Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

by Monique W. Morris

To have an “attitude” is to reject a doctrine of invisibility and mistreatment.

Being “sick and tired of being sick and tired”—words made famous by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer—is a concept that is immediately understood by Black women.

I think these words are echoed in A Raisin in the Sun.

In fact, most people walk through life consciously unaware of their multiple identities

Consciousness- the idea of the dream in Coates's book Woke from the dream or residing consciously in the dream Is this consciousness different?

Linda Darling-Hammond offers a well-rounded description. She contends that quality teaching includes engaging students in active learning, creating intellectually ambitious tasks, using multiple teaching modalities, assessing student learning and adapting to the learning needs of the students, creating supports, providing clear standards, reflection, and opportunities for revision, and developing a collaborative classroom in which all students have membership.25 This collaborative atmosphere is strengthened by a strong student-teacher

This compression is both a reflection of deeply entrenched biases that have stripped Black girls of their childhood freedoms and a function of an opportunity-starved social landscape that makes Black girlhood interchangeable with Black womanhood. It gives credence to a widely held perception and a message that there is little difference between the two.

stained glass that obscures their vision of what is possible.

been granted permission to fail by the implicit biases of teachers that lower expectations for them.

From the lessons, patterns, and insight gathered through speaking with Black girls from coast to coast, six themes emerged as crucial for cultivating quality learning environments for Black girls: (1) the protection of girls from violence and victimization in school; (2) proactive discussions in schools about healthy intimate relationships; (3) strong student-teacher relationships; (4) school-based wraparound services; (5) an increased focus on student learning coupled with a reduced emphasis on discipline and surveillance; and (6) consistent school credit recovery processes between alternative schools and traditional district or community schools.

That the majority of the girls in this discussion requested educational programming that was respectful, collaborative, and tied both to preparing for their futures and to building relationships signals their interest in a praxis anchored in the power of sharing one’s story and perspective—a learning process that has the added benefit of being restorative.