For Our Children: Black Motherwork and Schooling

For our Children: Black Motherwork and Schooling

Stephanie Fearon

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto

Stephanie Fearon

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto

2020 Abstract

Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010) compels school officials to identify and remove discriminatory practices and structures to ensure the full participation of all parents in their children’s schooling. Yet Canadian literature and media highlight ongoing challenges faced by Black mothers in their relationships with their children’s schools. This arts-informed study uses storytelling to investigate the relationships between Black mothers and school officials. The study presents insights obtained from 10 in-depth interviews with African Caribbean mothers living in Toronto. Participants shared personal stories to articulate their understanding of Black motherwork and its impact on their relationships with school officials. Data collected from these oral recounts, along with the review of the literature, addressed the questions: What is Black women’s motherwork?

How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationships with school officials? How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials?

This research draws on African Indigenous, Black feminist and Black maternal theories to investigate Black women's motherwork and their relationships with one another and school officials. Using a comprehensive analytic process, participants' oral accounts are compiled

into interconnected creative non-fiction stories. These stories are informed by African storytelling traditions like call-and-response, improvisation and audience participation. This structure prioritizes Black mothers’ voices and honours arts-informed methodologies, all while illustrating links to previous scholarship.

The personal/self-stories, cultural stories, and metanarratives presented in this arts- informed study uphold Black mothers as educational leaders in their homes, communities and schools. The study revealed Black Canadian motherwork as a form of activism that is integral to the health and wellbeing of Black women and children. Black mothers understand their motherwork as collective action involving community parents. For Black mothers, school officials do not always fulfill their roles as community parents. Black mothers work with members in their women-centred networks to affirm their leadership and safeguard their children’s rights to safe, inclusive schooling spaces. This arts-informed study contributes to a deeper understanding of the ways that Black mothers practice educational leadership amongst themselves and with school officials.

iii

Acknowledgments

This dissertation represents an emotional journey. On this journey, I experienced the loss of my grandmother and grandfather. My grandmother sparked my spiritual identity, while my grandfather nurtured my love for stories. While on this journey, I also grew. I married my soulmate and gave birth to a baby boy in our tiny house near the beach. I typed the majority of this thesis on my cell phone with one hand, while I used the other hand to nurse our baby.

This thesis is dedicated to my family. On this journey my grandmother, mother, aunts, cousins and sister cooked, cleaned, loved, prayed and watched over my husband, baby and me. The women in my family not only made this journey possible, they inspired it.

My father and uncles are brilliant storytellers. Their knowledge of and connection to familial land and histories continues to ground my journey.

I am thankful to my doctoral committee members. I am eternally grateful to my thesis supervisor, Dr. Flessa, who supported the use of arts-informed methodologies for this study. Thank you to Dr. Lopez and Dr. McCready who challenged my thinking throughout the process. I am especially grateful to the external examiner Dr. Terah Venzant Chambers and the internal external examiner Dr. Tara Goldstein. Both Dr. Venzant Chambers and Dr. Goldstein nurture my passion to ground educational leadership and policy research in the arts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Table of Contents ...... v

List of Tables ...... x

List of Appendices ...... xi

Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Background and context ...... 1

1.2 Problem statement ...... 3

1.3 Statement of purpose and research questions ...... 4

1.4 Research approach ...... 4

1.5 Assumptions ...... 7

1.6 The researcher ...... 9

1.7 The historical context ...... 10

1.8 The researcher’s professional and academic journey ...... 12

1.9 Rationale and significance ...... 13

1.10 Definitions of key terminology used in this study ...... 14

1.11 The organization of the dissertation ...... 16

Chapter 2 A Note on Frameworks ...... 18

2.1 African Indigenous framework ...... 18

2.2 Black Feminist Thought ...... 20

2.3 Motherwork ...... 21

2.4 Conceptual framework ...... 23

Chapter 3 Research Methodology ...... 26

3.1 Rationale for arts-informed narrative methodology ...... 26

3.2 Description of the research sample ...... 27

3.3 Summary of information needed ...... 29

3.4 Overview of research design ...... 29

3.4.1 Literature review ...... 30

3.4.2 IRB approval ...... 31

3.4.3 Location and recruitment ...... 31

3.4.4 Consent process ...... 33

3.4.5 Semi-structured and in-depth Interviews ...... 33

3.4.6 Interview guide ...... 35

3.4.7 Interview process ...... 35

3.5 Methods for data analysis and synthesis ...... 36

3.5.1 Locating the interviews within the historical context and cultural norms ...... 38

3.5.2 Demarcation of boundaries for individual stories ...... 38

3.5.3 Thematic and functional analysis of stories ...... 39

3.5.4 Grouping stories according to themes and functions ...... 41

3.5.5 Comparison of story themes and functions across participant interviews ...... 41

3.5.6 Restructuring participants’ memories into storied accounts ...... 42

3.5.7 Reviewing for conspicuous absences, silences and talkback ...... 42

3.6 Ethical considerations ...... 43

3.7 Research goodness, trustworthiness and limitations ...... 44

3.8 Chapter Summary ...... 47

Chapter 4 Presentation & Analysis of Findings...... 48

4.1 Structure of stories ...... 49

4.2 Structure of footnotes ...... 49

4.3 Story insights ...... 50

4.4 Cast of main characters ...... 50

Chapter 5 What is Black women’s motherwork? ...... 56

5.1 Chapter Introduction ...... 56

5.2 Home(land) ...... 56

5.2.1 Story Insights: Communal mothering ...... 61

5.3 Fried Bakes & Duppies ...... 62

5.3.1 Story Insights: Motherline ...... 66

5.4 Three-Ten ...... 67

5.4.1 Story Insights: Site of power ...... 72

5.5 A Snippet: Conversation & Hair ...... 73

5.5.1 Story Insights: Homeplace ...... 78

Chapter 6 How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationship with school officials?81

6.1 Chapter Introduction ...... 81

6.2 Bus Dreams...... 81

6.2.1 Story Insights: Communal Mothering ...... 86

6.2 Finding Home ...... 88

6.2.1 Story Insights: Homeplace ...... 92

vii

6.3 Won’t be Beat ...... 93

6.3.1 Story Insights: Site of Power ...... 97

6.4 Recipes ...... 99

6.4.1 Recipes: Motherline ...... 101

Chapter 7 How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials? ...... 103

7.1 Chapter Introduction ...... 103

7.2 All Falls Down ...... 104

7.2.1 Story Insights: Using data ...... 110

7.3 Ay-Yai...... 112

7.3.1 Story Insights: Collaborating for Black children ...... 116

7.3 #blackboyjoy...... 118

7.5.2 Story Insights: Goal setting ...... 121

7.4 Set it Off ...... 123

7.5.3 Story Insights: Amassing capital ...... 126

Chapter 8 Conclusions & Recommendations ...... 128

8.1 Theorizing and practicing Black Canadian motherwork ...... 128

8.2 Black mothers' relationships with each other and school officials ...... 129

8.3 Black mothers as educational leaders ...... 130

8.4 Recommendations for Black Canadian mothers ...... 130

8.5 Recommendations for Canadian school systems and school Officials ...... 131

8.5.1 School Administrators ...... 132

8.5.2 Classroom Teachers ...... 132 viii

8.6 Recommendations for Canadian policymakers ...... 132

8.7 Recommendations for further research in Canada ...... 133

8.8 Researcher reflections ...... 134

References ...... 135

Appendix A Sample of recruitment flyer ...... 148

Appendix B Sample of participant consent form ...... 149

Appendix C Sample of interview guide ...... 151

List of Tables

Table 1: Conceptual Framework 24

Table 2: Literature Review Overview 31

Table 3: Black Motherwork Venn Diagram 41

Table 4: Cast of Main Characters 55

List of Appendices

Appendix A: Sample of recruitment flyer 148

Appendix B: Sample of participant consent form 149

Appendix C: Sample of interview guide 151

Chapter 1 Introduction

This study explores the relationship between Black mothers and their children’s schools. The purpose of this arts-informed study is to use storytelling to investigate, with a sample of Black Canadian women, Black women's motherwork and its impact on their relationships with one another and school officials. This study, like education institutions and policies across North America, uses the term school official to refer to those employed by or who volunteer in a school (United States Department of Education, 2015). Teachers, principals, trustees, superintendents, as well as school support and clerical personnel are examples of school officials. For this study, ten Black mothers living in Toronto were purposefully selected and participated in individual, in-depth interviews. The study employed an arts- informed narrative methodology to capture and present participants’ experiences of Black women’s motherwork. The knowledge generated from this inquiry affords new insights to further inform how Black families engage with one another and school officials. This study also adds to scholarship on educational leadership by presenting qualitative inquiry grounded in African Indigenous storytelling traditions as necessary and effective when studying Black life in Canada.

This chapter begins with an overview of the context and background that frames the study. This is followed by the problem statement, the statement of purpose, and accompanying research questions. Also included in this chapter are discussions around the study's research approach, along with my perspectives and assumptions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the proposed rationale and significance of this research study and definitions of some of the key terminology used.

1.1 Background and context

Studies across Canada confirm the pivotal role that parents play in their child’s learning and achievement (Pushor, 2011, 2012; Wong, 2015). An extensive body of literature investigates the relationship between schools and caregivers, and its impact on students’ schooling experiences (Hamlin & Flessa, 2018; Pushor, 2011, 2012; Wong, 2015). In Canada, parent engagement research focuses on how students and their parents work with

1 2 school officials to achieve goals determined by the institution. Accordingly, the aim of Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy is to provide educators and parents with a roadmap “to help ensure that [parents] have the skills, knowledge, and tools they need to engage fully in their children’s education and in the life of their school” (Ontario, 2010, p. 5).

Canadian literature centring the experiences of Black caregivers and their relationships with elementary school officials are limited and fail to fully capture the nuanced ways that Black communities establish their own schooling goals for their children and organize to achieve them. A burgeoning body of work, led by Black Canadian scholars, expresses the expansive and fluid roles that Black Canadian mothers play in the lives of their elementary- aged children. Such research acknowledges motherwork as central to Black children's cultural, social, academic and identity development (Edwards, 2000; Onuora, 2013, 2015). These scholars affirm the collective work of biological mothers, grandmothers, aunts, othermothers, community mothers, non-biological mothers, and godmothers (amongst others) in the empowerment of Black children.

Research by prominent Black Canadian thinkers, like Dei (1993), James (2017), Turner (2017), and Maynard (2017) document the tenuous relationships between Black communities and the education system. Venzant and McCready (2011) argue that schools are driven by middle class, White, heterosexual norms that determine definitions of success. Students and their families who are more familiar or aligned with this dominant culture, Venzant and McCready (2011) write, are more likely to be perceived as academically successful as the school environment caters to this orientation. Recent events across Canada point to the urgent need for researchers to investigate the relationships between Black Canadian mothers and school officials, and work with Black communities to spearhead educational transformation. While writing the proposal for this study, I along with many Canadians was consumed by media coverage highlighting the treatment of Black mothers by school officials. In December 2016, long-time York Region trustee, Nancy Elgie, admitted to referring to Charline Grant, a Black mother, as a nigger, in public, after a school board meeting (Javed & Rushowy, 2017). In February 2017, a Black mother was distraught after police used handcuffs to restrain her six-year-old daughter following an incident at the school.

In 2019, Shada Mohamed led a group of Black mothers demanding the Alberta Ministry of Education to take action against anti-Black racism plaguing their children’s schools (McGarvey, 2019). Mohamed and fellow mothers accused school officials of denying the existence of anti-Black racism in public schools and ignoring its negative impact on Black children’s health and achievement. To the media, Mohamed declared, "I've been into the school every time there's been an issue, I address it right after school and address it with the principal. Nobody seems to take this seriously. It's a joke” (McGarvey, 2019). Also in 2019, Edmonton school officials called an 11-year-old Black boy a gang member because he wore a durag (Konguavi, 2019). While the boy’s mother, Una Momulu, sought redress from the principal, school officials called the police on her and later prohibited her from entering her son’s school. In addition to her son being racially profiled, Momulu maintained that she was "painted as an angry Black woman" and threatened with legal action by the school board (Konguavi, 2019). At a board meeting, Momulu said, “It is time to acknowledge that this entire incident has to do with race from the very beginning" (Konguavi, 2019).

Throughout the research process, I thought about my own childhood experiences as a Black girl growing up in Toronto and reflected on my mother’s relationships with school officials. I remember my mother’s anger after my Grade 4 teacher called me lazy. To this day, my 30-year-old sister and my mother reference the hurt and frustration they endured when my sister’s Grade 8 teacher refused to recommend her to an enriched high school program, while writing letters of support for her non-Black classmates who had lower grades. The mothers, including my own, all speak of the mistrust and negative relationships they have with school officials. These narratives solidify my desire and need to conduct educational research as a way to “make sense of the world of my childhood” (Kelley, 1997, p. 4), listen to the experiences of other Black mothers, and write of the possibilities.

1.2 Problem statement

Research attests to the importance of parents partnering with school officials to support student achievement and wellbeing. Ontario policy compels school officials to “identify and remove discriminatory biases and systemic structures in order to allow participation of all parents in their children’s schools” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 6). Yet,

Canadian literature and media highlight ongoing challenges faced by Black mothers in their relationships with school officials. Despite a growing body of work examining Black maternal practices, there is little information on how Black women's motherwork shapes their relationships with school officials.

