From Support to Action: A Critical Affinity Group of Special Education Teachers of Color

Abstract

Special education teachers of color (SETOC) multiply experience marginalized positions as students of color in P-12 classrooms, as teachers in teacher preparation programs, and alongside the experiences of students of color with disabilities. Instead of drawing from their identities, SETOC tend to be absorbed into the ableist, behaviorist, and racist system of special education and are expected to become complicit in the system. For educators of color, critical affinity groups provide support, reduce trauma, and support work toward collective intersectional justice. Using qualitative narratives, this paper describes how a critical affinity group (re)positioned three SETOC as smart, knowledgeable, and addressing racism and ableism in schools. Disability studies and critical race theory (DisCrit) illuminated SETOC’s unique experiences and how they came together to process racist/ableist interactions and resisted the erasure of their identities as teachers of color. Implications discuss how teacher preparation programs can support the needs of SETOC.

Keywords

special education teachers of color critical affinity group racism ableism resistance

The structures and systems of white supremacy have reinforced inequities and denied multiply marginalized students (i.e., students of color with disabilities) access to a meaningful education. In schools, frameworks of smartness and goodness are used to position PK-12 students across racial and ability lines (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011). Broderick and Leonardo’s (2015) work on smartness as property argues that “school plays a central role in shaping identities within ideological systems” (p. 55). The ways in which schools construct some students as smart/good (i.e., white, able-bodied) and others as not smart/bad (i.e., students of color with disabilities) allow for some students to experience “their intellectual supremacy and concomitant entitlement to cultural capital” and positions those who do not fit these criteria as inferior (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011, p. 2214). Positioning multiply marginalized students through the lenses of smartness and goodness has lasting implications for how students see themselves within school spaces and how they connect with their intersectional identities.

The number of special education teachers of color (SETOC) across the United States is increasing, especially in states such as California (Cooc & Yang, 2016). We argue that SETOC multiply experience the positions of smartness and goodness, as both former P-12 students, and as current educators in teacher preparation programs and P-12 classrooms. In P-12 school spaces, special education teachers’ positions are often relegated to helpers or assistants rather than professionals. For example, teachers often report that school leaders and general education teachers do not understand their roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, as teachers of color, SETOC are, like other teachers of color, forced to adhere to the dominant paradigm, rules, and expectations of schooling as an ideological system that positions multiply marginalized students (Pizarro & Kohli, 2020). These tensions uniquely position SETOC through experiences as teachers of color and as advocates for multiply marginalized students with disabilities. It further suggests their potential to critically understand how racism and ableism operate. And yet, few scholars have specifically captured the experiences and beliefs of SETOC (Boveda & Aronson, 2019; Kulkarni, 2021), nor dedicated spaces for them to share common experiences, pain, and joy.

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of this study is to describe how an SETOC critical affinity group collectively supported the (re)positioning of SETOC as knowledgeable, smart, good, and actively working to undo ableism and racism in school settings. We use qualitative narratives to highlight these important and overlooked stories and to provide implications for how to center the voices of SETOC and generate much needed unique support for this overlooked population. We purposely center race in this piece that describes SETOC. Far too often, there is an erasure of race-based discussions in teacher preparation (Boveda & Aronson, 2019; Kulkarni, 2021). We asked (a) how did an SETOC critical affinity group enable SETOC to share their beliefs and perspectives about racism and ableism and (2) how did an SETOC critical affinity group support the (re)positioning of SETOC as smart, good, and agents of resistance and activism in schools?

Review of Literature

Theories and beliefs make up an important part of teachers’ general knowledge, including how they perceive, process, and act upon information in classrooms (Kulkarni, 2021). In addition to informing future actions, beliefs are also shaped by personal experiences with schooling and formal and informal knowledge. While teacher beliefs can be positively attributed to actions that lead to student success (Caprara et al., 2006), deficit-oriented beliefs can also lead to critically negative outcomes for students who are considered multiply marginalized in schools, particularly students of color with disabilities. Specifically, racist beliefs contribute to (a) racist practices that lead to the overrepresentation and segregation of students of color in special education (Fergus, 2015); (b) deficit framings of students of color, their families, and communities; and (c) a lack of meaningful, inclusive, and culturally sustaining curriculum (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017). It is important to understand the beliefs of teachers of color which have the potential to be asset-framed for students of color (Pizarro & Kohli, 2020). In this study, we examine the beliefs of SETOC who work at the intersection of disability and race. This review of the literature attends to research on in-service and pre-service teachers of color (PSToC), describes the small body of literature on SETOC, including the importance of critical affinity spaces for teachers of color and describing the need for such spaces for SETOC.

Teachers of Color

Pham (2019) notes that teachers of color leave their teacher preparation programs ill prepared to work in urban schools with little growth in the social justice and critical consciousness frameworks with which they entered. Teachers enter classrooms lacking the tools to sustain their ability to teach in socially just and culturally sustaining ways. What research exists on teachers of color tends to center opportunities to diversify the field of education (Childs, 2019), examine the impacts of racism for teachers and students of color in schools (Fergus, 2015; Pizarro & Kohli, 2020), and frame how teachers of color can work toward racial justice (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016; Paris & Alim, 2017). Achinstein et al. (2010) note that while teacher education is beginning to recognize the importance of teachers of color and their unique strengths, this population has been broadly overlooked in the teacher education research (Philip, 2011).

