in the same or similar contexts to their upbringings for the purposes of racial uplift (Siddle-Walker, 2000). While contextualizing their choice, and that of Black women like them (Acosta, 2019), to educate in spaces that resemble the communities in which they were raised, it is their potential as healers to also find healing that anchors the present study.

The co-authors who participated in this study identify as Black women and teach in various capacities across urban spaces. Their roles range from chief people officer in a Harlem-based charter network, to a bilingual special education preschool teacher in Roselle Park, New Jersey. The remaining co-authors work at the university level—one instructing at a community college in Kansas City, Missouri, and two a research institution in Buffalo, NY. Those at SUNY Buffalo referenced their K-12 teaching careers in the places of their upbringings—both in Kansas City, Missouri and Jersey City, New Jersey. In each of these settings, the participants noted minimal representation or the absence of Black instructors and a high need on behalf of learners for the type of holistic approaches to teaching upon which they prided themselves.

According to Milner et al. (2015), the present roles wherein the participants take up their craft would be considered urban in distinct ways. While neither Roselle Park nor Kansas City meet the population threshold of urban intensive, the schools where the participants teach are indeed urban. Kansas City as an urban emergent municipality, boasts a “New Americans” page on its official website that offers information in 13 languages including Hindi, Spanish, Kiswahili, and Karen (an inclusive label for various Tibetan language groups) (Kansas City, n.d). Despite having a population a mere percentage of Kansas City's size, Roselle Park also reflects immense ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity (Milner, 2012a). With 63% of the population being non-white, ¹ the trend in this urban characteristic New Jersey borough continues upward in that the foreign-born population rose more than four percent between 2022 and 2023 placing it at 37.8%—far above that of the national average at 13.8% (Data USA, n.d.).

As for Harlem and Jersey City, both areas in the sister states of New York and New Jersey, respectively, have large Black and immigrant populations—even as Harlem is a neighborhood within the larger urban-intensive city of New York (Milner et al., 2015) famously known for its historic and present role in Black culture, resistance, and intellectualism. Harlem's population is only half that of Jersey City, but the density of it far surpasses its neighbor as it measures only 1.5 square miles. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River, its New Jersey counterpart is nearly 15 square miles. The schools in which two of the five participants found themselves working reflected the greater populations of Harlem and Jersey City in terms of diversity and resource deprivation, which, regardless of population threshold, serve to locate them as urban intensive particularly with their Title I statuses (Milner et al., 2015). Still, we further engage a conceptualization of urban across these contexts as both relating to a locale with particular characteristics while also conveying what particular groups navigate by virtue of living and working in these spaces. Finally, we join Wynter-Hoyte and Smith (2020) in rejecting deficit notions of what urban spaces produce and center in this work the “cultural wealth and richness” that these spaces often engender (p. 343).

The participants who not only work in urban settings but who were also raised in similar communities (see Table 1) represent the laborious effort that Black and Latinx women conduct from their particular axes of oppression. This labor as it pertains to education can be understood as a form of “motherwork” (Collins, 1995; Gilkes, 1994; Watson, 2020) highlighting the unique organization and commitment these women hold not only within their homes but in their communities while existing at the intersection of Blackness and womanhood. The othermotherwork of Black women educators is a central component of their teaching practice. We use the term othermother (Collins, 1995) to highlight the non-biological relationship of Black women who assist in raising Black children within a hostile and anti-Black U.S. society. Black women, who are among the lowest paid professionals in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023), also provide for their communities via teaching in urban schools (characterized by how under-resourced they are). This presents a worthwhile line of inquiry which the present study addresses.

Since Black women educators carry, build, and establish community for so many, this study asks, how is community experienced among Black othermothers? Additionally, what potential does the community among othermothers suggest relative to the preparation of Black women teachers? Our research question(s) are: What do othermothers (re)member about their own schooling and education? What can (re)membering and storytelling reveal about the potential care communities available to Black women teachers? This study investigates how a group of othermothers reflected on their K-12 schooling experiences as students and the impact those experiences have on their teaching and othermothering in each of the communities in which they educate.

Literature Review

Care for the Caregivers

Black women educators recognize the importance of community in schools and enact an ethics of care that they, too, deserve in service of urban schooling. An ethics of care is present when Black women not only tell their own stories but do so with the freedom to feel and express emotion without those expressions being positioned as discrediting their knowledge claims (Collective, 1983; Collins, 1989). As a tenet of Black feminist thought, the ethics of care centers on self-definition and lived experiences but also dialogue and personal accountability (Collins, 2000), signaling that through validating one another's truths, Black women educators continue to “reclaim space and forge communities” (Butler, 2018, p. 41) across space and time. The care work in which Black women educators engage is central to their motherwork (Collins, 1989), or individual and collective work Black women do on behalf of their children. This labor extends also to children related by community rather than by blood. We use the term othermother (Collins, 1995) in recognition that mothering is neither gendered (Oyěwùmí, 2016) nor limited to biological children (Diop, 1989; Whitney, 2016) within Afrocentric frameworks and communities. We recognize that through othermotherwork and related knowledges, Black women sustain community for their students and themselves (Watson & Baxley, 2021). We further understand that, because school is often a space of violence for Black children (Goff et al., 2014; Warren & Coles, 2020), Black women's othermotherwork serves to protect Black students and challenge the U.S. educational system that seeks to harm them (Watson & Baxley, 2021). What we understand less is the ways in which these communities of care can be leveraged for the benefit of the othermothers often laboring on behalf of the community.

Setting the Scene for Healing

While Black women teachers are overrepresented in urban schools (Ingersoll et al., 2019; McKinney de Royston, 2020), less scholarly attention than is warranted has been given to how to support their well-being as they carry out this work. In fact, Black and African-descended women recognize that their othermotherwork is constantly met with resistance as the system their children learn in works against their ways of knowing rendering such wisdom underutilized or ignored in teaching and teacher education (Austin et al., 2021; Boveda & Allen, 2021; McKinney de Royston et al., 2020; Muhammad et al., 2020). Though their knowledge and expertise are often ignored, we must recognize that Black women provide inroads towards social transformation and liberation (Butler, 2018). That is, in the face of systemic as well as interpersonal trials, collective care through the sharing of their stories (Toliver, 2021) animates Black women's activism.

