The journey to finding one's place in academia can be complex, especially for Black students navigating Predominantly White institutions (PWIs). My path through higher education--from feeling invisible in some White spaces to discovering true belonging at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU)--illustrates how educational environments…

Cultivating Black joy is critical, given censorship placed in schools, on Black bodies, and in the curriculum. This article conceptualizes how the dimensions of culturally responsive teaching practices can help reclaim and reconstruct Black students' sense of well-being in the classroom and their sense of Black Joy. Furthermore, this conceptual…

This teaching note reviews a four-part discussion post assignment that asks Black-identified students enrolled in a class connected to a Black living-learning community to make sociological and personal connections to concepts related to race, anti-Blackness, and institutional racism in Yaa Gyasi's novel "Homegoing." Reflecting on their…

This article describes experiences of a literary coach working with a first-grade teacher to make Pro-Black culturally relevant pedagogy foundational to the coaching relationship. Responding to the failure of mandated programs to support Black students' literacy proficiency and the success of culturally relevant pedagogies, they addressed the…

Hip-hop music and culture have existed for decades in the United States. Since the 1970s, five critical elements have been defined as parts of hip-hop culture: the MC (oral), the DJ (aural), graffiti (visual), knowledge (mental), and breakdancing (physical). The existing literature connects each of these forms of hip-hop to the experiences of…

Many scholars have documented the critical importance of youth having access to spaces of joy and homeplaces in which they learn to matter. Research has shown that Black LGBTQ+ youth often struggle to locate homeplaces and spaces of joy in K-12 schooling contexts due to societal beliefs flowing from anti-blackness, (hetero)sexism, homophobia,…

Black males continue to be underrepresented in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Some of the barriers to representation are due to lack of exposure, academic expectations, lack of belief in one's ability, and opportunity gaps. The purpose of this article is to discuss how homeplace (Black joy, authenticity, and…

Black girls and their literacies are genius. Yet, education, as we know it, does not consistently offer spaces for Black girls to be loved and honored. This form of neglect extends to literacy classrooms. As displayed in the news and research, Black girls experience abuse within the confines of educational walls. Educational violence against Black…

School reform efforts have long dominated the educational landscape, but the fixes that characterize many school improvement initiatives swing on the hinges of deficit beliefs about Black students. This book calls for a disruption in these models and urges educators to take seriously the significance of beliefs and cultures within schools. Focused…

The barriers for Black doctoral students are a long-term higher education issue that needs to be addressed and considered seriously as an academic pipeline issue. Anti-Blackness in higher education admissions and curriculum not only harms educational democracy but directly affects the limited number of Black doctoral students. Black doctoral…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an emerging topic for many institutions of higher education and should be integrated into departmental and university culture. The purpose of this review is to discuss how recent kinesiology research and organizations have emphasized DEI to provide faculty and staff with contemporary information for…

Black students of Barbers Hill Independent School District wear their natural hair in locs as an outward expression of their Black identity and culture. When the students' locs grew long, the district advised them that they would need to cut their locs to comply with the district's hair length policy. Seeking to maintain their culturally…

Fifty years after the birth of hip-hop, Jonathan E. Collins considers how hip-hop can transform U.S. education. Many schools have barred hip-hop and disciplined students who use it. But these restrictions have been built on flimsy premises that ignore the beauty and complexity of the art form. Embracing and incorporating hip-hop can improve…

In this article, we contextualize Black racial identity in the current sociopolitical context, and present and discuss a group counseling intervention using poetry as the medium to explore issues that foster a positive sense of racial identity in Black girls. We used the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory as a framework to…

Graduates of Roosevelt High School remember their experiences, specifically the principals. Bernard Watson introduces the other authors' personal reflections by describing the environment, his relationships with the principals and his fellow students, and the long-term effects of the school on its graduates. Following this introduction, Randall C.…