Childs (2019) emphasized the importance of diversifying the U.S. teaching workforce. While there are multiple benefits to increasing the number of teachers of color in schools, such as cultural mediation, the challenges of being a teacher of color in a system of whiteness are unique. Teachers of color experience levels of racial discrimination that have not been examined. Furthermore, throughout the past two decades, an emphasis on multiculturalism without also addressing anti-racism or abolition (Love, 2019) in teacher education has only reinforced whiteness and benefited the majority. Emphasizing multiculturalism without also addressing systemic racism promotes a surface-level understanding of difference, one in which difference tends to be essentialized (e.g., all people from a particular culture eat a particular food). One of the largest challenges has been the tension that teachers of color face when having to negotiate their identities as teachers of color in whiteness-dominated P-12 classrooms. Fergus (2015) also noted how racist practices stemming from teacher beliefs were/are a factor that has led to the overidentification of students of color for special education services for far too long. Noting that over 40 years of research has done little to improve outcomes for multiply marginalized students, Fergus (2015) implores a shift in beliefs and belief systems to radically change policy and practice around overrepresentation.

Kohli and Pizarro (2016) note how teachers of color tend to have a community-orientation identity in schools by grounding their commitments to communities of color, but that school systems are often at odds with this orientation. Teachers of color have a strong sense of racial identity that is not always recognized in schools. Particularly for SETOC, racialized identity is often missing or rendered invisible in schools and teacher education programs. Instead, as Pizarro and Kohli (2020) describe, teachers of color committed to racial justice often experience racial battle fatigue, or the mental and psychological toll of being a teacher of color for racial justice, which can lead to burnout or attrition in schools. Pizarro and Kohli (2020) specifically capture the tensions between teachers of color in a system of deficit framings of students of color. They share the story of Lisa, a 14-year veteran teacher, who noted how counselors and teachers at her school continued to believe that Mexican students were incapable of going to college. It is these deeply entrenched deficit beliefs about students of color and students who are multiply marginalized that illustrates disciplinary and educational inequities or debts (Ladson-Billings, 2006).

In conjunction with racial battle fatigue is imposter syndrome. As Doggett (2019) explains, Black people face societal judgment from all sides which can impact mental health, self-esteem, and teacher self-efficacy. Avent (2020) noticed that Black teachers’ self-efficacy and confidence were reduced by their feelings of inadequacy in teacher education spaces. Imposter syndrome, the name for such feelings, can coincide with racial battle fatigue as a symptom of the psychological toll of constantly being positioned as less than for teachers of color.

Paris and Alim (2017) similarly note that P-12 schools continue to be a part of a colonial project. Their framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies moves toward eradicating anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and anti-Brownness as a result (Paris & Alim, 2017). We have highlighted the importance of multiply marginalized youth being able to see themselves in the curriculum and having the direct opportunities to shape that curriculum. Teachers of color who move away from the belief that we should pathologize students of color and their communities have the potential to work toward intersectional racial justice. What continues to be erased from the broad existing literature on teachers of color is the experiences, beliefs, and practices of SETOC, those working with multiply marginalized youth at the intersections of race and disability.

Special Education Teachers of Color

What little research that exists on SETOC has highlighted (a) their understanding of sociocultural identities and equity in collaborative and inclusive P-12 classrooms (Boveda & Aronson, 2019; Kulkarni, 2021; Scott et al., 2021); (b) recruitment and retention of SETOC (Cooc & Yang, 2016); and (c) underrepresentation in the field (Bettini et al., 2018). Cooc and Yang (2016) capture recent increases in SETOC in California, yet despite this increase, few research studies specifically capture experiences of SETOC and critically note the tensions they face at the intersections of disability and race (Kulkarni, 2021). In addition, no studies have specifically examined the process and implication of developing critical support spaces, such as affinity groups for SETOC.

Kulkarni (2021) provided counter stories of how two SETOC were positioned across the framework of smartness and goodness. These stories specifically highlighted points at which participants experienced the intersections of racism and ableism throughout their experiences as P-12 students and how coursework that centered disability and race in a preparation program helped them to shift and unlearn certain beliefs about race and ability.

Boveda and Aronson (2019) captured the perspectives of 12 pre-service culturally and linguistically diverse special education teachers as a part of a larger mixed methods study. They found that SETOC, whom they deemed PSToC, tended to rely on their professional identities, positioning themselves primarily as special education teachers, when asked about the P-12 students with whom they work. This illustrates how SETOC are often positioned through the lenses of special education and teaching, but rarely as teachers of color and emphasizes the need for spaces in which SETOC can draw from their multiple positionalities.

More recently, Cormier and Scott (2021) captured the experiences and concerns of two minoritized SETOC (MSETOC). They highlight examples of institutional racial and micro aggressions across race and gender experienced by MSETOC across school spaces. Among other recommendations, they emphasized the importance of MSETOC finding allies and supports as racial justice advocates and building support networks.

Critical Affinity Spaces

Leonardo and Porter (2010) argue that White people and people of color enter spaces of racial dialogues from very different positions and experiential knowledge. It is imperative, therefore, that spaces exist where people of color can collectively access support. Even the most critical teachers of color face enormous constraints structurally as well as personally (Achinstein et al., 2010). Such challenges could lead to racial battle fatigue, as mentioned above, or racial trauma. It is important, when dealing with racial trauma, for teachers to center how to heal and cope. Moving from a trauma-informed approach toward a healing-centered framework (Ginwright, 2015) emphasizes the need for teachers of color to collectively heal and reimagine pedagogies of activism and resistance in their classrooms (Pour-Khorshid, 2018). Bristol et al. (2020) used an affinity space with Black male educators and found that the participating pre-service teachers positively rated their experiences and participation in the space. Participants especially noted feelings of solidarity and self-advocacy that led to collaborative problem-solving abilities in school spaces. Martinez et al. (2016) explain that as educators work to resist White supremacist ideologies in the classroom, they may experience isolation, further necessitating spaces to build with others collectively. Therefore, it is important that educators of color have a critical affinity space: a space that centers healing and collectively processes racial trauma. SETOC need this space across their work with disability and race (Kulkarni et al., in press).