Green (2023) explored the personal and professional experiences of eight millennial in-service Black women educators based through affinity groups in Baltimore City and Washington, DC, to find that humanization, trust and identity, and self-worth were among the most important factors that increased their morale. As such, it is through sharing ideas, practices, resources, and policies to address the (mis)treatment of Black and all children, that Black women's educational advocacy becomes an act of resistance against a system that disregards and disdains Black bodies (Watson & Baxley, 2021). Still, the potential of turning these efforts inwards as a means of preserving the well-being of Black women teachers through reflective and reflexive storytelling has been underexplored. Acts of resistance for learners and communities stem from Black women educators’ (re)membering of themselves and their ways of being. In fact, according to Dillard, when Black women teachers (re)member, they draw from the unseen to thrive (2021) in the face of multiple oppressions. The present study seeks to understand the environments and circumstances necessary for Black women teachers to draw unto themselves from the benefits of community they regularly bestow upon others.

The knowledges of Black women educators are expansive and diverge with perceptions of their contributions as superheroes, bodyguards, or mules for their tendency to be overworked and seen as stern disciplinarians (Acosta, 2019; Porcher & Austin, 2021). For these educators, teaching is a covenant with their ancestors who have a legacy of resistance (Dillard, 2021). Thus, the recognition of othermotherwork compels educational systems that oppress Black women educators (and their children) to reckon with the excess labor on behalf of these educators while managing to successfully instruct amidst navigating hostile spaces (Butler, 2018). It prioritizes Black women educators’ work to center Black families (Latunde & Clark-Louque, 2016) and communities (Latunde & Woods, 2022), to the benefit of, and towards improvement, advancement, and liberation for all teachers and students. In that care communities are central to the work of Black women educators particularly in urban settings, this study seeks to extend the expertise that Black othermothers embody by the potential of collectively unearthing innovative teacher preparation designs and insights that center Black women teachers as worthy of the care they so often provide.

Theoretical Framework

We ground this work in BCG, or Black Girl Cartographies (Butler, 2018), in recognition that the interlocking identities of Black girls including their classed, gendered, and racialized lived experiences are connected to geospatial locations inclusive of urban classrooms. BCG also centers the reality that the research questions of Black women educational researchers often places them in direct conversation with their younger selves (Toliver et al., 2024). BGC requires that we listen to Black girls, in this case ourselves, to understand how our acceptance or rejection within educational spaces informed our practices as girls, but also now, as adult educators. Our goal in unearthing the wisdom that Black othermothers offer to teacher education requires such an acknowledgement from a place of strength, but also from the central goal of collective healing (Baker-Bell, 2017) as we theorize.

Furthermore, we frame this study in acknowledgement that those who mother collective children (Watson, 2020) often enact their othermotherwork through radical mothering (Williams, 2019) as co-liberatory work. This orientation fundamentally establishes the interdependent nature of Black mothering as an overt rejection of white patriarchal violence particularly across urban settings (Gumbs, 2010). In recognizing that (Milner 2012a) describes the dispossessions within urban intensive settings, or those with schools “concentrated in large, metropolitan cities across the United States,” as under-resourced, we expand the focus to the spaces Black girls who later become educators traverse including urban intensive, emergent and characteristic spaces, where related harms occur but are less often scrutinized (p. 560). That is, recognizable dispossessions in urban intensive spaces may include the absence of physical space via gentrification, material resources like up-to-date curricular texts and access to qualified teachers; urban emergent and characteristic spaces may find dispossessions of community, belonging and/or narratives. As such, we engage these frameworks recognizing that the ways in which these harms are experienced may be complicated and multidimensional placing invisibilized demands on we who engage in othermotherwork. We view this work as an admission of the risk that we, as Black women, and all Black othermothers bear in promoting an anticapitalist freedom through valuing our care-work as legitimate labor from our youth through our adulthoods.

These frameworks allow us to center our girlhood selves and partake in the radical mothering we enact/ed and need/ed while restructuring our relationship to the geopolitical space of schools. The navigational prowess to teach and learn despite constant anti-Black opposition, and to study that process within the rich history of Black pedagogies is fugitive (Givens, 2021) in nature and its manifestations reflect various constraints and allowances. In reflecting upon our relationship to schooling and school spaces over time, the co-authors enacted a justice-centered care (Butler, 2018) that both wove us into long genealogies of resistance as well as a futurity of unbroken African(ized) optimism (Diop, 1989). Like Harriet Tubman whose liberatory visions sustained her efforts to care for her community again and again in the face of peril, and Fannie Lou Hamer who survived violence and sterilization only to rear many children with her love and wisdom, this work reveals the necessary courage of the othermothering of Black women, its emancipatory power while weaving Black othermothers back into the collective community it benefits.

Methods

This qualitative work combined collaborative narrative inquiry (Bhattacharya, 2017) and sista circle methodologies (Johnson, 2015) to elicit the stories of Black women pedagogues as both a healing (Dillard, 2021) and generative process of recounting their wisdom. For the purposes of understanding culturally-based orientations and life experiences among Black women educators, this sista circle is uniquely appropriate as exchanges within and among Black women are regularly negatively misinterpreted from without (Acosta, 2019; Dingus, 2008; Morris, 2016). Additionally, Johnson (2015) explains the development of sista circles as “an example of how researchers could support their participants in culturally relevant ways” and serves as “simultaneously a qualitative research methodology and support group” which aligns with the non-extractive goals of this study (p. 43). Johnson further notes that

[T]hree of the distinguishing features of sista circles are […]: (1) communication dynamics (2) centrality of empowerment and (3) researcher as participant. These features reveal the ways in which sista circles are different from focus groups or group interviews. (2015, p. 46)

With regard to informing the field of urban teacher education, this methodology specifically responds to the call of Gabbadon and Brooks (2025) to alleviate the loneliness Black women teachers face in finding mentoring or support particularly when it calls for developing networks beyond their own schools or districts (Green, 2023). While narrative inquiry elevates the persistent human practice of storytelling to derive meaning from linguistic and other traits of participants (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015), sista circles further humanize this approach by placing Black women in relation with each other to edify the participants rather than simply report on their knowledges.