1.3 Statement of purpose and research questions

Grounded in the art of storytelling, the purpose of this arts-informed study was to explore with 10 Black Canadian mothers their conceptions of motherwork and its impact on their relationships with Black women in their support networks, and school officials. With a better understanding of Black women's maternal practice, policymakers, school officials, and Black mothers themselves, can make more informed decisions when working together for Black children’s schooling success. The study addressed the following questions:

 What is Black women’s motherwork?

 How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationships with school officials?

 How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials?

1.4 Research approach

I recognize there is a range of ways to approach the study of Black women’s motherwork. In the 1960s, white sociologist Moynihan (1965) wrote the now widely critiqued report The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. This report relied heavily on census and other statistical data to pathologize African American families and demonize Black mothers’ leadership roles within their communities. The 1960s also saw white researchers applying qualitative approaches to further study African American mothers. For example, in the landmark study All Our Kin: Strategies For Survival In A Black Community, researcher Carol Stack (1973) used an ethnographic approach to investigate women-centred kin networks in a working-class African American community. Such an approach led Stack, a white woman and single mother, to live amongst those she studied and required her to secure community members to help navigate and interpret daily happenings.

The engagement of Black women in research expands beyond that of passive subjects. Dillard (2000, 2018) challenges Black feminist researchers to ponder the following

5 question: What happens when one’s life and being in the world are inseparable from research? Dillard (2000, 2018) calls on Black researchers to reflect on the moral, methodological, and spiritual imperatives and commitments of qualitative inquiry. In the book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, author Christina Sharpe (2016) maintains that any exploration of Black life in North America requires Black thinkers to take up “new modes and methods of research and teaching” (p. 13). Sharpe (2016) argues that any scholarship centring Black life in North America must be contextualized by the afterlives of slavery––“skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment” (Hartman, 2007, p. 6).

Black thinkers respond to these calls for transformation by using the arts to help plot, map, and collect the archives of the everyday Black experience (Sharpe, 2016). In Canada, Black scholars continue to use the arts, both within the academy and community, to exercise their agency and deepen their own understanding of contemporary Black maternal life “in the wake of slavery” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 8). For instance, Jamaican-Canadian artist D’bi Young uses dub poetry, a performative artform of Caribbean origin, to interrogate her own experiences of Black women’s motherwork in the face of discrimination. D’bi Young and other feminist dub poets use movement and Caribbean Creoles, which characterize their art, to elicit audience participation in social and political commentaries around Black maternal experiences in Canada. Black Canadian playwrights like Djanet Sears (1990) and Trey Anthony (2017), amongst many others, use theatre and literary arts to explore the diverse ways that Black women practice their motherwork within capitalist, sexist and racist settings. Black women within the academy also draw on the arts when engaging in research. Work by Caribbean-Canadian scholars Charmaine Crawford (2003, 2004, 2018) and Adowa Onuora (2012, 2015) centre literary arts when investigating Black maternal pedagogies. Education scholars like Jamaicans Saran Stewart (2019) and Aisha T. Spencer (2019) base their research in poetry, cultural stories, and personal narratives.

Like the many Black women before me, I opted to ground my research practice within the arts, namely in storytelling. Using a literary arts approach to my research meant, as Lewis- Fokum (2019) explains, “writing our stories by us, for us, and for the world rather than having stories being written about us” (p. 20). This study’s use of storytelling affirms my belief in the arts as a valid and dynamic form of research and is my way of responding to

Sharpe’s (2016) and Dillard’s (2000, 2018) urgent demands for change within the academy, notably pertaining to the study of Black life in North America. Grounding this study in African traditions of storytelling recognizes the plurality of research approaches and methodologies, and researcher identities thriving within academic institutions and communities. By assuming an arts approach to the study of Black women's motherwork, I was able to present study findings as a series of creative non-fiction stories. These storied accounts captured and amplified the ways in which we, Black Canadian women, identify, practice and theorize our own motherwork. The arts helped ensure that our stories were not just a transit point in this study. Instead, the voices of Black mothers provided the terms and drove the structure of this dissertation. Ultimately, the personal/self-stories, cultural stories, and metanarratives presented in this dissertation assert my place, as a Black mother and researcher, as well as the places of the Black mothers who participated in the study as trusted narrators of our own stories.

My journey to instituting an arts approach to this research study involved securing approval from the University of Toronto’s Research Ethics Board. I abided by protocols set out in my approved application by the university's ethics board. I set out to investigate the mothering and relational experiences of 10 Black Canadian women living in Toronto. All 10 participants mothered elementary-aged Black children. The participants self-identified as cisgender heterosexual women of African descent. All participants engaged in motherwork, were at least 18 years of age, and asserted their African Caribbean heritage. Participants also self-identified as biological mothers, othermothers, and community mothers.

In-depth interviews were the primary method of data collection. This study comprised 10 individual interviews. The information garnered from these interviews formed the basis for the study’s overall findings. Each interviewee was identified by a pseudonym, and all interviews were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. A comprehensive process, rooted in African storytelling traditions, was used to analyse and synthesize the study’s data. Thematic and functional analysis focused on the text of the story as told by the participant- storyteller (Banks-Wallace, 2002). I used the following questions, as articulated by Banks- Wallace (2002), to guide the analysis of stories told by participants during in-depth interviews: (a) What is the point of the story? (b) What function does this story serve in this context? and (d) What key words and/or phrases are used to tell the story? Thematic

7 categories were determined inductively and in concert with the conceptual framework. I used themes and participant quotes to present the study’s findings as a series of overlapping creative non-fiction storied accounts.

The synthesis of study data was an iterative process. I examined and compared threads and patterns within and across categories. I referenced prior research to place the study’s findings in conversation with issues raised by the broader literature. This permitted me to determine the broader implications of this research and present various practical and research-related recommendations for Black mothers, school officials and scholars. I further enhanced the study’s trustworthiness by searching for variation in the understanding of Black women’s motherwork and their relationships with schools. I reviewed findings with colleagues and participants. Academic colleagues and fellow writers provided me with invaluable feedback. Their feedback contributed to the structuring of the storied accounts and dissertation chapters.

1.5 Assumptions

My experiences and background as a cisgender heterosexual woman of African Caribbean heritage and a Program Coordinator at the Toronto District School Board inform my assumptions on Black motherwork and parent-school relationships. My identities and experiences contributed to seven primary assumptions:

1. Like Walcott (2019), Sharpe (2016), Brand (2001) and other Black scholars in Canada, I take the stance that Atlantic chattel slavery and its afterlives are still unfolding. Hartman (2008) explains, “Black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, impoverishment” (p. 6). The extensive work by Black scholars upholds my belief that slavery and its afterlives continue to shape the experiences of Black mothers in Toronto.

2. The network of women tapped to support the study is intrinsic to the cultural makeup of study participants. I initially solicited support from Black mothers within my own network. My network comprises mothers who also self-identify as being of African

Caribbean heritage. The women, in turn, spoke with members of their African Caribbean network to secure study participants. So, although the study was open to all possible African descended Canadian populations of mothers living in Toronto, all participants asserted their Caribbean heritage during the interviews.

3. African Caribbean mothers living in Toronto endure discrimination and systemic barriers in the school system as well as in society at large. Sexism, racism, classism, and xenophobia (amongst other forms of discrimination) inform all aspects of African Caribbean women's everyday life in Toronto, especially our access to formal (and public) employment, civic engagement, and social services. This assumption is based on my experiences as an African Canadian mother of Caribbean heritage.

4. Black Canadian mothers want their children to achieve high academic success in inclusive, safe learning spaces that are committed to Black children’s physical and emotional health. This assumption is guided by a prominent parent engagement principle that says all parents want the best for their children.

5. Both Black mothers and school officials appreciate the importance of authentic parent- school partnerships. This assumption is based on the premise that good schools become even better when parents are engaged.

6. Black mothers exercise agency, authority, and authenticity in their children’s education. This assumption is guided by my past work as an elementary classroom teacher in a Toronto school where I witnessed Black mothers advocate for their children’s access to and engagement in high quality learning.

7. Professional judgement is an integral part of the Ontario public education system. School officials enjoy varying degrees of autonomy (as there are limits placed by legislation and policy) in their implementation of the curriculum. This assumption is based on agreements outlined in Ontario’s School Boards Collective Bargaining Act negotiated by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

1.6 The researcher

I am a Canadian mother of African Caribbean heritage. I am the descendant of Africans who were enslaved in Jamaica. In order to appreciate my position as a Black Canadian motherwork scholar of Caribbean heritage, it is important for me to detail my family’s Canadian migration story. In 1955, Canada implemented the West Indian Domestic Scheme to mediate the movement of predominantly working-class African Caribbean women into domestic services across the country (Crawford, 2018; Henry, 1968; Lawson, 2013). The West Indian Domestic Scheme reflected pervasive racist and sexist ideas that deemed African Caribbean women as best suited for domestic work regardless of their skills, qualifications and interests in other areas (Crawford, 2003). It was through this Scheme that my grandmother and other African Caribbean women migrated to Canada in the early 1960s. In Canada, African Caribbean women, like my grandmother, were relegated to work as domestics and nannies in private white middle-class households and hotels, or as cooks, cleaners, and health-care aides in public institutions (Crawford, 2003). In addition to Canada, Jamaica along with other Caribbean nations benefited from this export of female labour "through market affiliation with Canada and from remittances sent home by domestic workers" (Daenzer, 1997, p. 85).

Crawford (2003) reminds us that African Caribbean women were not passive victims in this interaction. Many were household heads and saw migration as a way to escape poverty, unemployment, and limited opportunities in their home countries (Crawford, 2003). My grandmother and other African Caribbean women saw migration to Canada as a temporary strategy to support their families and households back home. At the time, to qualify to work in Canada, domestics were required to be aged 18 to 35 and without dependents (Henry, 1967; Lawson, 2013). Some African Caribbean women, my grandmother included, concealed their motherhood identity in order to secure entry into Canada (Crawford, 2003). Familial status, despite being a requirement, was overlooked by some Canadian officials and private employment agencies tasked to fill the country’s demand for domestic workers (Crawford, 2003; Daenzer, 1997). As a result, my mother and her brothers were left behind in Jamaica and raised by a network of grandmothers, aunts and uncles. Years later, as a teenager, my mother would undertake her own migration journey to Canada and reunite with her biological mother in Toronto.

1.7 The historical context

My family’s migration to Canada added to the longstanding and diverse Black Canadian communities, some of which stretch back to the beginning of settler colonialism in the country (James, 2010). Canada’s institution of slavery began in the early 1600s and was abolished throughout British North America in 1834 (Aladejebi, 2016). The enslavement of African peoples in early Canada informs the experiences of Black mothers currently living in Toronto. By positioning my family’s migration story within the historical context, we gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which slavery along with early social, economic and educational segregation in Ontario upheld a system that affixed Black women into the lowest levels of Canada’s racial, gendered, and class hierarchies (Aladejebi, 2016). Early Black women’s forced subordination and their ensuing resistance continue to characterize the lived experiences of Black mothers in present-day Canada.

In the late eighteenth century, Black communities in Ontario increased in number (Aladejebi, 2016). Aladejebi (2016) ties this influx of Black people in the province to the enactment of a series of legislative bills in Ontario and in the United States. In 1793, slavery was further entrenched in the United States with the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act (Tobin, 2007). This act detailed American slaveholders’ rights to recover escaped enslaved persons and penalize those who assisted (Tobin, 2007). While the United States increased restrictions on enslaved and free Black populations, Aladejebi (2016) notes that the province of Ontario began gradual abolition through the ratification of the Abolition Act. The 1793 Abolition Act aimed to “prevent the further introduction of slaves and to limit the term of contract for servitude within [Ontario].” The Act prevented the importation of enslaved Black persons into Ontario and freed the children of slaves within the province after the age of twenty-five. The enactment of both the Fugitive Slave Act and the Abolition Act in the same year encouraged formerly enslaved and freeborn Black people to settle in Ontario (Aladejebi, 2016; McLaren, 2003; Winks, 1997).

Black Ontarian communities endured hostility from white settlers and faced anti-Black racism by the colonial state. Black Ontarians were refused accommodations in hotels and taverns, and resided in separate isolated communities (Aladejebi, 2016; Riddell, 1924; Winks, 1997). Black women were relegated as labourers, domestics, and servants in white

11 households. White settlers perceived and treated Black Canadians as morally inferior and of a subordinate class (Aladejebi, 2016). Even after the emancipation of enslaved people of African descent in 1834, Black Canadian communities continued to face discrimination, especially within the education system. School trustees implemented measures, such as changing school district boundaries and removing Black students from schools (Prentice, 1977). Such practice by school officials further limited Black communities’ access to education and ensured racially segregated schools (Prentice, 1977). By 1850, the Common School Act, which was supported by Chief Superintendent of Education Ryerson, was used to institutionalize the establishment of separate schools for Black communities. While there were occasions where Black children were permitted into public schools, Aladejebi (2016) explains that Black children were often isolated within classroom spaces. More often than not, Aladejebi (2016), Cooper (1991) and Winks (1997) contend, Black children were not allowed into public schools and were required to attend separate Black institutions.