Teachers working at the intersections of racism and ableism in schools have the added challenges both from critical, collective spaces, which rarely include disability as an identity (Kulkarni, 2021) and from special education which employs a deficit framing of students of color, students’ disabilities and abilities. Working at this critical nexus requires careful attention to the interdependence of racism and ableism (see Annamma et al., 2013). It also requires an affinity space that specifically acknowledges the needs of special education teachers. Building a critical affinity space for SETOC is a first step at developing the allyship and support that is missing among this population (Cormier & Scott, 2021).

Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory

We used disability studies and critical race theory (Annamma et al., 2013) to illuminate how SETOC moved from voicing their experiences as multiply marginalized youth in P-12 spaces to resistance and activism in their own classrooms as special education teachers. Disability studies and critical race theory (DisCrit) was used to frame our coding and analysis as the participants shared their narratives during the critical affinity space sessions. DisCrit includes seven tenets that inform how race, ability, and disability operate in various contexts. We specifically examined how DisCrit Tenet 1, racism, and ableism uphold notions of normalcy; Tenet 4: how our voices as marginalized or multiply marginalized teachers of color informed our experiences in P-12 classroom and teacher education spaces. Note that we intentionally flip between “we/our” and “they/them” to highlight our proximity to the research participants and status as an insider. We further discussed and analyzed how our positions as SETOC uniquely positioned us through the dominant lenses of Whiteness and ability (DisCrit Tenet 6)—that we are consistently deemed knowledge seekers and not knowledge producers as SETOC in P-12 and teacher education. Finally, we described how our collective helped support our work toward resistance and activism in classroom spaces (DisCrit Tenet 7).

Methodology and Design

We used qualitative narratives to illuminate how participants’ experiences as SETOC informed their beliefs, instructional practices, and resistance to racism and ableism in schools. Qualitative narrative of participants’ experiences provided the necessary detail and in-depth accounts missing from existing literature on SETOC (Boveda & McCray, 2021).

Researchers’ Positionality and Relationality

The three authors of this paper all identify as people of color, and as individuals with invisible dis/abilities, including physical disabilities, learning disabilities, and chronic health conditions. Saili Kulkarni identifies as a South Asian woman (she/her/hers) with pelvic floor dysfunction, an autoimmune disorder, and mental health needs. She is a special education teacher educator of color at a Bay Area 4-year institution. Samuel Bland identifies as a Black male (he/him/his) with a speech and learning disability. He is a middle school special education teacher and a master’s candidate at the same participating institution. Joanna Gaeta identifies as a Latina woman (she/her/hers) with a mental health disability and chronic health condition. She is a middle school special education teacher. We have engaged in an in-depth unpacking of our positionalities (Kulkarni et al., in press). Understanding and sharing our positionalities and relationality with respect to race, disability, and education with each other aided us in gaining an insider understanding of the three participating SETOC. Our developed relationships from this study maintained a degree of flexibility through which we moved from insider to outsider.

Building trust and rapport with participating teachers was an important part of how we were able to generate an openness and in-depth nature during our data collection procedures. We co-constructed expectations during data collection activities, maintaining confidentiality of participant responses and spent 15 minutes of each session with a general check-in, allowing participants to share anything that was on their minds and in their hearts. Creating this trust ensured that each participant was able to share and be their full selves in the created spaces and that they were open to mistakes and vulnerability.

Participant Recruitment

Participants were recruited from a Bay Area 4-year university classified as a Minority Serving Institution (MSI). Teachers were recruited from the Department of Special Education where SETOC were obtaining special education teaching credentials in the state of California. The research team posted fliers and emailed announcements across department courses during the Fall of 2019. Participants completed an initial interest Google form that provided information about their current school context and their understanding of racism, ableism, and disability justice. They were asked whether they considered themselves teachers for racial and disability justice, about the demographic breakdown of race and the number of students identified for special education at their school sites, and what they saw as barriers for students of color with disabilities in their schools. Participants also listed a series of needs or challenges they faced as SETOC at their school sites. A total of five individuals applied to participate and two were disqualified due to their roles as assistant teachers. The remaining three qualified and were selected for the study. Their form responses informed the structuring of focus group sessions (e.g., focusing on how to help SETOC articulate their commitments to racial and disability justice).

Research Context

As an MSI in the Bay Area, the recruiting institution includes a diverse body of undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students including those in credential programs. The institution has a rich history as one of the oldest teacher training institutions in California and includes over 70% first generation and 86% students of color across six programs, including special education. Special education candidates complete a credential in one or more state mandated strands: early childhood, mild/moderate, and extensive support needs. Each strand includes between 40 and 50 credit hours of coursework and fieldwork.

Originally, the study was framed to be a physical affinity space, conceptualized in coordination with conversations and interactions in special education classrooms and teacher education settings. Saili Kulkarni noticed from her courses that SETOC shared details in written reflections that often did not come out in class discussions. All worked together to develop the affinity group as a critical space of need. The SETOC critical affinity space generated an opportunity to come together, build community, and develop close connections. Data collection for the study, however, began in March 2020, when the state of California began shelter-in-place orders for COVID-19. Given this mandate, the research team worked to convert the project into a virtual space using Zoom^®.

Data Collection

Data for this study were collected from an initial interest form which screened participating teachers for fit with the affinity group. The research team reviewed interest form responses for asset-based framing of race, culture, and disability as well as overall fit with a group for processing questions related to race, disability, and difference. From this group, we selected three teacher participants (see Table 1). The three participants all identify as women of color special education teachers.

Table 1.