Researcher Positionality

The remainder of this work details our experiences as Black girls across urban contexts while also speaking to our present-day roles as educators. To further contextualize how we conceived of, carried out and analyzed this study, we offer insights into our roles beyond research recognizing that those who engage this work are better-equipped to do so with the knowledge of how our worldviews and lived experiences shaped this presentation of these data.

I (Tasha) am a mother, wife, daughter, niece, sister, cousin, godmother, auntie and friend. As a teacher educator at a research intensive university, I am constantly reminded of the informal roles in which my guidance can do the most good–when it is unfettered by institutional rigidities. As a Black woman, each day allows me to delve more deeply into unnamed cultural resources that replenish my spirit and remind me where and how to show up in my various roles. My carework is important to me, and also includes me, and I endeavor to work through modeling the ways in which self and communal care do not contradict, but rather reinforce one another.

I (Dawnavyn) am a daughter, granddaughter, sister, auntie, godmother, cousin, niece, and friend. I come from a family that serves their communities through teaching, preaching, feeding, and listening. As a Black girl, woman, educator, reader, and researcher, I have discovered the ways I must remember myself in order to navigate academic spaces that often disregard my ways of knowing as valid. I am surrounded by Black women who lift me up and call me in. My curiosity for possibilities and the guidance of my ancestors fuel me to fight to protect myself, my history, and my people.

I (Teresa) am a creative, an HBCU graduate, a former corporate employee, and a perpetual student. As an editor and theatre director, I’m a leader-collaborator who offers guidance but leaves room for inquiry and discovery. As someone who thrived in traditional school settings but who does not have formal teacher training, these simultaneous truths allow me to bring an optimism to my classes and empathy for students trying something new without training wheels. As faculty at a community college, I teach my students composition and to refute, debunk, and dismantle underlying, implicit perceptions about their own abilities and positionalities. The work of helping people say what they mean is my work to do; the community college classroom happens to be one of the places this work occurs.

Rooted in love and legacy, I (Rosangela) stand as a proud AfroLatina shaped by the richness of culture, language, and community. I am a mother, wife, daughter, sister, tía, cousin, madrina, professor, the founder of FLOR (Fuertes Latinas Orgullosas de sus Raíces), and a lifelong amiga. Since 2005, I have served as an educator with unwavering commitment to multilingual learners, students with unique needs including ESL (English as a Second Language) students, while mentoring novice educators, acting as a cultural coach, bridging gaps in communication and fostering inclusive, affirming environments in public schools.

I (Modiegi) am a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, mentor, and teacher. As a Black South African woman, it is never lost on me how deeply rooted identity, community, and responsibility are intertwined. I hold firmly to the belief that you are your brother's and sister's keeper—a value that guides both my personal and professional life. And wherever you are, you are already in relationship, already part of a community. I believe that our sense of community radiates boldly when people feel they belong and have the space to create, shift, and reimagine what that community needs to be. My carework also includes protecting space for self-reflection—to learn self so that I and others can show up in community without diminishing who we are.

Participants

Consistent with the sista circle methodology, through purposive (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) sampling, Tasha, as both researcher and participant, determined potential participants through existing networks (Johnson, 2015) of African-descended women who have been teaching in formal institutions for a minimum of five years, who participate in othermothering. In honoring their labor, the final inclusion criteria reflected potential participants for whom the effort of this study would not overburden their schedules (see Table 1). For the purposes of this study, othermothering includes (1) the seeking out and acquisition of resources amidst harsh and under-resourced conditions (Austin, 2024), (2) honoring the fallen and charting hopeful paths for the future at great personal risk to themselves (Williams, 2019), (3) resisting participation in capitalist reproduction of future generations who serve only as laborers rather than as fully humanized individuals (Gumbs, 2010) and (4) insisting on freedom with in addition to freedom from (negative freedoms) and freedom to (positive freedoms) as co-sustained networks of liberation (Williams, 2019).

Formal email invitations were shared with reflective questions from Dawnavyn to the additional three participants and Tasha (see Figure 1) whose relationships to Tasha are noted in the figure provided. Additionally, invitations featured the expectation that Tasha and Dawnavyn commit to writing up the work as it most benefited their professional roles, while honoring the labor of all the authors through their typed reflection responses, sista circle participation and reviewing of the manuscript at various stages for corrections and input. Because of our commitment to research as a healing process, Tasha and Dawnavyn found through reflective discussions and memoing, that Dawnavyn not only fit the study criteria, but would benefit from engaging in the process, and thus she became fifth and final participant (N = 5) by participating in both phases of data collection in the study.

Data Collection

Reflective questions that participants answered via email in addition to a 95 min sista circle conducted via Zoom constituted the data that were analyzed in this study. This two-part design was intentionally drawn from the BCG emphasis upon placing Black women researchers in direct dialogue with their girlhood selves. As such the reflective questions featured questions calling for recollection of how we navigated our early girlhood experiences with urban schooling. The reflective responses totaled 25 single-spaced typewritten pages with each participant's responses ranging from three to six pages apiece. In addition, the participants were asked to share a go-to song that they would call their “favorite song of all time, the song [they] listen to to get [them] hype, or a song that comforts [them]” (email communication from Dawnavyn). This prompt was offered towards the goal of inviting the multimodal livingness (Griffin & Turner, 2021) of the participants’ girlhood memories into a digital kitchen table (Haddix et al., 2016) wherein we as Black women could “just be” (Baker-Bell, 2017; Dillard, 2021; Stovall & Mosely, 2022) in our full authenticity. Because these songs were played during the sista circle, they were subsequently incorporated within the collective reflection that was later transcribed as a part of the data set. The third and central data source was the sista circle convening which was conducted via Zoom and lasted for an hour and thirty-five minutes which, when transcribed, totaled 27 single-spaced type-written pages.

