Term of Award
Fall 2023
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)
Document Type and Release Option
Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Committee Chair
Daniel Chapman
Committee Member 1
Sabrina Ross
Committee Member 2
Ugena Whitlock
Committee Member 3
Amee Adkins
Committee Member 3 Email
adadkins@georgiasouthern.edu
Abstract
This dissertation explores the personal impact of my lived experiences as a school counselor, the uncovering of my own unconscious racial bias, and how it impacted my professional assessment of student’s issues. Personal growth and study of racial trauma created a social as well as professional context for better understanding many of the problems I encountered while counseling elementary school students of color with numerous office discipline referrals, (ODR)s. I began to realize, with great personal stress, that these same frustrated students who consistently found themselves as early candidates for the school to prison pipeline, STPP (Metze, 2012; Bornstein, 2017) were often pushed into confrontational situations with school faculty and staff which often resulted in defensive or reactive “misbehavior” As a school counselor, I worked with these students to help them to find a way to “walk away” from conflict even when the person was being deeply insulting to them. Most confounding was that often the person was the students' classroom teacher or another adult whom they encountered daily. The refrain, “I hear you (your frustrations and complaints) ...but… it really doesn't matter what that person said to you, please walk away, because you will be the one that gets in trouble”, became an unhealthy mantra. Acknowledging how disempowering and psychologically questionable it was to advise a marginalized student experiencing racist treatment to “ignore it” became the nexus for understanding the problem differently. Reframing some student behavior as self-efficacy in emotionally invalidating circumstances became the foundation for this research.
Recommended Citation
Black, Anna L., "Please Be Quiet While I Insult You (Observed): A Counter-Narrative to Students’ “Mis”behavior in School as an Aspect of Resilience and Effort at Self-Preservation in the Emotionally Invalidating Circumstances of Perceived Racism." (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2662.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/2662
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