Participant Characteristics.

Participant names	Age range	Racial and gender identification	Disability identification	Special education teaching assignment	CA school district area
Penelope	45–55	Black, female (she/her/hers)	No disability	Early childhood preschool	Silicon Valley
Mariah	25–35	Latina, female (she/her/hers)	No disability	Middle school resource specialist (mild/moderate)	East Bay Area
Sasha	25–35	Black, female (she/her/hers)	No disability	High school special day class (extensive support needs)	Central Valley

Note. Names were changed to protect identities of participants. CA = California.

Initial interviews

Each teacher candidate began the study by participating in an interview to capture their beliefs about teaching special education, race, and disability in schools. These interviews were conducted through Zoom^® during early March 2020 and included a set of questions that asked candidates about their teaching experiences, their work in special education, their general challenges with the job, and their early experiences as teachers of color in the classroom. The interview also asked participants to identify a couple of culturally responsive practices that they utilize in classrooms. Interviews helped provide additional framing for the focus group sessions and helped researchers facilitate sessions to navigate topics based on participant history (e.g., knowing about a particular racial trauma and how to bridge the subject sensitively given the participant history). Interviews lasted about 30 minutes and were video recorded and transcribed (for interview questions, please see Supplemental Appendix A).

Focus group affinity sessions

Teacher participants were then scheduled to attend bi-weekly focus group sessions through Zoom^®. These sessions lasted about 2 hours in length and agendas were developed by the research team and shared with participants about 1 to 2 days in advance. Typically, sessions occurred on weeknights to accommodate teachers’ school schedules. Sessions included 15 to 20 minutes of community-building activities, such as music, check-ins, discussions of any general or teaching-related issues that participants were dealing with, impacts of the COVID-19 context, and/or general news. For example, during one of the earlier weeks, Saili Kulkarni asked participants “what’s your walk on song?” Participants shared upbeat tunes that started off our sessions together and generated informal conversations to build connections. These focus group sessions became the life of the project and sustained the SETOC critical affinity group over a total of eight sessions from March 2020 to September 2020. Focus group sessions were video recorded on Zoom^®, audio recorded and transcribed using Otter.ai^®. A shared group was created on Otter.ai^® so that the participants also had access to their audio recorded sessions and transcripts of each focus group (see Supplemental Appendix A for focus group agendas).

Exit interview

Participants engaged in a 30-minute exit interview which captured the changes they experienced because of the virtual affinity space. These interviews asked participants to reflect on the group space as a place of healing and development. It also allowed participants to reflect on any changes or shifts in their beliefs and practices in the classroom. Interviews were video recorded on Zoom^® and transcribed using Zoom^® (see Supplemental Appendix A for exit interview questions).

Data Analysis

Data was uploaded into Dedoose^®, a mixed-methods analysis software. Data were organized in Zoom^® to include: (a) the initial interview videos and transcripts; (b) the focus group videos, transcripts, and chat files; and (c) the exit interviews and transcripts. We also included the initial data gathered from participant applications for the SETOC critical affinity group which included demographic information about their school placements and some of the earlier challenges and needs they indicated.

The research team came together to discuss coding approaches by reviewing Saldaña (2021) initial chapters on coding. All three authors met a total of three times, first to first cycle code initial interviews. We then met to discuss codes and generate an approach based on our readings. We agreed to use descriptive and in vivo first cycle coding, given the detailed descriptions and named experiences provided by participants, and then to move into theoretical second cycle coding by reviewing the seven tenets of DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013). Moving to theoretical coding allowed researchers to map the rich responses to the DisCrit framework as we noticed patterns that illustrated clear examples of how the theory was enacted through this affinity space. As participants went through a shift from research participant to critical affinity group collective member and agent of change, DisCrit’s tenets became instrumental to analyzing their interviews and focus group sessions.

We then developed a code book employing the seven tenets of DisCrit and initial codes with which they continued to code the entire data set. We met periodically to check in about the codes and brought parts of the analysis back to the participants through the creation of a text message group. The message group served not only as a space for ongoing connections and resource sharing, but also as a space to clarify meaning and analysis processes. We reviewed all codes from the code book and started to develop grouped meanings and themes which we jotted down and then refined as we found clear examples from the data. As an example of how themes were constructed, we noticed how conversations about White women were mentioned extensively by each participant, so that, we identified the multiple descriptions provided by each participant and group these from initial codes of “whiteness,” “Karens,” and “racial confrontations.” The analysis process helped generate the overall final themes for the study: White women confrontations, disability battle fatigue (as an extension of racial battle fatigue), and moving from imposter syndrome to repositioning SETOC as smart and good. The results describe the three participants of the study and then provide descriptive quotes and analysis for each broader theme.

Results

The three participants of this study included three SETOC who are women working in three different school districts across the Bay Area, California. Each chose their own pseudonym, and the following section introduces them and the themes generated from our sessions and interviews over the course of 8 months.

Penelope

Penelope is a Black woman (she/her/hers) in her late 40s. She has been working as a substitute special education teacher and early childhood special education teacher for 10 to 15 years. During initial interviews and descriptions, Penelope had a difficult time describing her feelings about race, but was very clear about the importance of moving away from stereotypes about Blackness:

Am I any less Black if I decide to listen to rock music or eat mostly raw foods? I am not interested in the stereotypes about Black people, I just want to be me, and I like what I like. If someone has a problem with that, it’s on them, you know what I mean . . . it’s not me, it’s on them.