Of note, the sista circle methodology calls for centering the communication dynamics of Black women as well as recreating an atmosphere of comfort. Thus, we purposefully designed a virtual convening to respond to the schedules of the participants while creating a sense of togetherness with the playlist that was collectively constructed. The songs in each collaborator's reflection within the collective space as an entreé into a sense of intimacy despite distance, while reflecting our distinct personalities. These co-constructed design choices facilitated the sense of community among the participants which was evident in their exchanges during the sista circle convening. In reflecting on the music in particular, Modiegi began, “from the Holy Spirit to Bad Bunny” and Tasha finished “We got layers!”

Analysis

Our interest in the descriptive reflections of the participants informed our decision to inductively (Hatch, 2002) code the 25 pages of narrative reflections independently (between Tasha and Dawnavyn), then to compare coding and resolve inconsistencies. We anchored this coding pass in the first research question by identifying how place impacted forms of dispossession as experienced in our girlhoods. In discussion, Tasha and Dawnavyn collapsed and refined our initial 16 codes into the 14 found in Appendix A in the supplementary materials. In our second pass we deductively applied our codebook to the 27 page sista circle transcript which was hand transcribed after the initial Zoom transcription failed to capture (Martin & Wright, 2022) the Black ratifications (Rickford & Rickford, 2000) or verbal forms of support, salient in the crosstalk of the participants also captured in the chat, e.g., “That's a vibe!,” “Yasss!” “Feelin it!” “Come on, DJ!”

Through a process of counting and clustering (Miles & Huberman, 1994), the codes which appeared most between the narrative analysis and that of the sista circle were then analyzed thematically for the processes they represented regarding (re)membering through description and healing in real-time—the central foci of the study. Over the course of various analysis meetings between Tasha and Dawnavyn, all inconsistencies in coding were resolved then subsequently confirmed asynchronously via email by Teresa, Rosangela and Modiegi. All co-authors reviewed the themes and manuscript drafts to ensure agreement on the presentation of findings.

Findings

To answer the research question, “What do othermothers (re)member about their own schooling and education?” We found that the act of (re)membering allowed the co-authors to shift interpretations of their girlhood selves in their present-day narratives as worthy of care amidst enacting collective responsibility. This was true even when recollections centered on various types of mistreatment and a general sense of feeling unprotected. To answer the research question, “What can (re)membering and storytelling reveal about the potential care communities available to Black women teachers?” We found that, provided a favorable context, the responsibility and ability of othermothering can be lateral and available within peer groups of Black women who offer varied experience and expertises to guide and affirm one another. We subsumed these findings under the thematic titles, (Re)membering to (Re)fuse, Community as an Active Choice and Homage and the Mothering of othermothers.

(Re)membering to (Re)fuse

In our narrative responses, the five co-authors enacted (re)fusal, which we define as untethering ourselves from the weight of racialized girlhood rejections and strife to reconstitute our present roles and responsibilities in the lives of learners. The participants also noted beauty and insight on sources of strength amidst the hardships they faced in their youth. In this way, the theme of (re)fusing to sit in the rejection of anti-Black spaces and instead fusing our identities to places, relationships and endeavors that prioritize the value of our growth through healing, is outlined below.

Modiegi reflected on the communities to which she did and did not belong in conjuring up the stark distinctions between the ways her upbringing during apartheid in Mamelodi, South Africa delineated the spaces of her youth.

I was born in South Africa and raised in the township of Mamelodi. I grew up during the time of apartheid, however, I was too young to understand what was happening around me. As a child I just knew there were two worlds I would see as I traveled to school. I didn’t know when and where the new world started but I knew when I saw it. As a child, I remember seeing vivid colors of green grass, beautiful houses and cars but when I came home, it didn’t look like that. It didn’t look beautiful, it was not shiny, but it was home. To this day, after immigrating to the United States in 1992–1993, South Africa is still home.

In the narrative reflection, Modiegi recalled her girlhood memories and how the antiBlack political landscape impacted her childhood in Mamelodi, South Africa. While too young to understand how the Group Areas Act of 1950 officially segregated what came to be known as Mamelodi as only for “(b)lacks,” young Modiegi certainly felt what it meant in terms of access to resources like green spaces and fair housing (Ralinala, 2002). This is evident in how she identifies her “home” as on the less “beautiful” or “shiny” side of town. Interestingly, despite having lived in the U.S. for 30 years, Modiegi does not identify the U.S. as her “home.” Still, this active election to name the resource-deprived “world” of Modiegi's youth as “home” speaks to prioritization of something beyond material goods as constitutive of community.

She further reflects on the clash between cultural and familial belonging through linguistic discrimination once faced within the U.S. school system. Notably, as the reflective prompts only called for locating where the participants called “home” and where they presently worked, the exact location of where Modiegi experienced this discrimination was not named. Upon arrival in the U.S., she was placed in English as a Second Language class without any parental notification.

I remember my father asking them, “ How did you arrive to this conclusion?” I remember him asking, “You do know my kids grew up speaking English, right?” Again, at the time, I did not know what it all meant, but now I understand. The school took a look at my name, what country I was coming from and made the assumption that I knew nothing.

The care work of Modiegi's father protected her and her siblings alike from antiBlack racism within her setting as newly arrived (im)migrants during childhood. The need for said advocacy, however, further delineated for her where and with whom she should have a sense of belonging and later come to define her community.

