If trauma is always "right there" for Black people, educators and practitioners must wrestle with the compounding nature of history, the body, and trauma that manifests in students' nuanced and analogous experiences. In the wake of increasing access to public acts of terror and violence, this article explicates the trauma-body-history…

As a practitioner who has scored many admission essays, the author has noticed that numerous colleges and universities include questions that seek to expose and evaluate students' interactions with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Frequently, applicants are encouraged to disclose a difficult moment in their life and share how they overcame it.…

Being the valedictorian is the highest honor bestowed upon a senior. Unfortunately, that was not the case for Jeffrey and Autry, the two high-achieving African American male participants in this critical race qualitative study, who were short-changed of their valedictorian status. Their cases reveal three themes: (1) these Black male students were…

This forum paper dialogues with Crystal Morton and Demetrice Smith-Mutegi's "Making it matter: Developing African American girls and young women's mathematics and science identities through informal STEM learning." Their article unveils the experiences of participants in Girls STEM Institute, and how they challenged beliefs about their…

Although studies on school suspensions focus on the disproportionate number of Black students receiving them, policy changes reducing suspensions offer new insights into the racial gap. Using annual school-level data from the Chicago Public Schools (2012-2016), I evaluate how a suspension reduction policy affected the number of students receiving…

To fully grasp the systems of oppression youth of color must navigate, educators must consider their experiences outside as well as inside the classroom. This paper adds to the small but growing body of literature across fields highlighting how Black and Latinx youth are simultaneously positioned by schools and the justice system as criminals that…

Race-based traumatic stress, also called racial trauma, refers to "mental and emotional injury caused by encounters with racial bias and ethnic discrimination, racism, and hate crimes" (Mental Health America, n.d.). While much research on racism-based stress in schools focuses on teachers, school psychologists can just as easily cause…

Purpose: Faculty members commonly write letters of recommendation (LOR) for students. Although letters can be helpful, they may do more harm if they include language that can negatively bias readers. The purpose of this article is to examine LORs written for Black applicants to speech-language pathology graduate programs for the presence of…

I problematize my first semester in a PhD program using autoethnographic methodology drawing from my perspective as a Black feminist scholar as well as give suggestions for gaslighting as a theoretical framework for future work on academic socialization. I use Black Feminist Thought to contextualize my analytic memos and journal entries as data to…

Forty years have passed since the "Larry P. v. Riles" (1979) decision prohibiting the use of standardized intelligence quotient (IQ) tests to assess African American children in California for special education. While the "Larry P." case has governed the assessment practices of school psychologists for so many years, yet little…

This article examines the role of play-based early childhood programs in perpetuating or interrupting messages of white supremacy which murder the spirits of Black children while reinforcing a sense of entitlement in white children. We ask educators to consider what children's play might look like if pro-Black teaching and anti-racist teaching…

Ebony Wright was slated to graduate from Claremont High School in the spring. She was on the honor roll, captain of the girls' varsity softball and swim teams, and recently awarded an academic scholarship to attend a highly ranked university in the fall. Ebony was a "model" student. How she found herself sitting in the principal's office…

Research in the United States suggests that teachers view Black students' misbehavior as more likely to reoccur, but such research has not disentangled the effect of race from related factors. We used conjoint analysis to experimentally test the effect of multiple student characteristics on the chances of being referred for a behavior intervention…

Youth Organizing as a tool for social change has helped to not only change material conditions in some respects, but it has also equipped youth with the critical tools needed to engage in long term social movement building. As a result, youth activists and organizers have been able to increase investments in the highest needs communities, gain…

Black children can no longer afford for school and district leaders to overlook and excuse the ignorance and/or blatant racism of its teachers and administrative colleagues. To meet the challenge of racial inequities in the classroom and beyond, White educators must be prophetic in their practice, and that requires that they be political.