Do No Harm: Strategies for Culturally Relevant Caring in Middle Level Classrooms from the Community Experiences and Life Histories of Black Middle Level Teachers

Abstract

This qualitative study focused on the life histories of four female African-American middle level teachers. The findings illuminate how culturally responsive caring can and should be foundational to successful teaching that does not discriminate but instead uplifts every student and assures them that teachers will seek to know, understand, teach, and not degrade them. Elements of this caring framework include serving as students’ otherparents or fictive kin, taking time to know students without judgment, appreciating the knowledge in students’ communities, believing in students’ brilliance and holding them accountable in warm yet demanding ways, teaching racial history and teaching students to speak back to negative profiles that define them, and never sugarcoating injustices but teaching for success.