Black mothers and families organized in response to the exclusion of their children from public schools by creating their own institutions with little assistance from the government or white school officials. For example, Black mother and teacher Mary Ann Shadd Cary and community mother and educator Mary Bibb opened schools in Ontario to accommodate Black students who were excluded from public schools. These Black separate schools received inadequate supplies and were underfunded (Aladejebi, 2016; Cooper, 1991; Knight, 1997; Rhodes, 1998).

The still living legacy of slavery in Canada continues to inform current experiences of Black mothers and their children not only in public schools, but also in society at large. Whether recent immigrants like my family or descendants of people who were enslaved in Canada, Black mothers in Ontario live a shared present-day experience of anti-Black racism. This overview of Black communities’ early experiences in Canada illustrates the continuum of anti-Black racism in the Ontario education system and society at large, as well as captures the ongoing resistance to oppression led by Black mothers.

1.8 The researcher’s professional and academic journey

By the time my sister and I were born, my family (sister, parents, cousins, grandmothers, uncles, and aunts)—along with others from the Caribbean—settled in Scarborough, a former municipality amalgamated into the city of Toronto. My extensive network of kin and fictive kin came together and supported my dream of becoming an elementary teacher. My family engaged in well-established practices of mutual aid, like alternative saving networks (which Jamaican’s call paadna), community kitchens and communal child-rearing, all with the goal of supporting my dream to become a teacher in a country where its histories of settler colonialism and the enslavement of Africans continue to prevent Black people from fully participating in all aspects of society (James, 2010).

With much support from my family, I completed my Masters in Teaching at the University of Toronto. Throughout my two-year masters’ program, I was the only Black person in my cohort. I craved professional and personal settings made up of people from my own African Caribbean communities. Upon completion of my graduate program, I secured employment as an English teacher for the French Ministry of Education in Guadeloupe, a French overseas department in the Caribbean. In Guadeloupe, I was mentored by school and system leaders who grounded their leadership and personal identities in their African Caribbean heritage. While living in Guadeloupe, I deepened my connection to the Caribbean through extensive travel within the region, enrolling in traditional African Caribbean dance and drumming classes, as well as learning Créole. In Guadeloupe, I witnessed the ways that African Caribbean languages, like Créole, can be formally taught in public schools in support of French language acquisition. I returned to Toronto after a year to begin my professional career as a classroom French teacher. My first teaching assignment was in an elementary school where the overwhelming majority of students and much of the staff self-identified as Black immigrants. African and Caribbean languages, like Creole, Patois, Somali, Twi and Ahmaric, were spoken alongside and even intermingled with English on the playground, classrooms, and hallways.

I embarked on my doctoral journey curious about school-family relationships. In the elementary schools where I taught, I was intrigued by the ways that Black mothers connected with their children’s schools. My doctoral journey not only involved coursework

13 and research, but also included getting married, purchasing a house and securing a Program Coordinator position at the Toronto District School Board. Towards the end of my doctorate, I gave birth to our son. I bring to the inquiry process practical and personal experiences as a school official and Black mother.

I start this dissertation with the personal to position this research, and myself, within the realities of Black life in Canada. The “autobiographical example,” explains Saidiya Hartman, “is not a personal story that folds onto itself; it’s not about navel gazing, it’s really about trying to look at historical and social process and one’s own formation as a window onto social and historical processes” (Saunders 2008b, p. 7). The personal is woven throughout this dissertation “to tell a story capable of engaging and countering the violence of abstraction” (Hartman, 2008a, p. 7)".

I agree with Bloomberg and Volpe (2008), “the same experiences that are valuable in providing insight could serve as a liability, biasing your judgment regarding research design and the interpretation of findings” (p. 42). In addition to my assumptions and theoretical orientation made explicit at the outset of the study, throughout this process I remained committed to engaging in ongoing critical self-reflection by way of journaling, dialogue with professional colleagues, receiving feedback from academic advisors, and connecting with community members.

1.9 Rationale and significance

The rationale for this study emanates from my desire to uncover ways to strengthen the relationships between Black communities and schools for Black children’s academic success and wellbeing. I acknowledge the significant role of Black mothers in their children’s lives and understand the authentic engagement of Black mothers in schools as important for Black student success. Increased understanding of the complexities of Black motherwork and its implications on school-parent relationships may contribute to the co- creation of schooling spaces where Black mothers and their children can realize their full potential. This research adds to the literature on how families, especially Black ones, form relationships with schools for the success of their children.

Grounding this study in the arts, namely storytelling, is of utmost significance to me and members of Black communities. As an African Caribbean mother whose lineage connects to rural Jamaica, storytelling plays a central role in the passing of knowledge. In my family and culture, stories are used to ask and answer questions, impart wisdom, and reimagine futures. For example, my mother and grandaunts would tell cultural stories like Anansi the Spider folktales to convey lessons and encourage collective meaning-making.

Arts-informed research provided me with the opportunity to centre African and African Caribbean knowledges as valid and essential to research. My doctoral program requires students to complete courses in quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Topics of Indigenous ways of engaging in research processes were not broached in any of my doctoral courses. In 2015, I attended the launch for Dr. Onuora’s book, Anansesem: Telling Stories and Storytelling African Maternal Pedagogies. Onuora, a recent University of Toronto graduate now living in Jamaica, introduced me to arts-informed methodologies and how such methodologies can be used to affirm our identities as African Caribbean mothers. By identifying as an arts-informed narrative researcher I am affirmed not only as a desirable thinker, but as a necessary innovator within the academy along with the Black mothers who participated in the study.

1.10 Definitions of key terminology used in this study

Anti-Black Racism ─ “Anti-Black Racism is defined here as policies and practices rooted in Canadian institutions such as, education, health care, and justice that mirror and reinforce beliefs, attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination towards people of Black- African descent. The term ‘Anti-Black Racism’ was first expressed by Dr. Akua Benjamin, a Ryerson Social Work Professor. It seeks to highlight the unique nature of systemic racism on Black Canadians and the history, as well as experiences of slavery and colonization of people of Black-African descent in Canada” (Black Health Alliance, 2018).

Black ─ For the purpose of this study, Black refers to individuals of African heritage who may also self-identify as Black demographically. These individuals may include, but are not limited to, those of North American, African, or Caribbean descent. In this dissertation, African and Black are used interchangeably.

Black Motherwork ─ “Black motherwork is a political enterprise that assumes as its central aim the empowerment of children. Black motherwork is concerned with how mothers, raising Black children in a racist and sexist world, can best protect their children, instruct them in how to protect themselves, challenge racism, and, for daughters, the sexism that seeks to harm them” (O’Reilly, 2004, p. 1).

Family ─ The [Ontario Human Rights] Code defines “family status” as “being in a parent and child relationship.” In this study, this can also mean a parent and child “type” of relationship that is not necessarily based on biological or legal ties, but might be based on care, responsibility, community, kinship networks and commitment. Examples include (formal and informal) fostering, stepparenting, community parenting, othermothering, people caring for aging parents or relatives with disabilities, and families headed by people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or two-spirited (adapted from Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2020).

Mother ─ In this study, mother is grounded in an African-centred tradition of kinship networks (see the works of Onuora, 2012, 2015; Nzegwu, 2006; Oyewumi, 2000 for more extensive discussion on the concept of community/othermothering in parts of Africa). Examples of mothers include community mothers, othermothers, aunties, and grandmothers (amongst others) who work and care for children who may or may not be biologically or legally theirs. Although the mothering practices of women formed the scope of this study, it is vital to recognize that not all mothers identify as women.

Parent ─ In this paper, the term parent recognizes a type of parent-child relationship grounded in care, responsibility, community, kinship networks, and commitment (Onuora, 2012 & 2015). This relationship is not contingent on biological or legal ties. For this paper, caregivers and community parents who care for children not biologically or legally their own are examples of parents.

School officials ─ The Family and Educational Rights and Privacy Act (2015) defines school officials as those employed by, on contract with, or who volunteer in a school. Superintendents, school administrators, teachers, school social workers, cafeteria workers, custodians, as well as support and clerical personnel are examples of school officials.

Women-centred support networks ─ A group of women who leverage cultural, social, emotional and political capital to help one another.

1.11 The organization of the dissertation

This dissertation is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduced the problem and the purpose of the study. The chapter outlined the rationale and significance of the study, along with the research approach. In this opening chapter, I also located myself in the study and discussed my assumptions.

Chapter 2 presents the theoretical frameworks grounding the study. The chapter provides an overview of African Indigenous, Black feminist and motherwork frameworks guiding the study. These frameworks are positioned as integral to understanding Black women's motherwork and their relationships with school officials. The chapter culminates with a description of the conceptual framework.

Chapter 3 explains the research design undertaken for the study. The chapter focuses on the method for data collection and the comprehensive process used for the data analysis and synthesis. The chapter details the use of arts-informed narrative methodologies and African traditions of storytelling to present study findings as a series of overlapping creative non-fiction stories.

Chapter 4 describes the roles of study participants, the audience, and previous scholarship when reading the storied accounts. The chapter centres on the structure of the stories and the ways in which it brings together multiple research traditions (i.e., storytelling, literary arts, as well as formal qualitative and quantitative scholarly work) to investigate Black women’s motherwork and their relationships with school officials.

The study findings are organized into three chapters. Chapters 5 through 7 present study findings as a series of creative non-fiction stories. Each story places participants’ voice, previous scholarship and reader reflection in direct dialogue. Chapters are organized around the study’s research questions. The stories in chapter 5 tackle ideas around the complexities of Black motherwork as activism. Chapter 6 focuses on the impact of Black women’s motherwork on their relationships with one another and school officials. Chapter 7

17 captures Black mothers’ use of women-centred networks to affirm and deepen their educational leadership practices.

The final chapter presents conclusions and implications. The chapter puts forward recommendations to Black mothers, school officials, and Canadian researchers. The chapter concludes with my personal reflections on undertaking this study.

Chapter 2 A Note on Frameworks

The purpose of this arts-informed narrative study was to explore with 10 Black Canadian mothers their conceptions of Black motherwork and its impact on their relationships with school officials. Specifically, I sought to understand how Black women’s motherwork informed how they navigate their relationships with one another and school officials. To carry out this study, it was necessary to complete a critical review of the theories framing the research. The review was ongoing throughout the study's data collection, data analysis, and synthesis phases.

This chapter introduces the theories underpinning the study:

 African Indigenous;

 Black Feminist Thought; and

 Motherwork frameworks.

This chapter also presents the conceptual framework.

2.1 African Indigenous framework

In her article African Indigenous Knowledge: Claiming, Writing, Storing, and Sharing The Discourse, Wane (2015, p. 29) stresses the importance of acknowledging the following at the onset of one's examination of African Indigenous frameworks:

 People of African ancestry are not homogenous and typify cultural diversity.

 Some common elements exist between them.

 African Indigenous knowledge systems and traditions have been subjected to different forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism and consequent distortion.

 African cultural resource knowledge is neither frozen in time nor space.

An African Indigenous framework recognizes that knowledge and its methods of investigation are connected to a people’s history, land, cultural context and worldview (Wane, 2005). This framework contends that worldviews inform the ways in which knowledge is sought, critiqued, and understood. An African Indigenous framework

18 19 maintains that knowledge is not an externalized single Truth to be attained, nor a scientific Truth to be proven (McDonnell, 2012). Rather, knowledge resides and shifts within the spirits of individuals, communities, and lands (Dei, 2011; McDonnell, 2012; Nyamnjoh, 2004).

African Indigenous knowledges, which form the core of the framework used for the study, are experiential and based on a worldview and culture that is largely relational. A person becomes human in the midst of others and seeks both individual and collective harmony (Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013; Sarpong 1991; Sarpong 2002). In this vein, acquisition of knowledge is collective and community-oriented (Wane, 2005). Central to African Indigenous knowledges is an orientation to a ‘collective ethic’ where survival of the group derives from interdependence and interconnectedness (McDonnell, 2012; Mkabela 2005; Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013).

Literary works by Pio Zirimu and Ngugi Wa Thiongo demonstrate the fundamental role of orality in African Indigenous frameworks. As a system, African Indigenous knowledges are characteristically oral and passed from generation to generation in the context of everyday community living and activities (Mkabela 2005; Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013; Wane, 2015). Its complexities are expressed in communal ceremonies and rituals, such as storytelling, proverbs, folktales, recitation, sport, poetry, riddles, praise, songs, dance, music, and other activities (Dei et al., 2000; Elabor-Idemudia, 2000; Kashope Wright, 2000; Turay, 2000; Wane, 2000a). Lebakeng (2010) reminds us that Indigenous frameworks of knowledge are not static and undergo “a continuous process of experimentation, innovation and adaptation” (p.25). African Indigenous frameworks have yielded results and contributions that have been discounted by many (Dei et al., 2000; Wane, 2005) and looked down upon relative to Eurocentric models of knowledge production (Dei et al., 2000; Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013; Wane, 2005). Colonial institutions continue to mischaracterize Indigenous frameworks as simplistic and not amenable to the systematic rigour of scientific investigation (Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013).

An African Indigenous framework is used in this study as it serves as a platform to further challenge colonial representations of African Indigenous cultures and knowledges. The framework supports the study's objective to, as Dei, Rosenberg and Hall (2000) write,

“rupture the present relationship between 'valid' knowledge and 'not valid’ knowledge, [as well as] introduce 'indigenous knowledges' as legitimate ways of knowing that are both dynamic and continuous” (p. 5).