For Tasha, the distinction between proximity and community was central to her recollection of her girlhood. Despite naming Jersey City as her “home,” she outlined various people and locations ranging from Irvington to Ocean Township, New Jersey, with which she derives a sense of belonging to contrast it with where she did not feel such connection.

My community was not with the school [original emphasis], but rather with other working class multiethnic friends, and within my church during this time. I was in sports and organizations, and only received recognition as the face of the school (giving speeches in Trenton or D.C.) but not in the school proper.

Here, Tasha indicates that, unlike her feelings toward her friend group, sports teams, organizations and religious affiliation, she did not feel a part of the various school communities that she was the “face of.” Interestingly, this is juxtaposed with the fact that she gave speeches in the state and national capitals on behalf of her urban intensive and urban characteristic school settings across New Jersey. Jersey City features prominently in her reflections as it is the site of the religious and social connections which she highlights. This suggests that, for Tasha, being tokenized within school spaces did not amount to feeling recognized or connected in ways that connote community.

Dawnavyn, like Tasha, did not feel connected at school during her youth. As did Modiegi, she also noted the ways her racialization as a Black child impacted her ability to make sense of where and among whom she belonged.

In 5th grade we moved to a small suburb outside of Kansas City. I had never been in a classroom where there were only 2 other kids that looked like me. I mean, I had never been surrounded by so many white kids. I hated middle school- that was a time when I wasn’t Black enough for the Black kids and struggled with my identity and who I was. I actually think all of the Black kids might have been struggling with their identity at that time.

The rupture between who could identify with Dawnavyn is amplified by location as much as relation reflecting a lack of belonging. This is salient in her relating to her moving to a “small suburb” with the recognition that her rejection from both Black and white groups might have been a result of not just who, but where she was. Notably, while Tasha and Dawnavyn moved frequently during childhood, they both cited their urban settings as “home” as opposed to the suburban spaces where they later moved as young girls.

Like Dawnavyn, Teresa highlighted having moved frequently in her youth. While previous reflections draw from an authorial insight on navigating different spaces and developing a lens towards what constitutes connection or rejection, Teresa's narrative reflected a sense of belonging based on intellectual similarities within a policy-mandated racially integrated school in Jersey City, New Jersey.

My family moved around a lot when I was growing up, so I was in numerous communities—whether I belonged to them or not is a different matter. I’ve lived in predominantly brown and Spanish speaking/bi or multilingual communities. [My high school] was only slightly more diverse than my middle school, still majority white, but I recall other ethnicities (very few were Black like me). I felt connected to these educators and this school because we were all just nerds; the teachers and the students seemed to like school as much as I did.

Within a context that was more diverse but still predominantly white, Teresa cultivated a sense of community based primarily on interest and disposition at the school level as it stood apart from the larger urban context. It is important to note the agency within her determining that her community would be more than “skin” deep. Teresa's reflection draws attention to age and race as having come secondary within the school space in terms of potential social connections wherein achievement was prioritized.

Finally, Rosangela drew on how she herself was mothered to make sense of her own belongingness and her responsibility to children as an educator. She first recalls how her mother was able to pass in racially exclusive areas in ways that benefited racially minoritized groups. She wrote, “I grew up in Hoboken New Jersey in the 80s. A primarily Italian community, where I saw my mother (a light skinned/white Puerto Rican) be the liaison between minorities and the Italians.” These local race relations highlight a distinction among how Italians are construed within Northeastern New Jersey (even as it was rapidly taking on an influx of Puerto Ricans and Latinx immigrants in at the time), as racially white, as opposed to “other minorities” that she remembers from her youth—location, again, featuring prominently in the Rosangela's sense of belonging.

She continues by revealing the limitations of her mother's ability to racially pass as a protective measure for her regarding her own experiences in school.

At one point a teacher observed me in the pre-K class and suggested I be placed in the kindergarten bilingual class instead. Once there, I experienced being ignored, being told to stop crying, and being forced to hold a stick and point to letters while not even knowing the letters I was pointing to. I felt, at 5 years old, like I wasn't enough. I had severe separation anxiety and cried everyday for a month. I [later] began my educational career in a bilingual setting.

While within the larger context of Hoboken, NJ, Rosangela witnessed her mother's ability to navigate distinct racialized communities, but this agency was halted at the school door. As an AfroLatina, Rosangela was surveilled and removed from the general education context where she was “ignored” and made to feel that “at five years old” she should not cry and was not “enough.” In reflecting, she related the pain of her youth with her present-day work as a bilingual special education teacher.

The complex navigational strategies the co-authors recalled depict strategic and agentive associations with places, people and multigenerational constructions of self- identity. Ruptures in location spurned a critical lens towards un/belonging for Rosangela, Modiegi and Dawnavyn, whereas academic and extracurricular interests anchored relationships for Tasha and Teresa. AntiBlack racism and raciolinguistic discrimination through the apparatus of schooling highlighted the othermotherwork passed down to Modiegi and Rosangela from their parents. The weight of (re)creating a place to belong clarifies the ways in which being in schools was not tantamount to feeling connected to them. This suggests that approximating to resources by changing schools, towns or even moving across the world does not determine where a sense of community was established, nor how it endured personally or professionally.

Community as an Active Choice

The narrative responses also revealed the clarity and decisiveness employed when these present- day othermothers took on the role of caretaking for children around them. From the South African to the U.S.-based context, Modiegi relays her inheritance of othermothering from observing elders in her family and the collective benefit of care work for the community.

On both my parents’ side of the families, I grew up watching our families take care of each other. They took care of those around them, even those who were not family. The idea of community has been seared into my brain from an early age. You took care of those around you, it was not just about you, it was about the greater community, when one wins, we all win, when one eats, we all eat! In fact, my father taught not just my sister and I how to play tennis, he taught all the kids in the neighborhood. My father viewed the kids on our street in the same manner he viewed his own kids.The same way he expected his own children to do their homework before playing, he also expected the same of the children in the neighborhood.

