Building a “Lifetime Circle”: English Education in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter

Abstract

This article argues that, to prepare teachers in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, there must be a radical reframing of teacher education in which teachers learn to disentangle their teaching from the culture of Mass Incarceration and the criminalization of Black and Brown people in the context of the United States in their practice. Using a restorative justice paradigm, I seek to understand in what ways, if any, teacher training, specifically of English teachers, can address issues of Mass Incarceration and how teacher preparation can support preservice teachers to resist colonizing pedagogies and practices that privilege particular ways of knowing and being that isolate particular youth.