Considering that culture is the ‘lens’ through which a person perceives, interprets and makes sense of their reality, an African Indigenous framework provides this study with grounding to investigate motherwork and its relationships with schools from the perspectives of African Caribbean mothers living in Canada. Research viewed through the lens of African indigeneity affords Black peoples worldwide with a framework through which to reclaim values, practices, beliefs, and the ontological underpinnings that continue to shape our existence and sustain us as whole communities (Daniel, 2005; Onuora, 2015). My lineage connects to rural Jamaica where meaning-making continues to be understood as communal work. African Indigenous knowledge systems align with the ways in which my family and I understand ourselves and the world around us.

2.2 Black Feminist Thought

African Indigenous frameworks are not without limitations and are subject to critical analysis. As Dei (2011), Onuora (2015) and McDonnell (2012) warn, Indigenous knowledge systems can reproduce sites of disempowerment for women. Dei (2011) stresses that when engaging with Indigenous frameworks we must do so in ways that contribute to deconstructing and questioning sites of oppression. Like scholars before me (Collins, 1986, 1987, 2000; hooks, 2007; James, 1999; Lorde, 1982, 1997, 2007, Massaquoi & Wane, 2007; Onuora, 2015), my work centres Black women’s practice, thinking, and theorizing. Black Feminist Thought allows for this study to critically engage with the manifestations of patriarchal domination present even within African Indigenous knowledges.

At the end of the twentieth century, writings by African American theorists, like bell hooks' Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) and Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (2000) helped to usher a shift in post-modern feminist thought. Such theorists advocated for politics of empowerment focused on the complex and nuanced lives of Black women. These American theoretical frameworks have influenced a growing body of work by Black feminists in Canada. Black Canadian research (scholarly, literary, visual, and performative)

21 contributed to an explicit theory of Black Feminist Thought in Canada that prioritized Black women’s everyday life and thinking.

Like in the United States (Patricia Hill Collins, 1986, 1987, 2000), Canadians have critically explored Black women’s social location, activism, and self-determination within a country that continues to be shaped by its practices of colonialism and slavery. Literary works by Dionne Brand (2001), Afua Cooper (2007), Notisha Massaquoi (2007), Njoki Nathani Wane (2007), D’bi Young (2007) along with others have long articulated the lives of Black women in Canada. These Black Canadian thinkers express the complexities of lives produced by the intersections of race, class, nationalism, culture, gender, language, and sexuality.

Black Feminist Thought, in Canada and abroad, demands the critical study of Black women's mothering experiences. As such, Black Feminist Thought provides this study with a framework to identify, question, interpret, and reimagine the work in which Black Canadian women engage. This framework also illuminates the nuanced ways that Black women’s motherwork informs our relationships with members of our informal networks as well as with formal institutions like schools. Black Feminist theories not only grounded this study, but also deepened my own understanding of the ways in which structures and systems inform my lived experiences as a Black woman researcher and educator here in Canada.

2.3 Motherwork

Feminist theorists Sara Ruddick (1989) and Adrienne Rich (1986) have propelled the study of mothering and motherwork internationally. These early American scholars explored mothering as a site that affords women opportunities for agency. Ruddick (1989) argues that the work of mothering “demands that mothers think” and “out of this need for thoughtfulness, a distinctive discipline emerges” (p. 24).

In Canada, feminist thinkers continue to politicize mothering as work of resistance. Canadian scholars such as Andrea O’Reilly (2004), Notisha Massaquoi (2007) and Njoki Nathani Wane (2007) document the preserving, nurturing, and healing aspects of Black motherhood. O’Reilly (2007), a professor at York University’s School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, traces Toni Morrison’s theory of African American mothering as

22 articulated in her work. Black mothering is central to Black feminist theories, and motherhood is a persistent presence in Morrison's work. Examining Morrison’s novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea O’Reilly (2007) illustrates how Morrison builds upon Black women’s experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to theorize a Black motherwork that is, in terms of maternal identity, role, and action, radically different from the motherwork prescribed in the dominant culture. Black motherwork, according to Morrison and other Black feminists, is an act of resistance, essential to Black women’s fight against racism and sexism, and propels our ability to achieve wellbeing for ourselves, our children, and our community (O’Reilly, 2007).

Scholarship dedicated to Black maternal thinking and practice is spearheaded by Black Canadian women. Black Canadian thinkers like Onuora (2012, 2015), Perryman-Mark (2000), Flynn (2000), and Henwood (2000) amongst others use storytelling and narratives to investigate the interconnections between the scholarly and motherly work of Black Canadian women. Such Canadian scholarship archives the longstanding African-centred tradition of women-to-women networks that Black mothers draw on for support. Education researchers, such as Dolana Mogadime (2000) and Adwoa Ntozake Onuora (2012, 2015) contribute to this body of literature by joining feminist pedagogies with the motherwork of Black Canadian women. In so doing, these education researchers further support this study's aim to deepen learning associated with Black Canadian women who engage in the work of mothering.

Motherwork frameworks are essential to this study’s investigation of the ways that Black mothers use women-centred support networks to navigate their relationships with the school system. Motherwork frameworks enable me to fuse scholarship on Black motherwork with that of educational leadership and policy. Ultimately, motherwork frameworks provide insights needed to interpret and articulate how we, Black women, understand, practice, and leverage motherwork in our daily life in Canada. Motherwork scholarship forced me to understand my own maternal practice to my two-year old son and a fourteen-year old goddaughter as communal work spanning Africa, the Caribbean and Canada.

2.4 Conceptual framework

The ongoing review and critique of the literature and pilot research data, combined with my own insights, determined the study’s conceptual framework. The study’s conceptual framework directed the research process, informed the methodological design, and influenced the data-collection instruments. As suggested by Bloomberg and Volpe (2008), the conceptual framework acts as a sort of “repository for the data that were collected, providing the basis for and informing various iterations of a coding scheme” (p. 50). This framework provides an organizing structure both for reporting study findings as well as the analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of these findings. In this way, the conceptual framework was a “working tool” and revised throughout the research process.

In the book, Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart, Andrea O’Reilly (2004) documents Morrison’s theory of Black motherwork. Morrison’s framework on Black motherwork is concerned with the empowerment of the Black mothers themselves, their children, and their communities. Wanda Thomas Bernard and Candace Bernard (1998) define empowerment as, “naming, analyzing, and challenging oppression on an individual, collective, and/or structural level” (p. 46). Morrison’s maternal theory comprises four interconnected aspects: (1) communal mothering, (2) motherline, (3) homeplace, and (4) site of power.

Communal mothering is a formal or non-formal arrangement to care for children. Communal mothers (i.e., othermothers, community mothers, and transnational mothers) take care of children who are not necessarily biologically theirs. This form of parenting is indigenous to African communities (Wane, 2000b) and remains a present-day staple practice in the African diaspora preserved through enslavement and immigration. This form of communal parenting is revolutionary as it opposes the idea that parents, especially biological mothers, should be the only child rearers. Communal mothering often transcends geographical borders and state documentation. Communal mothering advocates for a form of parenting where mothering is understood as collective work.

Motherline is an aspect of Black women’s motherwork that centres communal learnings and knowledge systems. Black mothers pass on narratives about women’s physical, psychological and historical triumphs. This transmission of intergenerational knowledge,

24 values and worldviews serves to teach Black mothers and their children self-love, leadership and “an astute opposition to oppression” (King & Ferguson, 2011, p. 24).

Homeplace is an aspect of Black motherwork that seeks to establish a site where the agency of Black mothers and their children is nurtured. In the face of social, race, class and gender oppression, Black mothers create a homeplace (site) where Black children and their families are affirmed and subvert oppressive systems.

Site of Power is a place, spanning time and space, where Black mothers and their children come together and engage in acts of resistance. Black women’s motherwork provides a foundation for Black women’s activism. Black women’s feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their networks stimulate a more generalized ethic of care where Black women feel accountable to all the Black community’s children.

Table 1 Conceptual Framework

Heeding Bloomberg and Volpe's (2008) advice, the categories of the conceptual framework are derived from the study's research questions as outlined in the first chapter. Each conceptual category includes descriptors drawn from the literature, pilot study findings, as well as my own experiences as a Black mother. The first research question seeks to

25 determine participants’ conception of Black women’s motherwork. The following conceptual categories capture participants’ responses to this first inquiry:

 Communal Mothering

 Homeplace

 Motherline

 Site of Power

The second research question aims to identify the ways in which Black women’s motherwork shapes their relationship with school officials. The conceptual framework articulates Black motherwork as educational leadership. The description accompanying each conceptual category highlights how the multiple facets of Black women’s motherwork inform their leadership identity and frame their relationship with one another and school officials. The final research question concerns the obstacles and opportunities faced by Black mothers in their relationships with school officials. The category descriptors provided an overview as to how women-centred networks help Black women navigate oppressive social, political and economic systems.

Bloomberg and Volpe (2008) stress the iterative nature of the conceptual framework. Bloomberg and Volpe (2008) warn, “You should be aware, like so many aspects of the dissertation, that the [conceptual framework] takes time to develop. [...] You will go through various iterations until you finally arrive at a workable, tight conceptual framework for your study” (p. 46). During the course of data collection and analysis, I expanded, edited and deleted descriptors within each of the major categories. In fact, some conceptual categories were removed, while others were added. The conceptual framework was thus continuously revised and refined.

Chapter 3 Research Methodology

This arts-informed study investigated the relationship between Black mothers and school officials. A better understanding of this phenomenon equips educators and policymakers with a more informed perspective when engaging with Black families. The study addressed three research questions: (a) What is Black women’s motherwork? (b) How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationships with school officials? (c) How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials?

This chapter describes the study's research methodology and includes discussions around the following areas: (a) rationale for research approach, (b) description of the research sample, (c) summary of information needed, (d) overview of research design, (e) methods of data collection, (f) analysis and synthesis of data, (g) ethical considerations, and (h) issues of trustworthiness. The chapter culminates with a brief concluding summary.

3.1 Rationale for arts-informed narrative methodology

This study used an arts-informed methodological approach to theorize about the relationships between Black Canadian mothers, their communities of support and school officials. Arts-informed narrative research relies on empirical data informed by the literary genre and comprises personal narration and cultural stories (Onuora, 2012, 2015). I am inspired by researchers-turned-creative writers, like Onuora (2012 & 2015), who participate in meaning-making by storying memories relayed from conversations with participants. For this study, I, much like Onuora, engaged in what Toni Morrison calls “literary archaeology” (Morrison, 1987, p. 112). I use information, descriptions and direct quotations from participants’ transcripts and reconstruct them in order to take readers on a narrative journey through lived experiences recalled from memories (Onuora, 2012, 2015).

African Indigenous people have long used storytelling to articulate our hopes, fears, and dreams (Banks-Wallace, 2002; Klingler, 1997). We embody a rich legacy of using stories to ask and answer epistemological and ontological questions in our own voices (Onuora, 2012, 2015). This study continues the tradition of using stories as sites to nurture “psychic

26 27 self-preservation” (Rodriguez, 2006) and usher social change. Indigenous writers and scholars worldwide articulate the longstanding relationship between storytelling and research. For example, Margaret Kovach (2009), a scholar of Plains Cree and Saulteaux ancestry and a member of Pasqua First Nation located in southern Saskatchewan, declares, “if research is about learning, so as to enhance the wellbeing of the earth’s inhabitants, then story is research” (p. 102). Within academia, arts-informed narrative scholars use storytelling as a medium through which to engage in research. Cole and Knowles (2008) have long promoted the use of arts-informed research in Canadian academia. Through arts-informed research, my dissertation, as Cole and Knowles (2008) explain, intertwines “the systematic and rigorous qualities of conventional qualitative methodologies with the artistic, disciplined, and imaginative qualities of the arts” (p. 59).

This study consisted of storied memories re-created from transcribed conversations with African Canadian women on their mothering experiences and relationships. These storied accounts are organized as three modes: i) personal/self-stories, ii) cultural stories, and iii) metanarratives of cultural groups (Onuora, 2015). Storytelling honoured the experiences of the research participants by using creative imagination “to order, make sense of, and give significance to often fragmented recollections of the past.” In so doing, this dissertation communicates, in a structured, creative, and accessible form, the insights gleaned from the information shared by participants. Arts-informed narrative research helps us understand the individual experiences of participants “as more than a series of disjointed temporal events” (Flood, p. 105) and as part of a larger collective cultural story (Onuora, 2015).

3.2 Description of the research sample

A purposeful sampling procedure was used as it enabled me to yield the most information about the phenomenon under study. Since I sought to locate Black women who engaged in motherwork in Toronto, a snowball sampling strategy, sometimes referred to as network or chain sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002), was employed. Participants were asked to refer other Black women whom they knew to be engaged in motherwork. The inclusion criteria were as follows:

 women that self-identify as being of Black/African descent living in the Greater Toronto Area;

 women who have engaged in motherwork;

 women who have mothered elementary-aged Black children; and

 women at least 18 years of age and competent to formally give consent for the interview.