Penelope’s early reflections of being a SETOC focused on the importance of making students and their families feel welcome in her classroom. She shared how her walls were decorated with different languages and how she tried to support different cultural artifacts in her classroom spaces. As a substitute, she sometimes felt stifled by having to follow a setup structure provided by the main classroom teacher, but she often negotiated this restriction by trying to connect individually with family members of children and incorporate representative literature and activities with a wide variety of language and cultures with her students. At the time of the study, she was still working as a substitute for a district office in Silicon Valley, but toward the end of the study, she had moved into a permanent preschool special education position. Penelope is currently completing her early childhood special education credential. She has plans to continue toward a master’s degree in special education.

Mariah

Mariah is a Latina woman (she/her/hers) in her late 20s. She currently works as a middle school special education teacher, providing resource support (working with students in small groups, individually taking a student to her classroom for testing and support, or pushing into a general education classroom to provide joint support) in the East Bay Area of California. Mariah started teaching English in Thailand for 2 years immediately after completing her undergraduate degree. When she returned to the United States, she began working as a paraprofessional in the East Bay Area. She worked at an elementary school site for a few years before obtaining her secondary (middle school) position:

I started working with kids in college and I just figured I knew I always wanted to be a teacher . . . I just didn’t know like what kind of teacher. So then in college when I started working as an ABA [applied behavioral analysis] therapist for kids with autism, that’s when I knew that special education was my field. So, then I just stuck with special education ever since. And it’s worked for me so far. I’m still happy.

Mariah’s desire to work with students with disabilities stemmed from her earlier work in applied behavioral analysis. Her work in schools additionally stemmed from her background as a Latina woman and her deep ties to her family and cultural roots. Mariah desires to instill that same sense of community and cultural belonging in her students and aims to tie learning into providing representative curriculum and learning opportunities for her students with disabilities. She truly believes that representation of people of color in schools is important:

Growing up from kindergarten to fifth grade, I was in like all English learner [ELL] classes. Like a large group of us were all from Mexico or Latin America and first gen and we were all in this bilingual class for ELLs. We were all placed in the same classroom and what I noticed was all the way from kindergarten to like seventh grade, all my teachers were white, except for one.

Sasha

Sasha is a Black woman in her early 30s. She currently teaches in the Central Valley of California (slightly south of the Bay Area), and also taught in an Easy Bay Area school district as a high school special education teacher for students with mild to significant disabilities. Her students typically participated in what was called the “alternative curriculum” as it was a curriculum designed for students with more significant disabilities. The alternative curriculum is based on the premise that students with significant disabilities are not able to fully access the general education curriculum in meaningful ways.

Sasha began working in the field of special education after some challenges with failing college and several different career choices. Her older sister was working as a high school counselor and several of her sister’s colleagues suggested that she should consider becoming a special education teacher. Sasha mentioned how this, coupled with seeing some of the overt and subvert racism that students of color faced in schools, solidified her need to be a special education teacher:

I’d seen a teacher who was like racist towards Black kids, like full blown, blatant racism. I mean she bluntly told me this! And when I heard that, it just made me think . . . there must be somebody who can look out for these babies . . . my Black kids with disabilities.

Sasha started out working as a paraprofessional but quickly transitioned in to a special education teaching position in the East Bay Area. Sasha was very interested in generating instruction that was culturally relevant and responsive to the needs of her Black students. She did this by describing the nature of the curriculum and how she worked to restructure it for her students. She also described how she was heavily involved in the lives of her students, well connected to the community, and worked to support her students wholeheartedly:

It’s like I always say, we gotta learn these kids, like where they come from, what they do at home, who they’re families are, the community, all of it. If we don’t learn ‘em what can we teach ‘em?

Confrontations With White Women

The system of education is setup to uphold the ideas of Whiteness (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011). In thinking about Whiteness and ability as property (Annamma et al., 2013; Harris, 1993) and Whiteness as equated with knowledge and rights, we recognized a shared experience across participants during the SETOC critical affinity group and interviews: that participants consistently described confron-tations with White women. Participant interactions tended to be filled with examples of racial battle fatigue and trauma but were rarely incidents that the participants ever processed or told to anyone outside of their immediate circles of friends and family. Especially in their special education teacher education program, there was little time to process these kinds of traumatic incidents that participants carried with them into their everyday work interactions. Furthermore, their colleagues in special education, most of their professors, and their administrators all had the potential to be perpetrators (and many were) of these racist or micro aggressive acts.

Penelope described an incident early in her teaching experience with a White women substitute who had been working in her school district for about 20 years:

I was walking from my car to the school site and there she was. She came up next to me and started to rant like sayin’ all kinds of stuff, racist stuff. I mean it was like . . . she wasn’t shy about it, just all up in my face and I had to walk around her to move away from all of that. I went straight to the admin to let them know what happened and he was on it, took care of that shit right away.

Penelope relayed the trauma of this direct encounter with the critical affinity group and in her initial interview. When she described this encounter, we realized that we could all relate to her experiences and she realized that her experiences, which were held in during teacher preparation courses, and during early childhood classroom encounters, could be shared freely with the collective who centered the importance of her healing from it.

Sasha connected with Penelope over the shared pain faced by Black women in special education. She noted that her new district in the Central Valley of California was a space where very few teachers of color existed, let alone very few Black, women special education teachers. She described how her encounters with White women, often confrontations or subversive comments, always left her feeling and questioning her ability to do her work as a special education teacher:

They’ll be like questioning my every move. And then I’ll be like second guessing if I am doing things right. And then on top of that, if I like to suggest, it’s like they try not to hear me. I’m not going to apologize for being me, so I say things, I tell it like it is, but they try to tear me down, to make me feel like I did something wrong when all I’m here doin’ is looking out for these Black and Brown babies.

Sasha brought up the phenomenon of imposter syndrome and how people of color have been made to feel as though they are less than. The SETOC critical affinity group provided a collective space in which SETOC could lean on each other and learn quickly that it was not that they were doing something wrong or that they were less than adequate in their positions as special education teachers, rather they were being made to feel like this in their confrontations with White, women.