This reflection centers on the expectation of care in that beyond the “nuclear” roles of mother and father, ensuring the well-being of those around her was “about the greater community.” Her selection of Bad Bunny's Titi Me Preguntó alludes to the interest of “aunties” and the like in the well-being of children within the family. Modiegi specifically highlights how her father taught the children of the community tennis, which echoes Tasha's sentiment that community can be found in sports. She goes on to outline how this legacy of caring guides her professional work today.

All of these experiences have made such an imprint in how I live my life now. Community is wherever I am. In every space I am in I look for community among Black women, community among those who are from marginalized groups of people, and ultimately I created a company that specifically specializes in creating space for women to lead, thrive, and for women to fully own their power!

The enduring impact of community as a value system drove Modiegi to, in addition to her work within a charter network, found a company that uplifts and encourages minoritized women to lead. Tasha, too, is expansive in her considerations of othermotherwork as she reflects on how she envelops students, and the children of her siblings within her scope of responsibility.

I consider the children in my care more broadly and include nieces, nephews and the youth I’ve taught in my K-12 time. I would say that collaborating with willing partners (teachers of other subjects, administration, coaches, siblings and sometimes university colleagues) along with my spiritual beliefs and resources, helped me to support these children.

Rather than connecting her decision to care for children to elders in her family, she highlights those who facilitate the care work she enacts, including “willing partners” like “teachers of other subjects, administration, coaches.” In keeping with her musical selection, Celia Cruz's Carnaval, Tasha also identifies how her “spiritual beliefs and resources” enable her to support young people. The song chides no hay nadie sólo, siempre hay alguien—Dios está con él or “no one is alone, there is always somebody—God is with them!”

The ability to maneuver around policies which are not responsive to the needs of students is one way that Teresa reveals her choice to support young people in her care. She reflects:

A student has contacted me asking for permission to bring a child to class, or they’ve just shown up to class with a child in tow. Every time, the child has been quiet and occupied for the duration of the class period. More often than not, these were students in evening classes who’d lost childcare at the last minute. I would rather they attend class, so I look the other way.

Teresa makes light of the risk inherent in looking “the other way” so that the students at the institution where she instructs might thrive. As an adjunct at an urban intensive community college, she revealed during the sista circle, that she often finds freedom in being able to refuse additional responsibility that does not align with her strategic decision to teach in a locale where immigrant and working-class students study. Still, she uses her contingent status to the benefit of those students even at her own professional risk.

The decision to care for others is driven by a belief that it is right, that there will always be a means to do so, and that rules cannot obstruct what should be done to carry out othermotherwork. Being apprenticed into care work through ungendered mothering impacted Modiegi's understanding of her responsibility in creating community, and both Tasha and Teresa made the collective concern for young people their own with minimal or no resources at all. In this way, while othermothering is expensive, the cost of community is always within the capacity of those who are committed to carrying it out.

Homage and the Mothering of Othermothers

An unexpected revelation that transpired during the sista circle was that of real-time mothering. The co-authors shared space, music and laughter while reflecting on the relationship between community and their school experiences, when spontaneous mothering occurred time and again.

Several affirmations around the value of a PhD and the cost of it were discussed during the sista circle resulting in participants encouraging those pursuing the degree (and Tasha who earned one) while also rejecting it as a unique measure of impact of intellect. Although they were all just meeting her, Rosangela, Modiegi and Teresa unanimously encouraged Dawnavyn and told her they were with her on the journey, calling her “awesome” for her endeavor, to which she responded, “Yes! I need all my sistas with me!” referencing the song We Are Family by Sister Sledge. Nevertheless, the encouragement to see beyond the degree as a measure of accomplishment, was a constant drumbeat during the sista circle. Rosangela shared

I'm like, “No, I'll leave that unless somebody else gonna pay for it.” But I'll still do the work—like I'm not afraid of the work. So, I still run like little focus groups to help me better understand my students, right? To better understand my families – and it's actually really fun, because […] I get to ask them those real questions …

Rosangela distinguishes between the scientific endeavor of understanding her teaching craft, and the costly undertaking of earning a PhD. She assures the women that she is “not afraid of the work” and that “it's actually really fun” amidst rejecting the need to achieve the degree to investigate teaching and learning. Teresa shared a similar stance on how costly a PhD is and knowing her worth outside of institutionally granted degrees. She explained, “I took a very Good Will Hunting approach right? And shout out to my Uncle Lenny– if it's in the library I can figure it out”; the consistent referencing of elders, famous, biological or otherwise, carrying the conversation forward in its affirmative tone.

Amidst the crosstalk, Modiegi chimed in with her grappling around collecting an additional degree, while reminding herself to be accountable with both her words and actions.

I myself went through that phase [of] should [I] also get myself a doctorate? But, I was basing what success meant based on what, quote unquote society wanted and what society wanted was really anchored in the space of what whiteness defines as success. So I feel like, “Am I gonna get more validation? Do I feel more worthy now?” But really and truly, there's more than one way to skin a cat and like, how am I living that out? Not just like, in my words, but with my kids at school [and] in the household as well.

Within the context of the validation and encouragement the sista circle provided, Modiegi challenged herself to extend the racialized (mis)understanding that intellectual growth and instructional impact comes from degrees, to her own household and children. She took the opportunity to place such a belief outside of the community from which she drew strength and sense of self, locating it within the “whiteness” of “society” instead.

As the co-authors shared space, they actively supported one another's endeavors even as they differed from each other—in essence, othermothering themselves and one another in real time. Their pursuit of uplift remained intact, and with or without continued degree acquisition, they engaged in citation practices that revealed a recognition that their care work drew from the ways they themselves were othermothered. The women, through collectively engaging in the (re)membering process, became one another's community. As they affirmed each other in their divergent pathways, the act of othermothering revealed itself to not only overflow the boundaries of biological belonging, but to be timeless in its enactment.