I acknowledge the diversity within Black Canadian communities. Some African descended Canadians affirm their longstanding presence in Canada across multiple generations, whereas others (irrespective of state documentation) self-identify as immigrants, refugees, or migrant workers. In fact, I belong to a growing Black Canadian population: second and third generation Black Canadians who continue to honour ancestral bonds to our “home country”, while negotiating ideas around our Canadian citizenship. As a child growing up in Toronto, Black communities’ deep-rooted presence in Canada, other than brief discussions about the Underground Railroad during Black history month, was omitted from the Ontario education curriculum and public discourse on Canadian identity. Further, Black Canadian experiences, beyond those of recent Black migrants, were ignored within my own immigrant household. In his groundbreaking book, Black Like Who?: Writing Black Canada, Walcott (2003) highlights the ongoing "absented presence" of Blackness in Canada where Black life is seen as "new," with our vast history often overlooked. Walcott (2003, p. 14) writes:

It is crucial that recent Black migrants not imagine themselves situated in a discourse that denies a longer existence of Blackness in this country. Such a position is an ethical one whereby the recent Black migrant must refuse the seductiveness of a multicultural discourse, which strategically denies a longer Black presence in this country.

Growing up I noticed the irony inherent within this “absented presence” narrative. On the one hand, Black Canadians are outsiders as the prevailing narrative ignores the history and long presence of Black people in Canada (Fatona, 2006). On the other hand, Black people exist within the nation and are often figured as an immediate internal threat in media depictions (Fatona, 2006). Fatona (2006) explains that this narrative positions Black Canadians both as absence and as excess within the nation’s narratives.

I embarked on this study expecting participants to reflect African Canadians’ fluid and complex relationships to the Canadian state and land. It was unintentional that the research sample only comprised 10 cisgender, heterosexual women of African Caribbean heritage. Although unexpected, participants’ Caribbean heritage permitted the study to investigate the nuances and commonalities amongst motherwork practices within Toronto’s African Caribbean communities. Even though participants all self-identified as women of African Caribbean heritage engaging in motherwork, there were differences among them along the following parameters: place of birth, number of dependent children, family structure, marital status, level of education, socio-economic status, age, and occupation. Included in the sample were women who identified as biological mothers, othermothers, and community mothers.

3.3 Summary of information needed

This study focused on the experiences of 10 Black Canadian women living in the greater Toronto area. The information needed to answer the study’s research questions was determined by the conceptual framework and fell into three categories: (a) demographic, (b) conceptual, and (c) theoretical:

 Demographic information pertaining to participants, including place of birth, age, gender, marital status, and family structure.

 Participants' conceptualization of Black motherwork, and how they went about navigating relationships with school officials.

 An ongoing review of the literature providing theoretical grounding for the study.

3.4 Overview of research design

The following list summarizes the steps used to carry out this research. Following this list is a more in-depth discussion of each step.

 Preceding the actual collection of data, a selected review of the literature was conducted to study the contributions of other researchers and writers in the broad areas of motherhood, Black motherwork, parent engagement, as well as educational leadership and policy.

 Following the proposal defense, I acquired approval from the University of Toronto Research Ethics Board to proceed with the research. The ethics review approval process involved outlining all procedures and processes needed to ensure adherence to standards put forth for the study of human subjects, including participants' confidentiality and informed consent.

 Potential research participants were contacted by email and telephone, and those who agreed to participate were sent a consent form by email.

 Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 Black mothers across the Greater Toronto area.

 Interview data responses were analysed within and between groups of interviewees.

 Significant patterns were identified, and findings were reconstructed as storied accounts.

 The current work was compared and contrasted with the broader literature.

3.4.1 Literature review

An ongoing and selective review of literature was conducted to inform this study. Three topics of literature were identified: Black motherwork, parent engagement, and educational leadership. The focus of the review was to gain a better understanding of how participants understood their motherwork, the role of their support networks, and their relationships with school officials. Evidence of the extensive literature is captured in Chapter 4 of this dissertation. Table 2 Literature Review Overview

3.4.2 IRB approval

Following the literature review, I developed and successfully defended a proposal for this study that included:

 the background/context, problem statement, purpose statement, and research questions outlined in Chapter 1;

 the conceptual framework included in Chapter 2; and

 the proposed methodological approach as outlined in this chapter (Chapter 3).

3.4.3 Location and recruitment

The study centres a makeshift salon located in The Woods1 housing co-operative, a ten- story residential building located in the east end of Toronto. Tania2, a thirty-six-year-old Black mother, operates an informal hair salon from her subsidized unit at The Woods. Originally from Barbados, she has lived at The Woods for the past eight years. Tania is president-elect of the co-operative and assumes a leadership role in accepting new members to the building. Clients, many with ties to the Caribbean, retain Tania’s services for cornrows, twists, locs, weave installations, and custom wigs. Tania’s salon does not have fixed hours of operation and requires clients to call or text to secure their hair appointments. Tania relies on Instagram posts and referrals to advertise her services. Over

1 This is a pseudonym. 2 This is a pseudonym.

32 the past seven years, Tania’s salon has provided her with the income to financially help women and their children in her network when needed. For example, Tania has loaned and given money to mothers in the building to secure tutoring services and literacy resources for their children.

Tania braids my hair a couple of times a month at her salon. Her home is filled with Black mothers who live in the same co-operative and surrounding areas. Black Canadian scholar Dr. Cheryl Thompson (2009) calls women who do hair out of their homes, like Tania, kitchen beauticians. In her article, Black Women and Identity: What’s Hair Got to do With It?, Thompson acknowledges the significant historical, economic and political roles that these women and other Black hair care workers play in shaping Black Canadian life.

Tania’s salon is not just a place where Black folks come to get their hair done. Instead, the salon represents a space where Black people convene to further live out Black life in Canada. At the salon, women cook traditional Caribbean meals and clean while listening to soca and dancehall. Children at the salon huddle in corners of the apartment to practice the latest dance routines and gossip about playground happenings. It was usual for me to observe a group of children hunched over a textbook on a Sunday evening working together to complete a school project. The salon plays such a central role in the lives of many of the participants and community that it is positioned as a character throughout this dissertation.

While getting my hair braided, I witnessed the ways that fellow Black mothers and their children congregated in Tania's apartment, sought her leadership, and enacted familial duties. Tania's position as the community's kitchen beautician led me to post recruitment flyers in her makeshift salon to solicit participation in the study (see Appendix A for recruitment material). Tania also distributed the recruitment flyers to her customers. All study participants come from this housing co-operative and the surrounding area. By engaging participants who live either in the same housing co-operative or nearby, I was able to interview Black mothers who draw on one another for support.

3.4.4 Consent process

The recruitment flyers were posted throughout the informal hair salon (see Appendix A). Potential participants contacted me via email and telephone. I responded to their inquiries by emailing them the consent form (see Appendix B). Such material provided potential participants with information regarding:

 eligibility criteria;

 the intent of the research;

 criteria on interview location;

 what they are being asked to do;

 potential benefits and risks; and

 how their information will be used.

I also responded to any specific questions about the research by email and telephone. These steps helped potential participants make an informed decision about their participation. Informed consent was an ongoing process. Throughout the study, I continued to respond to questions (whether verbal or written) that arose about the study and their involvement with it. Throughout the study and even upon completion, participants (as outlined in the consent form) had the opportunity to withdraw. At any time, participants were able to request that any information, whether in written form or audio file, be eliminated from the project and immediately destroyed. No participants withdrew from the study.

3.4.5 Semi-structured and in-depth Interviews

In her book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals, Saidiya Hartman (2020) argues that research centring the lives of Black women and girls must "grasp their beautiful struggle to survive, glimpse their alternative modes of life, [and] illuminate their mutual aid and communal wealth" (p. 38). To do so, Hartman concludes, requires researchers to esteem Black women and their friends as thinkers, planners, and storytellers. Banks-Wallace (2002) maintains that data collection instruments rooted in African oral traditions enable researchers to capture the theories within the stories recounted by Black women participants. Hartman's and Banks-Wallace's advocacy for Black women’s storytelling

34 cemented this study's use of the semi-structured, in-depth interview as the primary method for data collection.

Kvale (1996) describes the qualitative research interview as an “attempt to understand the world from the subject's point of view, to unfold the meaning of peoples' experiences, to uncover their lived world…” (p. 1). Patton (1990) similarly claims, “qualitative interviewing begins with the assumption that the perspective of others is meaningful, knowable, and able to be made explicit” (p. 278). Creswell (1994), Marshall and Rossman (2006), and Denzin and Lincoln (2003) affirm that a major benefit of collecting data through individual, in-depth interviews is that they enable the researcher to record a person's perspective of an event or experience in their own words.

In this study, the interview method engaged participants as storytellers and elicited rich, thick descriptions. The semi-structured, in-depth interview permitted participants to control the flow of conversation and decide which aspects of an issue to emphasize (Banks- Wallace, 2002, p. 420). Participants asserted their position as storytellers while I became what Banks-Wallace (2002) calls the storytaker (story listener). The interview provided participants with opportunities to evoke feelings and memories of what it is to be a mother of African descent living in Toronto across time and space within the research setting. Further, the interview method allowed me to interject and ask clarifying questions. Goss and Barnes (1989) remind researchers that such interactions between storyteller and storytaker are common elements of African and diasporic African storytelling. Participants used the interjections to provide clarifying information and ensure the receipt of their message.

I leveraged my lived experiences as a Black Caribbean mother living in Toronto as a way to establish trusting relationships with participants. I understood Black Canadian’s distrust in engaging in research tied to institutions. Black communities, dating back to their early interactions with public institutions, have been marred with violence and harm throughout the research process (REDE4 Black Lives: Research, Evaluation, Data Ethics, n.d.). As such, James (REDE4 Black Lives: Research, Evaluation, Data Ethics, n.d.) stresses the importance of conducting research that is ethical, beneficial, and relevant to the health and wellbeing of peoples of African descent in Canada. At the beginning of the interview,

35 participants and I explored the possible ways that my research on Black women’s motherwork would benefit Black communities and further support Black mother leadership. For example, we discussed the ways that Black mothers sharing and capturing our stories could strengthen solidarity and organizing amongst Black women.

Although interviews have certain strengths, there are various limitations associated with interviewing. Not all people are equally forthright in sharing their experiences with those they are not familiar with; thus, interviews require skill on the part of the researcher. Interviews are not neutral tools of data gathering. I took steps, as explained later in this chapter, to ensure that the interaction between participants and the context in which they took place (Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Schwandt, 1997) were welcoming, affirming, and built trust.

3.4.6 Interview guide

For my dissertation, I interviewed 10 women that identified as being of African descent living in the Greater Toronto area. The women all engaged in motherwork. I used the study's three research questions as the framework to develop the interview questions. Matrices were constructed to illustrate the relationship between this study's research questions and the interview questions as they were being developed. My supervisor and colleagues were then asked to review the interview questions and provide feedback. The final interview guide is included as Appendix C.

3.4.7 Interview process

I received individual emails and telephone calls from prospective participants stating their interest in the study. I responded to their emails and calls by inviting their participation, providing them with a copy of the consent form and requesting a convenient date and time for a face-to-face interview. I sent confirming emails to the 10 women who agreed to be interviewed. Before the interview commenced, the interviewee was asked to review and sign a university consent form required for participation in this study (see Appendix B). Eight interviews were conducted face-to-face and two were done via telephone. All interviews were tape recorded in their entirety. I began all interviews by self-identifying as a woman of African-Jamaican ancestry raised in east end Toronto's Caribbean community.

For the face-to-face interviews, a welcoming environment was established for the participants through the procurement of tea and snacks (e.g., crackers, muffins, biscuits, etc). Interviews were scheduled around participants’ work and childcare responsibilities. Interviews were conducted at an agreed upon location to mitigate participant travel. All face-to-face interviews took place at the participants’ homes. Participants were able to move around and rearrange seating to better suit their needs. In fact, I cooked with one participant and on two occasions participants braided my hair during the interviews. Each interview lasted approximately 45 to 60 minutes. Upon completion of the interview, the audio tape was transcribed verbatim.

3.5 Methods for data analysis and synthesis

The challenge throughout data collection and analysis was to make sense of large amounts of data, identify significant patterns, and reconstruct findings as storied accounts. For support, I relied heavily on Banks-Wallace’s (2002) article, Talk That Talk: Storytelling and Analysis Rooted in African American Oral Tradition, Bloomberg and Volpe’s (2008) book, Completing Your Qualitative Dissertation: A Roadmap from Beginning to End, as well as Butler-Kisber’s book, Qualitative Inquiry: Thematic, Narrative and Arts-informed Perspectives (2010). I attended monthly virtual workshops focused on research methodologies and data analysis facilitated by Dr. Kerry-Ann Escayg, a professor at the University of Nebraska. The free workshops were geared for Black women studying the field of education in doctoral programs across North America. I also completed an expressive writing course with professor Guy Allen, the University of Toronto’s professional writing and communication program coordinator. I participated in Writing While Black community workshops organized by Whitney French. Whitney French asks Black Canadian writers, "How do we tell our stories by magnifying our dignity in the everyday?" Not only did these resources provide me with a map for data analysis and synthesis, they also helped me create community with fellow Black women researchers and writers.