Furthermore, Penelope and Sasha both shared examples of how mentorship in special education was a challenge. Penelope reached out to the group to share that she noticed that her teaching supervisor was generating less feedback and rescheduling more of her meetings frequently as compared to her White, women student teacher colleagues:

Something was off and after talking to ya’ll, I’m listening to that. My university supervisor scheduled like all of my observations at the end of the year, and I noticed that all of my colleagues, mostly white, women got all of their observations scheduled earlier. I also notice that the feedback that I get on my lesson plans is like pretty minimal compared to colleagues. I want to be a better teacher, but I notice that I’m not getting the same kinds of supports.

Sasha shared a similar tension with mentorship as a teacher of color:

I have this mentor at school, who was like an excellent teacher. I mean she knew all about things like IEPs and classroom management and she was the one that encouraged me to apply to the district here, but I notice that as a white woman, there are certain things I just can’t say to her. Like I must spend so much time trying to explain it and I dunno, it makes it so much harder to connect authentically.

Encounters like the ones described by participants prompted our collective to discuss how to generate support and work toward solutions to combat these negative interactions with White women in the field. First, the collective noted that simply having these conversations is both a process of emotional labor and resistance. We understood right away that our White colleagues were not giving many of these interactions a second thought. Second, participants noted the importance of trustworthy allies and documentation, as these were critical aspects of being able to survive emotionally in spaces where racial strife and conflict occurred. While it is unfortunate that acts of micro aggressiveness and blatant racism in the classroom is often met with skepticism and doubt, SETOC noted that documenting these incidents serves to bring such issues to the surface in school spaces and move toward anti-racist conversations and practices.

Disability Battle Fatigue

Like their experiences as teachers of color facing racial battle fatigue, SETOC equivalently shared their frustrations at trying to advocate and support students with disabilities in “an ableist world.” As an extension of racial battle fatigue, Joanna Gaeta noticed that participants were experiencing similar trauma and fatigue around disability. Sasha, for example, constantly shared the struggle to support high school students with complex needs in an ableist world that would not accept them:

These . . . my babies, they’ll act up in my classroom and I keep thinking what it’s gonna be like for them in the real world. Like how are they gonna be treated on the bus or in public places when they have a disability. It’s like the world wasn’t built for them and that’s sad but that’s how it is and how do we make sure that they’re ready for that world?

Here, Sasha explains how an ableist world will not support or nurture students who may have complex support needs and her concerns and stress related to being able to support her students in navigating an ableist world as a person with a disability. This stress of having to constantly prepare her students for an ableist world weighed on her, generating a fatigue in having to push across this tension. A disability battle fatigue captures the nature of constantly fighting against ableism (Kulkarni, 2021) in P-12 and higher education spaces. While racial battle fatigue deals with the physical and psychological tolls of racism, we note here the stress of having to constantly fight the ableism of school settings, advocate for students with disabilities’ legal and socio-emotional rights, and negotiate physical spaces as SETOC.

Other participants of the critical affinity group also noted the tensions they continue to face as special education teachers. Mariah, for example, noted that there are constant tensions in her role as a special education teacher and a teacher of color, working alongside general education teachers:

When I am trying to co-teach, for example, I’m like trying to figure out how to pull a kid out for a resource class while also making sure that they’re not missing critical instruction. It’s like the class is set up so that if the students with disabilities miss even one session, they’ll fall behind or miss something important.

Mariah brings out a tension that is common among special education and general education teachers—collaborative or co-teaching. In her case, as a middle school resource special education teacher, she notes that the structure of the general education classroom is built around a rigid academic structure that centers normal or average. Such a system negatively impacts students with disabilities who are receiving individualized supports or services. These students often miss out on key opportunities for academic, social, and emotional development alongside peers without disabilities.

The critical affinity group provided a space to listen and hear this common frustration that we shared in the collective space. Most important to co-teaching is the opportunity for flexibility for all students, especially for students with disabilities who may receive services and support outside of the general education classroom. Mariah’s experiences with disability battle fatigue illustrate this theme of constantly advocating for her students who need individualized supports and/or navigate the rigid schedule of the general education teachers with whom she works.

Both Penelope and Sasha additionally noted the challenges of co-teaching responsibilities among general and special education teachers and the challenges of navigating, such a space as Black, women teachers. Often, in addition to having to fight for students with disabilities and their school needs, Penelope and Sasha were positioned as teaching assistants or paraprofessionals more often than special education teachers. This relegation to lower status often means that instead of truly co-teaching or team teaching, SETOC are working with small groups of students or supporting an individual student in the back of the classroom while the general education teacher maintains teaching power. All three participants in the critical affinity space also similarly noted a disability battle fatigue in having to constantly advocate for their students while simultaneously advocating for themselves to be in the space. As Annamma et al. (2013) note in DisCrit Tenet 1, racism and ableism are interdependent entities that are used to uphold notions of normalcy. The conversations with SETOC critical affinity group made clear that disability battle fatigue, like racial battle fatigue, occurs at the intersection of racism and ableism as these are part of the normative fabric of school spaces.