Discussion

The co-authors of this study engaged in (re)membering their schooling and education both through narrative reflections as well as collectively through the sista circle experience. As othermothers, they (re)member being in but not of various communities as girls, as they elevated their sense of agency while (re)fusing the harsh rejection of those spaces. Their ability to connect with one another and create a sense of belonging (Watson & Baxley, 2021) for their girlhood selves in the present, suggests an ethics of care (Butler, 2018; Black Latinas Know Collective, 2019) already familiar to them individually—yet activated through the collective. This (re)membering revealed that the co-authors had experienced a variety of traumas in their schooling ranging from linguistic pushout (Austin, 2022) and native speakerism, to xenophobia, sexism in the form of gendered (Austin, 2024; Haddix, 2012; hooks, 2014; Morris, 2016) silencing, and constant dis and misplacement, driving them to establish connections time and again outside of school. This suggests that in the pursuit of Black women teachers receiving mentoring, they do not need to physically be together to face down a sense of alienation and loneliness (Acosta, 2019).

What Black othermothers (re)member about schooling and education is how to make a place for themselves. Placemaking is an ancestral knowledge (Dillard, 2021) that has played out among African peoples and their descendants as they recreate Africa (Gilroy, 1993; Hall, 1999) wherever they find themselves. The participants in this work discussed how, in their youth, drawing from sports and intellectual like-mindedness to extended family gave them a sense of belonging. In their professional lives this echoed in how they enlisted the support of allies across professional disciplines and sought out opportunities to gather with minorized women for the sake of empowerment. While these support systems represent kinship circles, men and many others outside of Black women in terms of social identity markers, in recreating these supports we must acknowledge the simultaneity of oppressions (Collins, 2000) as it manifests particularly within U.S. schools, and how this disproportionately burdens Black women teachers across all grade levels. Still, this self and collective (re)defining suggests that (re)membering is an ongoing work of countering dispossession within schools and within U.S. society at-large, reminding us that both for Black girls and Black adults with feminized subjectivities, schools continue to present a force against which to push back rather than in which to thrive. This suggests, as the literature has demonstrated, that for Black women to find social spaces of refuge, they must perceive a sense of investment and evidence of earnest concern from those in their communities of care (Collins, 2000; Milner, 2012b).

As adults, the active choice to affirm one another and take responsibility for young people who face economic, geopolitical, ability-based, linguistic and racial violence in schools, further highlights the agency of the co-authors as participating in radical mothering as informed by their urban upbringings (Williams, 2019). Despite admissions of under or lack of compensation as professional educators expected to work with purportedly difficult populations– a form of continued dispossession of resources, the co-authors chose to return to urban settings to teach, and to elevate the inherent worth of learners marginalized by U.S. schooling acting as servant leaders who restore balance to inequitable environments (Alston, 2005). The selective labor in which the co-authors engaged that centered justice (Watson & Baxley, 2021) for immigrant, parenting, disabled and linguistically marginalized learners, contributed to the success (Jang & Alexander, 2022) of their students despite its fugitive (Givens, 2021) enactment. The women offered pointed responses to the narrative prompts that (re)located them in various situations across time. During the virtual session they blurred the past and present and fused themselves into more hopeful and powerful narratives deriving inspiration from the real-time othermothering they provided. They reconnected with the feelings experienced in their girlhoods and through reflection and conversation, dislodged often painful moments recasting them through present-day understandings to make meaning of their responsibility to those within, what they deemed to be, their care. This affirms what Dingus (2008) found as the importance of expanding network ranges for Black women teachers to be able to access culturally affirming support.

Within teacher education, unstructured time and space wherein othermothering particularly for Black girls and women can transpire, must be provided such that the ongoing placemaking that is necessary can transpire with cultural fidelity and away from oppressive and carceral restrictions. This liberatory orientation offers insights towards the type of foundational shifts in the goals and processes of schooling that can invite critical joy (Vargas & Austin, 2021) wrought through care work as labor, as the expectation in teacher education praxis. What is termed as unstructured here refers to an absence of labor on behalf of the women while prioritizing their health and healing. It is a space that purposefully integrates the rest, interests and joy (inclusive of art and music-based elements) of Black women teachers in the design of space and time they co-design and share together.

Finally, the co-authors recalled how they learned to othermother in observing the practices of elders including uncles, artists, parents, teachers and even peers who displayed the values they had come to revere. This legacy-driven (Stovall & Mosely, 2022) sense of purpose suggests that othermotherwork within urban teacher education, particularly on behalf of the African-descended, is learned through respect for seniority rather than gender (Oyěwùmí, 2016) via apprenticeship, keen observation and unseen (Dillard, 2021) knowledge. Therefore, the continuation of care-work as an inheritance (Dotson, 2013) is as much genealogical reverence as it is an act of cultural responsiveness (Gay, 2002). That is, when placed among caring and established value-laden practitioners, the participants (as their girlhood selves) found themselves absorbing the approaches towards community-centric teaching even when they were not yet prepared for, or in the position to enact them. We should expect then, that young racially minoritized learners in spaces of care attend closely to those who are community-oriented and the steps necessary to recreate similar spaces that they might, when such a need is activated, display to the benefit of future learners. This suggests that in addition to intergenerational mentoring and support (Dingus, 2008), inviting Black women teachers to be among peer-groups may also activate the dormant potentials of what their girlhood selves have come to honor through reflexive practices and the desire to uplift other Black women.

As these Black women remembered the importance and difficulty in searching to find belonging as girls, they were reminded of the value of establishing community in their professional roles. Having been apprenticed into othermothering through a variety of influences including parents, uncles, teachers, coaches and friends, their present roles back in urban spaces allows them to both liaise on behalf of communities and become trusted figures within them (despite their connections to often oppressive institutions). During their youth, when some participants were shifted from urban areas to surrounding suburbs, the narrative reflection revealed the sense of the benefit being Pyrrhic in nature since finally accessing resources came at the deep cost of community. They therefore presently foreground the protection of young people in their work, while also rejecting narratives that they are somehow unworthy of professional respect. With the discussion on the value of a PhD, for example, the group reminded one another that those who had the degree (or were pursuing one) were to be encouraged, while those who did not or did not want one were no less important in the fabric of their personal or professional contexts. Finally, this institutional critique was held in a culturally complex and syncretic regard while faith-based insights were welcomed and the layers and intersections of the women's identities we tenderly cared for and affirmed.