Although stories are the foundation of qualitative research, the development of qualitative methods for data analysis and synthesis grounded in African storytelling traditions remains largely unexplored by researchers. In the article, The Substance of Things Hoped for, the Evidence of Things not Seen: Examining an Endarkened Feminist Epistemology in

Educational Research and Leadership, Dillard (2000) urges the research community to recognize the validity of Indigenous epistemologies. Dillard (2000) writes:

[The research] community might be ready to examine more culturally Indigenous ways of knowing research and enacting leadership in the academy. In this way, such voices are provided legitimization, not of their existence, but as analytical, conceptual and representational tools that explicate the deeper meanings of the very bases of educational research..., its ontologies, epistemologies, pedagogies and ethical concerns” (Dillard, 2000, p. 661).

Banks-Wallace addresses this call to action by developing a comprehensive analytic process, rooted in diasporic African oral traditions, for collecting and interpreting stories shared during in-depth interviews (Banks-Wallace, 1998, 2002; Banks-Wallace & Parks, 2001). Banks-Wallace inspired me to reimagine her process in ways that reveal the arts as central to the analysis, synthesis and presentation of data.

For this study, I used Banks-Wallace’s (2002) process as a foundation to develop a framework for the analysis and synthesis of research findings into creative non-fiction short stories. This analytic process enabled the study to reveal the depth of participants’ lived experiences and the ways in which those experiences inform their motherwork and relationships with school officials. The study’s method for data analysis included the following:

A. locating the interviews within the historical context and cultural norms,

B. demarcation of boundaries for individual stories,

C. thematic and functional analysis of stories,

D. grouping stories according to themes and functions,

E. comparison of story themes and functions across participant interviews

F. restructuring participants' memories into storied accounts, and

G. reviewing stories for conspicuous absences and silences.

3.5.1 Locating the interviews within the historical context and cultural norms

Hartman (2020) affirms the necessity for those engaged in the study of Black women and girls to listen to and read intently their stories. Hartman (2020) describes the analytic process she undertook when investigating the histories of Black women and girls. She writes, “It required me to speculate, listen intently and read between the lines...” (p. 56). I heeded Hartman’s suggestions and, as part of the analysis process, I listened intently to audio recordings of the interviews. Through intent listening, I made provision of the historical context and cultural norms underlying the study. The social-cultural-political context in which a study is conducted influences story creation, telling, and interpretation (Etter-Lewis, 1993; Goss & Barnes, 1989; Hurston, 1990; Livo & Rietz, 1986; Mishler, 1986). I transcribed each interview and assigned pseudonyms to participants. The process of transcribing and reading the transcripts solidified, challenged, and expanded my initial grasp of the historical context and cultural norms that shaped the interviews. As suggested by Banks-Wallace, I documented directly onto the transcripts references made by participants to specific historical events and cultural conditions. The following are some of the events and conditions revealed throughout the analysis process:

 The West Indian Domestic Scheme (1955)

 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (2001)

 History of Black beauty culture in Canada

 African Caribbean traditions on death and mutual aid

 Ontario welfare system

 Special Education policy in Ontario

Not only did locating the interviews within historical and cultural norms support the interpretation of participants’ memoried accounts, it also informed the study’s literature review.

3.5.2 Demarcation of boundaries for individual stories

Banks-Wallace (2002) reminds researchers that a crucial component of the analysis process is to define a story in a manner consistent with the population under investigation. Stories consist of narrative and dialogue. A narrative is a running account of the sequence

39 of events or plot, while the dialogue captures discussion (Livo & Rietz, 1986). Analytic methods used by many qualitative researchers place more significance on the plot (Mueller, 1999; Polanyi, 1985). In fact, Mishler (1986) argues that researchers frequently suppress or selectively delete dialogue deemed to be unrelated to a particular storyline of interest to the research. Conversely, dialogue is a defining feature of African oral storytelling traditions. It is not just what is said but how it is said that determines the meaning of a story (Collins, 2000; Goss & Goss, 1995; Stewart, 1997). In order to analyse the data, I had to establish story boundaries that were consistent with participants' Caribbean experiences. For this study, temporal and spatial boundaries were used as the guides to distinguish one story from another in each interview. These boundaries indicated when the participant talked about an event outside the present context (Livo & Rietz, 1986). I identified keywords used by participants, noting how the words were said, to denote story boundaries. Some keywords included:

 “At the time…”

 “What happened was…”

 “That reminds me of…”

 “Let me tell you about a time…”

 “As I told you…”

 “Now that I think about it…”

 “This happened when…”

 ”For instance…”

3.5.3 Thematic and functional analysis of stories

Thematic and functional analysis focused on the text of the story as told by the participant- storyteller (Banks-Wallace, 2002). Banks-Wallace (2002, p. 416) presents researchers with questions to guide the analysis of stories told by participants during in-depth interviews: (a) What is the point of the story? (b) What function does this story serve in this context? and (d) What key words and/or phrases are used to tell the story? For this study, I used the aforementioned questions to inform the thematic and functional analysis of the stories shared by participants during the interviews.

Thematic categories were determined inductively and in concert with the conceptual framework. Hartman (2020) recounts the ways in which researchers often pathologize the stories shared by Black women. She writes, "[Researchers] fail to discern the beauty and they see only the disorder, missing all the ways Black [women] create life and make bare need into an arena of elaboration" (p. 23). When determining the thematic categories, I continued to honour participants as thinkers and prioritized key words and phrases they used to tell their stories. Identifying these key words and phrases provided me with insights into the “embodied context of the [story]teller’s world” (Sewall, 1998). Understanding why specific words and phrases were chosen to describe an event or convey an idea, as well as how the words were said, was critical in ensuring the correct interpretation of participants’ stories (Cannon, 1995; Etter-Lewis, 1993; Hine, 1989; Hurston, 1990). Examples of key words and phrases used by participants when telling their stories included:

 gran/granny/grandma; friend, sister, aunt, godmother; take care, help out, support;

 back home; Caribbean, island; culture;

 advice, talk through it; guide; figure out;

 confidence; safe; happy

Like Hartman (2020), I “broke open” the stories by listening to and reading intently memoried accounts shared by participants. I paid attention to participants' reactions when they told particular stories. To further help me "read between the lines" and discern the stories’ meaning, I noted in the transcript margins personal feelings elicited when listening to and reading the storied accounts. In so doing, I created an audit trail documenting how I centred participants' experiences and put them in conversation with the literature when deciding thematic categories. The analysis of participants' stories led to the development of the following categories:

 communal mothering;

 motherline;

 site of power; and

 homeplace.

3.5.4 Grouping stories according to themes and functions

Banks-Wallace’s process for analysing stories rooted in African oral traditions calls for the grouping of participants’ stories into themes. I analysed each identified story shared by participants in the interviews separately. For each participant, I created a Venn diagram labelled with the thematic categories (communal mothering, motherline, site of power, and homeplace). I reviewed each interview transcript, focusing on the stories shared. For each participant, I titled their stories and grouped them into thematic categories on a Venn diagram. The Venn diagram allowed me to highlight the ways a participant’s story addressed multiple themes. The Venn diagrams were housed in a virtual folder that I created for each participant.

Table 3 Black Motherwork Venn Diagram Communal Mothering

Homeplace Motherline

Site of Power

3.5.5 Comparison of story themes and functions across participant interviews

I created a master Venn diagram for the study. Similar to that of the participants’, the master Venn diagram was labelled with the thematic categories. I referenced participants’ diagrams and plotted the titles of each story collected across interviews onto the master chart. I highlighted stories that were emotive and addressed the questions guiding the

42 study. I created a chart outlining how each highlighted story connected to the study themes and answered the research questions.

3.5.6 Restructuring participants’ memories into storied accounts

Banks-Wallace (2002), Collins (2000), Goss (1995) and Stewart (1997) write of the prominent role dialogue figures in African storytelling traditions. With the aim to prioritize participants’ voice and their relationships with one another, study findings were presented as a series of interconnected stories. Each short story began as dialogue. I took direct quotes from the interviews and used creative imagination to order participants' recalled memories as dialogue. I then included description as a way to reinforce the meaning captured in the dialogue. Description also enabled me to set participants' stories within a social, political and historical context. I consulted interview transcripts and, on two occasions, reconnected with study participants for additional details. This process of centring dialogue revealed the importance of who was saying what to whom, and how they were saying it. The creative and imaginative qualities of literary arts ensured that study findings reflected the emotive and accessible qualities of African oral storytelling traditions.

3.5.7 Reviewing for conspicuous absences, silences and talkback

I presented study findings as a series of interconnected storied accounts. I read the completed short stories aloud and listened for conspicuous absences and silences. I noted directly onto the written stories openings for readers, scholars and artists to talk back to these silences. I drew on the African tradition of call-and-response (antiphony) to elicit audience engagement with study participants. My aim was not to recreate "actual" African oral traditions in written form, but rather to infuse a sense of orality into the stories. In so doing, the reader, current scholarship, and policy became active contributors in the analysis and synthesis process. Toni Morrison (1984), a vocal proponent of Black art, describes her work as follows:

If my work is faithfully to reflect the aesthetic tradition of Afro-American culture, it must make conscious use of the characteristics of its art forms and translate them into print: antiphony, the group nature of art, its functionality, its improvisational nature, its relationship to audience performance” (pp. 388-89).

Call-and-response patterns, developed in spirituals and play and work songs, align with African Indigenous worldviews that define art as communal work involving the artist and audience (Sale, 1992). This dissertation stresses the value of audience performance. Footnotes are woven throughout the storied accounts and signal to readers when to participate in the call-and-response. These footnotes contain quotes from policy, artists and scholars that address the ideas, absences or silences presented in the story. The footnotes demand readers reflect on the ideas put forth and to share their own responses. This approach encourages multiple ways of seeing and interpreting and enables readers to witness the complex (and often contradictory) daily life of Black mothers living in Toronto.

The communal and performative nature of the stories presented in this dissertation assume that the story will be repeated and changed with every telling. As Sale (1992) explains, “the success of the telling, and so of the particular story, resides not so much in its similarity to the original as in its individual nuances and its ability to involve others” (p. 42). The stories presented in this dissertation thrive on audience performance and improvisation, which work together, as Sales (1992) argues, to ensure that the art will be meaningful to the community.

3.6 Ethical considerations

For this study, as in any research study, ethical issues relating to the protection of participants were paramount ( Berg, 2004; Bloomberg & Volpe, 2008; Marshall & Rossman, 2006; Merriam, 1998; Pring, 2000; Punch, 1994; Schram, 2003). This was especially pertinent as this study involved participants from a marginalized group—Black Canadian women—whose narratives have been repurposed and used by institutions to cause harm to themselves, their children, families, and communities. Bloomberg and Volpe (2008) remind researchers that the central issue with respect to protecting participants is the way in which the information is treated. Although it was anticipated that no serious ethical threats were posed to any of the participants or their wellbeing, this study employed various safeguards to ensure the protection and rights of participants.

First, informed consent remained a priority and ongoing throughout the study. Written consent to voluntarily proceed with the study was received from each participant. Participants, as outlined in the consent form (see Appendix B), had the opportunity to

44 withdraw at any time from the study. Second, participants' rights and interests were considered of primary importance when choices were made regarding the reporting and dissemination of data. Names and/or other significant identity characteristics of the sample were confidential. Data (audio files, written notes and email addresses of participants) was stored electronically on my personal laptop. A valid username and security code were needed to turn on the laptop. Additionally, a valid email address and security code were needed to access all data and information related to the study. Identifiable data stored on my laptop was encrypted at all times and decrypted during my use.

3.7 Research goodness, trustworthiness and limitations

This study acknowledges the power of stories to reach a diverse audience and uphold language as a way to gain insights into phenomena (Cole & Knowles, 2008). I am grounded in a framework which affirms that “personal and cultural stories, when placed within the broader socio-political context become vitally important in theorizing about collective, self-knowledge and the empowerment of African peoples” (Onuora, 2015, p. xxii).

A repeated question that arises in arts-informed narrative research is about the veracity of the stories (Butler-Kisber, 2010). Mishler (1990) argues:

Focusing on trustworthiness rather than truth displaces validation from its traditional location in a presumably objective, non-reactive, and neutral reality, and moves it to the social world—a world constructed in and through our discourse and actions, through praxis (p. 420).

In narrative work, Butler-Kisber (2010) explains, the distinction between fact and fiction is not a pressing issue. Rather, of more concern are ethical practices throughout the research process that attend to (1) the relational nature of the work, (2) the positioning of the researcher in the inquiry, and (3) the focus on issues of power and voice (Butler-Krisber, 2010; Clandinin & Connolly, 2000). As such, the stories comprising this dissertation took cues from Cole and Knowles (2008) around research goodness, as well as Lieblich et al. (1998)’s work on evaluating narrative research:

Intentionality, intellectuality, purpose and knowledge advancement refer to how the text communicates its intellectual purpose (Cole & Knowles, 2008). According to Onuora (2015), arts-informed narrative research provides opportunities for transformation, revelation, or intellectual and moral shift. Echoing Onuora, Lieblich,Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber (1998) maintain that the text’s purpose should resonate with the audience and add insights to their lived experiences. The stories presented in this study are more than just good stories (Cole & Knowles, 2000 p. 65). This study acknowledges the meaning-making that occurs through Black mothers’ everyday work, stories and memories. To honour these often-subjugated knowledges is to intentionally give, as Onuora (2015) states, “epistemic saliency to African women who have and continue to contribute to our survival as a community” (p. xxix). This study forces readers to consciously acknowledge the contributions of Black mothers to private, public and academic spaces in Canada.