Moving From Imposter Syndrome to SETOC as Smart and Good

Pham (2019) indicated that rather than pre-service teachers being viewed as “newcomers,” they need to be genuinely seen as learners and experts who bring experiences and “insights” into the realm of education. Positioning teachers of color as both learners and experts enhances preparation programs by drawing on their lived experiences. While participants in this study had varying levels of teaching experiences, all were being positioned as novice. Rather than being positioned as experts and knowledgeable, their experiences with teacher education and P-12 classrooms were that of being “newcomers” or worse yet presumed incompetent. Participants’ feelings of imposter syndrome resonated deeply with all of us in the SETOC critical affinity group. We spent our fourth focus group session discussing imposter syndrome in detail, learning about what it was, and sharing the experiences we had in predominantly White spaces, such as special education teacher credential programs and schools, with feeling like an imposter. This conversation then generated new conversations about how to name it and then work to undo its grasp on our sense of selves. This work of repositioning through the SETOC critical affinity group took time, but by the end of the 8 months, each participant began to see themselves in more positive and affirming ways as individuals and as part of the collective, including the researchers.

Sasha shared her early example of feelings of self-doubt, particularly around her racial background as a Black woman working as a special education teacher. She recalled that it took her most of her adult life, until a few years ago, to get to a place of feeling like she could truly identify and embrace her identity as a Black teacher:

I think that’s something that up until I would say like three or four years ago that I struggled with all middle school and elementary school, and so it wasn’t until when I was a freshman or a sophomore, that I felt okay with literally being Black because that’s when you really start to notice your differences. And it wasn’t until [I started working in East Bay] that I was okay with being a Black teacher. I felt very similar to [Samuel], like I felt like I was consistently being watched. I was there was never Black people there, but I just felt like I was consistently being watched. I feel like there was nothing that I could do right, which did lead me to like anxiety, frustration, like struggles within the classroom and outside the classroom. I had a terrible first year, but there was a point where I literally was having so much stress.

Sasha went on to say that learning to cope with stress involved taking off time to relax or decompress after a particular difficult year at her school site. She also described how coming to terms with her Blackness and being a Black special education teacher allowed her to feel more comfortable sharing her experiences and reaching out for support. The SETOC critical affinity group became a space where Sasha could freely describe the challenges and frustrations of being a Black special education teacher and share wisdom upon which we could draw connections and learn from one another.

Mariah similarly described her desire to gravitate toward other people of color who have shared experiences and knowledge upon which she could draw. She immediately connected with the discussion around imposter syndrome and noted how she had an experience with this during her study abroad program after college. She explained how there was a tendency to become withdrawn, quiet, or aloof when around a predominantly White group because of a fear or anxiety about perception:

There were like 86 people in this teaching study abroad program and I looked and noticed that only three of us were people of color. I was like, “okay at least there are a few” and we just sort of stuck together because that’s what we tended to feel most comfortable with. Like I noticed when I am around a lot of white people, I tend to like kinda withdraw from them because I don’t know how I am supposed to act or like what I am supposed to do to keep from being seen a certain type a way. Most of us were first gen too so we didn’t know much about leaving the country, travel, and all that. Like we each paid our own way full for this trip from saving up from work or and many of the white kids were like getting family money, like a check from their grandma or something.

Mariah’s description of the intersection of first-generation status, and of being a person of color in predominantly White spaces resonated with many of us. There is fear, stress, and anxiety about how we are perceived in these White spaces, and therefore, a strong tendency to remain silent or aloof. The challenge then becomes that this can be perceived by White people as disinterest or apathy. Mariah’s participation in the SETOC critical affinity group allowed her to connect these feelings and actions with other SETOC. Knowing and sharing this common feeling and these common reactions to predominantly White spaces, allowed her to gain confidence in owning her stance.

Penelope described imposter syndrome using the metaphors of a “herd” and “roadblocks” that come from being in predominantly White spaces. She shifts back to her desire to work in diverse districts and schools because of the challenge she previously faced as the only teacher of color:

What everyone is saying, you know, just gets me thinking about how thankful I am to be in a district with other teachers of color, you know. Like when you’re in those spaces and it’s just one race . . . like mostly white people teaching, then it just feels like a herd mentality if you like ever to try to call it out or say something, you know? Like there’s this roadblock up from ever being able to do anything because no one takes you seriously. Like they treat me as if . . . and you know I have a bachelor’s degree, I have a different master’s degree, almost got a credential in early childhood special education, and yet, when I go into those spaces, I still feel like it’s not enough . . . like somehow the white para has something over me, you know?

The feeling of being presumed incompetent when Penelope had several accomplishments was yet another way that imposter syndrome can manifest itself into racial trauma. Being able to share this feeling with the SETOC critical affinity group allowed Penelope to move from the uneasiness of worrying that she was not accomplished enough, to a space of confidence and wisdom that she has always possessed as an educator who has worked for close to 20 years, in multiple school districts, with deep knowledge of students and their communities, by growing up in that community. Penelope possessed a historical understanding of both special education and school contexts that was rich and from which all of us can learn.

Discussion

Rendering the Racial Identities of SETOC as Visible

One of the most important ways in which the SETOC critical affinity group shifted participants’ beliefs was in the racial possibilities gained from bringing a critical consciousness to their racial identities. In special education teacher education and P-12 classroom spaces, these aspects of their identities were rendered invisible. As Sasha noted, there was a time in which she did not see herself as a Black special education teacher.

Boveda and Aronson (2019) noted in their study of pre-service SETOC, the teachers tend to foreground their experiences with students with disabilities over their racial and racialized identities as teachers of color. The erasure of their racial identities in special education spaces and deficit framework through which special education students of color are being framed in teacher education and P-12 spaces (Boveda & McCray, 2021) was reified by what was deemed valuable or normalized in the field.

The SETOC critical affinity group was able to highlight this erasure to support the repositioning of SETOC as smart, good, and wise. The structure of the collective positioned two SETOC and one special education teacher educator as experts who led the study (see “Researchers’ Positionality and Relationality” section) and the knowledge, wisdom, and experiences of a diverse group of SETOC as change agents for schools.