In spite of the small and purposive sample, this study suggests that Blackness in its various manifestations, presents a diasporic nuance that must be contextualized and considered critically with regards to urban teacher education. Rosangela, for example, an AfroLatina who self-described as a Black woman, faced similar antiBlack linguistic racism and xenophobia as did Modiegi, a South African who is more phenotypically and traditionally recognized as Black. Conversely, Tasha and Teresa's experiences of finding community outside of school or finding it within intellectually similar school-based groups, respectively, suggest that even biological siblings experience their Black girlhoods distinctly once navigating the outside world particularly within urban schools. As informed by BGC, these findings remind us that the place-based urban upbringings of Black women teachers must be recognized for their enduring and resonating impact on the resistance and navigational strategies of Black girls over time and as educators (Butler, 2018). Finally, the co-authors’ participation in the sista circle reveals that elderhood is ageless as the participants called forth, respected and responded to one another's strengths as an act of collective responsibility. This responsibility highlighted the value of lived experience as keeping pace with if not outshining professional expertise in support of one another and in support of the futures of those they expected to positively impact in the future.

Conclusion

Acts of (re)membering and (re)fusal are central to othermothers developing a sense of community and this finding is important for teacher education. For teacher educators to create a space for the sharing and vulnerability that inspires connection among Black women, we recommend that shared cultural background cohort structures be considered in the preparation of teachers. The current small numbers of Black pre-service teachers will increase when cohorts are created across rather than within disciplines such that they reflect culture and racialized lived experiences rather than solely subject area expertise. This is of particular importance in areas where Black women are isolated (e.g., predominantly white institutions, suburban and rural contexts). The typical disciplinary structure that groups pre-service teachers by content area alone, while logistically beneficial to program designers, may not be the only formation that has positive impacts on pre-service teachers—particularly Black women who represent declining numbers in urban areas around the country (Bond et al., 2015). The independent reflection prompts from this study (see Appendix A in the supplementary materials) suggest that simply requesting that Black women engage their girlhood memories, while illuminating, largely affirms what the literature already suggests about the violent nature of antiBlackness (Dumas & Ross, 2016) in US K-12 schooling. In fact, this study offers counter-evidence to the insistence upon reflection in teacher education if it does not contend with the pain of the memories it may be asking Black women to access without regard for their subsequent healing.

The role of (re)fusal in the process of these Black othermothers (re)membering themselves as members of communities not only who drew upon them, but upon whom they could draw for strength, suggests that renarrating their roles can play a significant role in the purpose-driven healing of Black women teachers. For this reason, as local and state policy makers prepare to absorb the financial responsibility of public education amidst shifts that preclude them from federal funding, they should consider the return on investment that financially supporting professional communities (who share not only expertise, but cultural and/or sociocultural backgrounds) may bring to the recruitment, support and retention of Black women teachers.

This study further offers insights for the field of teacher education research in terms of methodological ethics. That is, as the sista circle method provided a nourishing environment for the (re)fusal processes to occur in tandem with (re)membering in ways that were non-extractive for the participants, teacher education research should consider Black women in particular among groups who are disproportionately teaching for justice and therefore in need of particular protections as research participants. The challenges the authors faced in their girlhoods positioned them as committed to interrupting the inequities of resource distribution, assumed deficiency and more across distinct educational settings as adults. It also carried into their professional needs to find financial and employment stability as they chose to return to under-resourced areas to carry out their work. While this study offered a place of community and support for participants, direct forms of compensation even within teacher education structures wherein Black women pre-service teachers are participants should reflect the ongoing labor and income inequalities they face.

Importantly, it is under the appropriate culturally responsive circumstances that these Black women teachers created a sense of support and community for each other suggesting the need for an approach of continual repair through acts of self-(re)making and placemaking (Butler, 2018) which defy linear conceptions of space and time. Practical implications for teacher preparation and professional development should include recognizing that Black students grow up to be Black educators who bring both the expertise and fatigue of overcoming systemic inequities. That is, Black women teachers who overwhelmingly were raised in urban settings, carry the scars, lessons and power of those spaces into their adult lives into whatever profession they choose. Thus, conceiving of and protecting time for communal healing is equally necessary for Black diasporic adults, educators and women educators, as it is for Black diasporic students. We therefore recommend that in determining clinical placement and cooperating teacher matches for Black women pre-service teachers, the stories and inspiration for teaching as well as cultural backgrounds be considered for these pairs rather than solely matching pairs based on the content being taught. This is not to diminish the need for content expertise, but rather to suggest varied forms of matching and support, particularly informal and socializing opportunities which may allow for more authentic spaces of sharing perhaps across schools and districts and even in a virtual format (Meacham, 2000). It is paramount that these spaces reflect Gumbs’ (2010) assertion regarding nonreproductive mothering as Black women speak life into one another's and their own girlhood selves. This ability to mother ourselves creates both precedents for and expectations of community outside of the auspices of labor and productivity despite its professional nature.

Finally, the unique positionality of Black women in the U.S. institution of schooling and their ability to create and sustain community calls for further research on how our commitments to our communities can foster a space for our own healing while potentially improving the quality of how we experience longevity in our lives and work in education and beyond.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-uex-10.1177_00420859251382191 - Supplemental material for “Community Is Wherever I Am”: A Sista Circle on Othermotherwork in Teacher Education

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-uex-10.1177_00420859251382191 for “Community Is Wherever I Am”: A Sista Circle on Othermotherwork in Teacher Education by Tasha Austin, Dawnavyn James, Teresa Leggard, Rosangela Bencosme-Perez and Modiegi Notoane-Eugene in Urban Education