Researcher presence and reflexive self-accounting require narrative researchers to ask: How am I present throughout the text? How do I engage in an explicit reflexive self- accounting? In this dissertation, the intertwining of cultural and personal stories with the broader literature forced me to draw connections between my experiences, as a mother, daughter and school educator, with the stories of participants. Through writing this research account, I reflected on deeper meanings of my own motherwork and educational leadership, as well as the experiences of the ten women with whom I spoke.

Aesthetic form, quality and appeal note the relationship between the artistic process, form and research goal (Cole & Knowles, 2008). The quality of arts-informed narrative research relies on evaluating the ability of the artistic process to serve the research goals. Lieblich et al. (1998) emphasize the need for the text to have an ‘aesthetic appeal’. This study combined creative non-fiction and storytelling to examine the relationship between Black mothers, their communities of support and school officials. Through storytelling, I invited scholars and practitioners, as well as readers residing outside formal academic institutions to participate in meaning-making from the stories participants shared with me.

Methodological commitment, principled process and procedural harmony refer to the ways in which the researcher makes transparent the research process (Cole & Knowles, 2008). Showing the research process, Mishler (1990) and Butler-Kisber (2010) contend, helps

46 readers examine the ‘trustworthiness’ of the analysis and interpretations, as well as helping other researchers in their own work. This chapter details the research methodology and includes discussions around the study’s research design, data collection, analysis and synthesis. The sharing of the research process illustrates to readers the ways that storytelling and African Indigenous knowledge systems preserve the integrity and emotive quality of participants’ experiences.

Communicability and issues of audience are concerned with how the text resonates with and is accessible to the audience (Cole & Knowles, 2008; Lieblich et al., 1998). This study used emotive language, along with cultural and personal narratives to relay key themes from in-depth interviews with participants. Rather than inundate readers with academic jargon, I use emotive stories to connect the audience to the themes under study.

Contributions centre readers’ assessment of the text. Readers are encouraged to ask: In what ways does the text demonstrate theoretical and transformative potential? How does the text inform and provoke action? Lieblich et al. (1998) encourage readers of narrative research to reflect on the ways the text relates to, or works against, existing research and theory. Onuora (2012) states, “The stories’ framework starts from the premise that there are theories in stories” (p. xxxii). Through the personal and cultural stories presented in this study, readers explore and gain insights to knowledges embodied by Black women who engage in motherwork. Additionally, this study contributes to the use of storytelling in the context of mothering and educational leadership. This work also reveals possibilities for future researchers to explore the relationships between schools and members of Black Canadian LGBTQQIP2SAA communities.

To further enhance the trustworthiness of this study, I also used the below strategies:

 I clarified my assumptions in the first chapter.

 I looked for variation in the understanding of the phenomenon and sought instances that might challenge my emergent findings.

 I reviewed and discussed findings with colleagues and participants to further ensure the reality of the participants was adequately reflected.

 I documented my procedures and demonstrated that coding schemes and categories have been used consistently.

 I maintained an audit trail (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) that chronicled the evolution of my thinking and documented the rationale for decisions made during the research process.

 Provided detailed, rich description of the participants and the context to demonstrate relevance to the broader context (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2008; Schram, 2003).

3.8 Chapter Summary

This chapter provided a detailed description of the study's research methodology. An arts- informed narrative methodology was employed to illustrate the phenomenon of the relationship between Black mothers, members of their support network and school officials. The participant sample was made up of 10 purposefully selected Black women. Data was collected primarily from individual interviews. The data were reviewed against literature as well as emergent themes.

A review of the literature was conducted to devise a conceptual framework for the design and analysis of the study. A process analysis grounded in African oral storytelling traditions enabled the key themes from the findings to be identified. Through a comparison with the literature, interpretations and conclusions were drawn, and recommendations were offered for both educational practice and further research. The intent of this study was to contribute to the advancement of family-school relationships, reflective practice, and policy measures that successfully connect schools with Black families for Black student success. It is hoped that this study will be of value to school officials and policy makers who seek to improve their relationships with Black families. In addition, this study aims to help Black mothers further understand their personal experiences with school officials within a broader socio- political context.

Chapter 4 Presentation & Analysis of Findings

This arts-informed study explored the relationship between Black mothers and school officials. A better understanding of this phenomenon will equip policymakers and school- based practitioners with a more informed perspective when designing and facilitating partnerships with Black women and their families. The following three chapters present key findings obtained from 10 in-depth interviews with Black mothers. In these interviews, participants shared narratives that explored the following questions:

 What is Black women’s motherwork?

 How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationships with school officials?

 How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials?

The following chapters compile participants’ experiences and perspectives into overlapping storied accounts. The stories provide a robust account of participants’ daily interactions with informal women-centred networks, as well as with formal institutions. These storied accounts are organized as three modes: i) personal/self-stories, ii) cultural stories, and iii) metanarratives of cultural groups. The stories demonstrate the interconnectedness of the participants' motherwork. Direct quotations and descriptions derived from study interviews are woven into the stories and illustrate to readers the complexity and richness of Black women’s motherwork and their relationships with school officials.

The following three chapters present key findings that emerged from the study. These key findings include:

 Black motherwork is activism.

 Black mothers understand school officials as community parents.

 Women-centred networks engage in motherwork to help Black mothers assume leadership roles in their relationships with school officials.

48 49

4.1 Structure of stories

Chapters five through seven present key study findings in the form of storied accounts. The stories, guided by African oral traditions, are structured as a call-and-response. This structure invites the reader to consider the ways that multiple research traditions (i.e., storytelling, literary arts, as well as formal qualitative and quantitative scholarly work) come together to reveal Black women’s motherwork and their relationships with school officials. The stories require the reader to reflect on and disclose their own responses to the ideas put forward by participants, current policies, literature, and previous academic studies. This format honours the arts-informed methodology and centres research around Black mothers’ stories, all while illustrating links to previous scholarship.

4.2 Structure of footnotes

Similar to other arts-informed researchers, like Onuora (2012; 2015), I use footnotes extensively throughout each story. Onuora (2012; 2015) uses footnotes to contextualize data-driven stories about African Canadian maternal pedagogies. In this dissertation, footnotes go beyond simply situating the stories within scholarship. The footnotes capture the many voices, ideas, and structures that inform Black maternal life in Canada. Footnotes are used throughout each story to invite readers to participate in an improvised call-and- response where scholarship, audience reflections and participants’ voices are placed in dialogue. The footnotes further situate the stories in the historical, political and social context of participants’ everyday life as Black mothers in Toronto.

The content of the call-and-response, as captured by the footnotes, documents the extensive literature review undertaken for the study. This critical review revealed three topics of literature (Black motherwork, parent engagement and educational leadership) and was ongoing throughout the data collection, data analysis, and synthesis phases of the study. To conduct this selected literature review, I used multiple information sources, including books, dissertations, Internet resources, professional journals, and periodicals. These sources were accessed through services available at the University of Toronto Libraries and the Toronto Public Library. Virtual databases used included ERIC, ProQuest, Digital Dissertations, and the Toronto Public Library’s OverDrive. No specific delimiting time frame was used around which to conduct the search.

As captured in participant stories, Black life in Canada is noisy, overwhelming, and complicated. The use of the footnotes reflects the complexities of Black motherwork. Visually and in content, the structure prioritizes the voices of the participants. I invite readers to engage in the call-in-response in ways that are authentic to them. Readers are welcomed to read the footnotes separately from participants’ stories or alongside.

4.3 Story insights

Each story concludes with Story Insights. Story Insights draws on the components of the conceptual framework (communal mothering, motherline, homeplace and site of power) to analyse, interpret, and synthesize the findings. The elements that framed the analysis were (a) connective threads among the experiences of the research participants; (b) ways in which participants understand and explain these connections; (c) unexpected as well as anticipated relationships and connections; (d) consistency or inconsistency with the literature; and (e) ways in which the data go beyond the literature. Story Insights are organized by the following analytic categories:

 Conceptions of Black motherwork in Toronto’s African Caribbean communities (Research Question 1)

 The influence of Black women’s motherwork on their relationships with school officials (Research Question 2)

 Black mothers as educational leaders (Research Question 3)

4.4 Cast of main characters

For this arts-informed study, I conducted 10 in-depth interviews. All participants identified as cisgender women of African descent who engaged in motherwork and lived in the Greater Toronto Area. Forty percent of participants identified as second generation Canadians from the Caribbean, while 60 percent identified as first generation Canadians from the Caribbean. The stories revolve around a Scarborough cooperative housing building called, The Woods. Scarborough is a former municipality that was amalgamated to the city of Toronto in 1998. Initial recruitment for the study centred a makeshift salon located in The Woods cooperative housing building. Co-operative tenant and president, Tania, operated the salon. Tania distributed the recruitment flyers to her customers.

Participants recruited to the study either frequented the salon or knew a mother who did. Accordingly, all study participants came from this housing co-operative or the surrounding area. By getting participants who live either in the same housing co-operative or nearby, this study was able to focus on Black mothers who drew on one another for support. The following visual depicts the relationship that study participants had with one another, as well as with Tania and her hair salon.

In addition to presenting study findings, the stories comprising this dissertation provide readers with a holistic portrait of the participants. Through story dialogue, interactions between characters and setting descriptions, participants’ identities, relationships and histories are shared with readers in dynamic and authentic ways. In this regard, the stories aim to “show” readers who the participants are, as opposed to “tell”. The following vignettes capture details about the participants that might not be captured or readily evident in the stories:

Tania

Tania was born in Barbados and raised by her mother. At the age of sixteen, Tania migrated to Canada to be reunited with her biological father in Scarborough. Tania has lived in the Woods Cooperative Housing Building for the past 8 years.

At the time of the study, Tania was president-elect of the cooperative. The Ontario Co- operative Corporations Act covers election procedures, as well as lists the leadership roles and responsibilities. The act stipulates that only the members can elect the president with each member having one vote.

As president, Tania prepares and attends board meetings. Tania also ensures the property is well-managed, accepts new members, and makes decisions within the co-op’s bylaws. For the past seven years, Tania has operated a salon from her subsidized unit. Since there are no fixed salon hours, customers are required to call or send a WhatsApp message to secure their appointment.

Kolisha

Kolisha was born in Toronto to Jamaican parents. She has lived at the Woods Cooperative Building for roughly five years with her sons, Nate, Jacob, Isaiah and Zachary. Kolisha goes to Tania’s salon often for braids and sew-in weaves. Tania and Kolisha attended the same high school in Scarborough. Kolisha received a study flyer at the salon and contacted the researcher.

Stacey

Stacey was born and raised in Barbados. She also gave birth to her daughter, Brenda, in Barbados. In her early teenage years, she befriended Tania. Stacey and her young daughter migrated to Canada so that she could attend college. In college, Stacey was diagnosed with a learning disability. Her mother’s older sister, Aunt Marjorie, supported her with the immigration process and assumed the role of othermother in her life, as well as in the life of her daughter. Stacey lives in the Woods Cooperative and is the godmother to Tania’s daughter. Tania shared the study flyer with Stacey. Stacey contacted the researcher to participate in the study.

Marjorie

Marjorie was born in Barbados and raised by her grandmother. She migrated to Canada at the age of sixteen to be reunited with her biological parents. Marjorie neither lives at the Woods nor does she frequent the salon. Marjorie lives in a house in a nearby neighbourhood. Marjorie heard about the study from her niece, Stacey. Stacey provided Marjorie with the researcher’s contact information. Marjorie called the researcher and declared her interest in participating in the study.

Monique

Monique was born in Barbados. As a young child, Monique and her parents migrated to Canada and settled in Scarborough. Monique lives in a house in a Scarborough neighbourhood with her Haitian-born husband, mother in-law, and daughter, Egypt. Monique and her daughter often go to the salon. Monique and Tania have been friends since high school. Monique received the study flyer from Tania. Monique contacted the researcher by telephone to participate in the study.

Tisha

Tisha was born in Jamaica and raised by her grandmother. Her mother left Jamaica when she was a young child to work in England as a nurse's aide. Tisha gave birth to her son when she was a teenager. Tisha migrated to Canada to secure employment and support her family in Jamaica. She initially moved to Canada alone, leaving her son to be raised by her grandmother and uncle. Tisha and her son were reunited in Scarborough following a five-year separation.

Tisha and her son live at the Woods. Although Tisha frequents the salon, she heard about the research from another resident who did not participate in the study. Tisha contacted the researcher to participate in the study.

Lisa

Lisa was born in Jamaica and migrated to Canada as a young child. Lisa was raised by her mother in Scarborough. Lisa lives at the Woods with her son, Mick. Lisa is upfront with her struggles with reading and was diagnosed with a learning disability in college. She is a college graduate and aims to work in a public school setting supporting young students with behavioural needs. As she continues to look for employment at a school, she works as a cashier at a local grocery store.

Lisa and Tania have been friends since high school. Lisa goes to the salon and is an othermother to Tania’s and Stacey’s daughters. Stacey told her about the study. Lisa contacted the researcher to participate in the study.