Whiteness and Ability as Positioning SETOC

As Harris (1993) explained, Whiteness as property is not limited to physical property, but includes time, labor, time, benefits, and other entities. In the case of the participating SETOC, Whiteness and ability as property (Annamma et al., 2013) is linked to the presumed abilities of SETOC, based on their roles as teachers for majority students of color with disabilities (see Kulkarni, 2021). In special education teacher education spaces as well as P-12 classrooms, SETOC are seen as teachers of students with disabilities. The erasure of their racial identities presents a critical issue in the field as all the participants indicated that they spend significant time and emotional labor negotiating their racial identities with their roles as special education teachers.

The racialized identities of SETOC are a critical component of their abilities to perform their roles as advocates for resistance, and for anti-racism and anti-ableism in schools. All participants noted a commitment to anti-racism and anti-ableism that was strengthened through the SETOC critical affinity group through their collective sharing of experiences. As Scott et al. (2021) explain, SETOC in their study noted that they were constantly perceived as not being a real teacher as compared with general education teachers. SETOC similarly noted challenges in working with general education teachers who perceived them as assistants and as incompetent in comparison to White general education and special education teachers. We note this as a disability battle fatigue that the participants uniquely experience as SETOC.

Limitations

We note several limitations to this study and opportunities for further exploration of ways to support SETOC in the classroom and in teacher education spaces. We note that there was a power differential that we had to work to undo during this study. Saili Kulkarni, as a former special education teacher and former instructor of each of the participants and co-authors, generated a power differential compared with the SETOC. SETOC might have said more about the university special education teacher education program but avoided doing so because of Saili Kulkarni’s presence. To mitigate this tension for future studies, SETOC should facilitate or co-facilitate some sessions without Saili Kulkarni or instructors to allow for more free conversations. The small and concentrated group of three participants (all from the same program, all living in the Bay Area) could have meant that implications were limited to that context. While we had participants who identified as female, Black, and Latinx, we did not have broad gender representation, nor did we have other racial groups represented. There is a need to expand this work to include more of these identities and experiences. Also, although all of us identified as disabled, the three participants identified as able-bodied and it is important to consider how this identity influenced the discussions of disability.

During one to two of the latter focus group sessions, the SETOC critical affinity group went off topic, which was to structure conversations about universal design for learning. These conversations, though rich in other ways, did not provide necessary information for the generated topic. Future studies might include more time for informal conversations that were clearly needed from the group and to develop additional group trust and rapport before launching into content.

Future Research and Implications

Future research might explore the specific influences of critical affinity spaces and how they are conceptualized in terms of gender identity. In Bristol et al. (2020), for example, we note the affordances of a space dedicated toward the identities of Black male-identifying participants and our own space, which included one Black male (Samuel Bland), but centered the experiences of women of color. Future research must explore the intersections of gender, race, and disability as it informs teachers of color affinity spaces.

Listening to the voices of SETOC, we learned how there is a strong need to generate spaces where SETOC can feel supported and valued as smart, good and knowledgeable in the education of students of color with disabilities. SETOC have the potential for strong activism and resistance in schools, but many burn out because they do not find the necessary spaces to garner support (Scott et al., 2021). Nor are there spaces where SETOC can fully engage in their identities as teachers of color and as teachers for racial and disability justice in schools. Generating and maintaining such spaces is critical to continued support and retention of SETOC in P-12 schools. The development of critical affinity spaces has implications for how SETOC can confront racism and ableism in their classrooms. These allyship-building and discussion-oriented spaces can generate support to reduce burnout, strengthen resistance, and center healing.

Conclusion

Cormier and Scott (2021) highlighted the challenges often faced in schools by being an MSETOC and various strategies that teachers can use for equitable work environments. We, like our conversations in the critical affinity group, mention the use of allyship, self-care, and collective support. We similarly felt that creating a collective space for us to vent, process, and be heard was important to sustaining our ongoing work in special education and as teachers of color. We believe in the importance of this space and eight sessions over Zoom^® brought us together in ways we would not have expected. We advocate here for the need for more collective spaces where SETOC can come together to process how our work is across disability, race, culture, language, and how we can continue to support each other in sustaining and enacting changes in our classrooms and schools.

Teacher education programs in special education need to listen to the voices and experiences provided by SETOC. In addition to (re) centering the curriculum around Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) voices in special education, teacher education programs need to meaningfully attend to the intersections of disability and race. SETOC should be able to see themselves in their work and continue to work toward all forms of resistance and activism (DisCrit Tenet 7; Annamma et al., 2013) rather than having these ideals erased over time through those programs.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-tes-10.1177_08884064211061189 – Supplemental material for From Support to Action: A Critical Affinity Group of Special Education Teachers of Color

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-tes-10.1177_08884064211061189 for From Support to Action: A Critical Affinity Group of Special Education Teachers of Color by Saili S. Kulkarni, Samuel Bland and Joanna Marinia Gaeta in Teacher Education and Special Education

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Saili S. Kulkarni

Supplemental Material

Supplementary material for this article is available online.

Author Biographies

Saili S. Kulkarni, PhD, is an associate professor of Special Education at San José State University. Her research examines the intersections of race and disability in teacher education, disciplinary disparities for young children of color with disabilities, and how to shift the beliefs and practices of special education teachers of color.

Samuel Bland, MA, is an MA candidate in Special Education at San José State University. His thesis examines the feelings of imposter syndrome of students of color with disabilities in a middle school setting. He is a middle school special education teacher in the Alum Rock School District.

Joanna Marinia Gaeta, MA, has a MA in Special Education at San José State University. Her thesis topic is studying discipline disparities for secondary males of color in a Bay Area middle school. She currently works as a middle school special education teacher in Oak Grove School District.

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