Kam

Kam migrated to Canada from Jamaica. In Jamaica, she was raised by her aunt. Her aunt in Jamaica continues to play a central role in her life. Kam and her two daughters, Meagan and Chastity, live in a house with Mama Roo. Mama Roo is her friend’s mother and helps Kam raise her daughters. Kam does not frequent the salon. Kam heard about the study from her friend Tisha. Kam contacted the researcher to participate in the study.

Jennifer

Jennifer was born in Canada to Trinidadian parents. She was raised by her mother and grandparents. Jennifer first became pregnant while still in high school. Upon revealing her pregnancy, her mother severed communication and Jennifer moved into her grandparents’ apartment.

After giving birth to her second son, Jennifer was determined to obtain an undergraduate degree from a local university. At the time of the study, Jennifer lived at the Woods with her two sons. Jennifer and Tania attended high school together in Scarborough. Jennifer frequents the salon. Tania shared the study flyer with Jennifer. Jennifer contacted the researcher to participate in the study.

Chantelle

Chantelle was born in Canada to Jamaican parents. Chantelle lives in a house near the Woods. Chantelle attends a local university and is in her final term in the Child and Youth Care program. Chantelle has a son, Paul. Chantelle does not go to the salon. She heard about the study from her friend Jennifer. Chantelle contacted the researcher to participate in the study.

Table 4 Cast of Main Characters

Chapter 5 What is Black women’s motherwork? 5.1 Chapter Introduction

This chapter presents key findings to the question: What is Black women’s motherwork? Through a series of overlapping short stories, this chapter immerses readers in the ways that race, gender, immigration experiences, and class intersect and shape participants’ daily lives as Black mothers in Toronto. Participants described their motherwork as activism and understood such work as integral to the health and wellbeing of Black women and children within their network. Accordingly, the stories in this chapter reveal the ways that participants used motherwork to organize and carry out resistance aimed at particular social context(s) and institution(s). Each story, using illustrative quotations from the study’s interviews, testifies to the nuanced facets of Black women's motherwork.

Each story is followed by a discussion section entitled Story Insights. The discussion sections draw on the components of the conceptual framework (communal mothering, motherline, homeplace, and site of power) to analyse, interpret, and synthesize the findings presented by means of storied accounts. In so doing, these discussion sections couple participants’ narratives with literature to further synthesize findings around Black women’s motherwork and its dedication to group survival and institutional transformation.

5.2 Home(land)

On a summer morning in 2013, Tisha Arlington held her eight-year-old son’s hand and marched into the Montego Bay airport. “Shawn, hurry up,” Tisha grumbled as the pair rushed through the automatic doors. Tisha’s grandmother trudged behind with an aluminum suitcase. The baggage wheels slid across the tiled floor clacking at each dip. Tisha, her grandmother and Shawn nestled beside a telephone booth. Shawn's fingers raced up the silver cord and knocked the receiver from its hook. Tisha clasped her son's arms and

56 57 kissed the spot where his eyebrows met. “I'll send for Shawn when I’m settled3,” she mumbled to her grandmother. The old woman nodded twice. With each drop of her head, the grandmother's thick green glasses slid closer to the tip of her nose.

“I need time to sort things out in Toronto4,” Tisha continued. “I’ll send money as soon as I find work5.” She pushed two braids behind her ears and watched Shawn’s dimpled hands fold into fists. He banged the telephone’s dial pad setting off a chorus of clicks from the booth.

Tisha hoisted the suitcase to her hip and scampered to the departure desk. She bumped into a tourist donned in a floral t-shirt. The tourist let out a baritone squawk, “No problem, Mon!”

*****

Five years later, Uncle Choon dropped 13-year-old Shawn and his great grandmother at the Montego Bay airport. Uncle Choon lowered his cap, revved the rusted Corolla and raced to his morning shift at the bauxite plant. The woman and her great grandson, Shawn, stood outside the airport's main entrance. The wind scattered dark clouds across the sky and shook a row of palm trees lining the path to the airport's door. “I'll call as soon as I reach,” the teenaged boy announced over a growling plane engine flying above the treetops. Clumps of Shawn’s afro peeked out from under his cap.

3 “Transnational motherhood refers to how the meanings of motherhood are rearranged to accommodate spatial and temporal separations" (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997, p. 548). 4 “Women as primary migrants have to reconcile their absence from their children through circuits of affection, caring and financial support that transcend national borders" (Crawford, 2004, p. 98). 5 “For female migrants the lure of working abroad is necessitated by the opportunity to send remittances (which could be in the form of foreign currency, goods, and services) home to support their families” (Crawford, 2003, p. 103).

The old woman slid her green framed glasses up the bridge of her nose revealing a quartet of moles. “I did my best with you6,” she replied. Shawn grabbed his bag, entered the airport and boarded the plane to Toronto.

*****

In the fall, Shawn began Grade 8 at the neighborhood school, a seven-minute walk down Sheppard Avenue from his Toronto co-op building. Just two weeks after his first day, complaints from the school flooded Tisha's telephone and email account7. Teachers whined that Shawn hurled curses and slammed doors8. The hall monitor warned, “He's headed for jail, if things don't change9.” Tisha pled with her son, "Shawn, don't waste your chance at getting a good Canadian education." Following a meeting with Principal Petrazzini and the school social worker, Tisha signed the placement papers10; Shawn would leave his neighbourhood school to attend Rockford Middle School's behaviour program11. Principal Petrazzini assured, “This program is meant for kids like Shawn12.”

*****

6 “African Caribbean women utilized their extended family networks to maintain their families from abroad. Older Caribbean women, usually grandmothers and aunts, nurture and care for displaced children, becoming carriers of culture as other-mothers or [community] mothers, while their female relatives or friends work abroad in order to send money and goods to their households back home” (Crawford, p. 107). 7 “Respectful, ongoing communication and transparency are essential if we are to fulfill our vision of parent engagement. Effective, ongoing communication results in positive and respectful relationships and an appreciation of the roles played by all partners in education. Multiple channels of communication about student progress that connect boards, schools, parents and families, students, and communities need to be in place, and all partners should be encouraged to use them” (A Parent Engagement Policy for Ontario Schools, Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 26). 8 “Black students, as self-identified in the Toronto District School Board’s Student and Parent Census data, accounted for almost half of the expulsions” (Zheng & De Jesus, 2017, p. 3). 9 “[In the Toronto public school system], Black students have a drop-out rate almost twice that of their White peers” (Zheng & De Jesus, 2017, p. 3). 10 “The school board will implement the placement decision either after the parents consent in writing to it or, if the parents do not consent but do not wish to appeal the decision, after the time limit for an appeal has expired” (Identification and Placement of Exceptional Pupils, Ontario Regulation 181/98, Section 20). 11 “Each school will welcome all students, providing an open and inclusive learning environment that recognizes that most students can be served effectively within their community school” (Toronto District School Board, Multi-Year Strategic Plan, 2018, p. 24). 12 “Self-identified Black students with an overall proportion of 14% were over-represented amongst students with Behavioural (36%), Mild Intellectual Disability (33%), Developmental Disability (30%), and Language Impairment (24%) identifications” (Brown & Parekh, 2010, p. 42).

The morning of the new program, Shawn burrowed into his bedsheets. Threads from the linen laced into his afro. From behind his closed bedroom door, Shawn declared, “I don’t wanna go to that new program13. I'm not going to school anymore14.”

“What do you mean you're not going? You mus’ want CAS to take you from me,15” his mother, Tisha, retorted. The woman gazed out the kitchen window, and from her tenth-floor apartment, she tracked the buses as they zoomed from one stop to another.

Shawn cried, “Granny and Uncle Choon didn't make me go to school!”

“I sent money every month,” Tisha yelled. “They were wrong not to take you to school.” She abandoned her window perch and rushed to Shawn’s bedroom.

“You were wrong to leave me16,” the thirteen year old sobbed. He questioned, “What mother leaves her son?”

Tisha boomed, “I never forgot about you. I called. I gave you money. I sent for you, didn't I17?”

Shawn bolted from the bed and struck the door with his fist.

*****

Tisha met Kam on the 102A bus. Every morning, the two women rode the bus to Warden Station, dashed onto the subway and pushed past business-types to secure seats for one

13 “Research [points to] the lack of control students have over their educational placement” (Venzant Chambers, 2009, p. 426). 14 “...the principal of every elementary or secondary school shall report to a children's aid society the name, age and residence of a pupil of compulsory school age who has been habitually absent from or late arriving to school for more than 40 days in a school year without being excused from attendance…” (Student Absenteeism and Protection Act, Bill 198, 2018). 15 “Black mothers have historically been charged with the responsibility of providing education, social and political awareness” (Bernard & Bernard, 1998, p. 47). 16 “Most spoke of the pain of the separation from and loss of their primary carers (mainly grandmothers), but more painful was the traumatic experience of reunion with their mothers who were strangers to them” (Arnold, 2006, p. 162). 17 “Although [transnational mothers] were physically separated from [their children], they maintained mothering ties and financial obligations to them by regularly sending home money. The exchange of letters, photos, and phone calls also helped sustain the connection” (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997, p. 558).

60 another. Once on the train, they swapped stories about their children and reminisced of back home18. “I miss the parties,” Kam sighed. Gold bangles clanged at the rise and fall of Kam's wrist. The bangles, gifted by her aunt the day she left Jamaica, matched the yellow undertones of Kam's brown skin.

“Last time I went to a party in Jamaica, I was sixteen, got pregnant and never saw the guy again19,” Tisha scoffed.

The two friends kissed their teeth.

At Yonge station, the women parted ways. Tisha went southbound to tidy rooms at a nursing20 home. Kam trekked north to her accounting class at York Adult Education Centre.

*****

Kam and her two daughters spent Friday evenings at Tisha’s apartment. One Friday, Tisha and the girls baked pone in the kitchen. The twelve-year-old grated the cassava, while the six-year-old heaped raisins into a bowl. “We only need half a cup of raisins,” Tisha advised.

Kam followed Shawn to his bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled a fine- toothed comb from her purse. Shawn settled on the parquet floor and wedged his back between Kam’s knees.

“Aunty Kam, I want cornrows going straight back,” Shawn described the hairstyle with his hands.

Kam used the comb to part the boy's afro. She tugged and wrapped his hair. Kam crisscrossed the strands of hair into braids running straight from temple to nape. Halfway through, with only four braids remaining, Kam’s hands fell from Shawn’s head and into her

18 “There is a sense in the mind of not being here or there, of no way out or in. As if the door had set up its own reflection. Caught between the two we live in the Diaspora, in the sea in between” (Brand, 2001, p. 20). 19 “Going back home may not be possible or pleasurable for some due to political, economic, and social strife…” (Crawford, 2004, p. 100). 20 “The racialization of Black women's labour from a colonial past has contributed to them being overrepresented in both private and public paid reproductive work, where they engage in, as Dionne Brand calls it, dirty work (e.g. cleaning, washing, feeding, caregiving, etc.) for limited pay” (Crawford, 2004, p. 102).

61 purse. She shuffled inside causing a set of house keys to scrape her wallet’s metal buckle. She pulled a picture book from her purse and handed it to the boy. The book, with a flying brown bird and a straw nest on the cover, belonged to Kam's six-year-old daughter.

“I can't read it,” Shawn muttered.

“I know,” Kam whispered, “that's why we’ll read it together21.”

5.2.1 Story Insights: Communal mothering

Home(land) recounts the migration experiences of a mother and her teenage son. The story spans countries, from Jamaica to Canada, and interrogates non formal arrangements of care for Black children. Throughout the interviews, participants shared personal narratives highlighting the central role of communal mothering arrangements in the lives of Black women and their children. Participants characterized these forms of parenting as revolutionary as they oppose the dominant idea that biological parents, especially mothers, should be the sole child rearers. These formal and non-formal mothering arrangements also extend Black Caribbean motherwork across national borders and expand on notions of home (Anderson 1993; Colen 1995; Crawford 2012, 2018; Daenzer 1993; Glaser 2017; Goulborne 2002; Silvera 1983). Transnational mothering, which encompasses the material and social aspects of care that women migrants give to their children and families from abroad (Anderson 1993; Colen 1995; Crawford, 2018; Daenzer 1993; Glaser 2017; Goulborne 2002; Silvera 1983), played a central role in the lives of all participants in the study and further shaped their understanding of Black motherwork as collective labour not confined to a geographical location.

Throughout the study, participants identified public schools as an oppressive structure. Extensive research by Robyn Maynard (2017), Carl James (2017) and Tana Turner (2017), amongst other African Canadian thinkers, documents and analyses anti-Black violence inflicted upon Black Canadian students and their families. Much like these scholars, participants shared narratives archiving how they and members of their women-centred

21 “Black women’s support for education illustrates this important dimension of Black women’s political activism. Education has long served as a powerful symbol for the important connections among self, change, and empowerment in [Black] communities (Collins, 2000, p. 210).

62 networks used communal mothering to create spaces where Black children are able to heal from injustices endured in the public school system. For example, in the story Home(land), Kam assumed the role of othermother to thirteen-year-old Shawn. Shawn, who is labeled by school officials as violent and unteachable, was slated to attend a special education program. In the story, Shawn rebels against his mother and school officials as they exert control over his schooling. Kam crafts a homeplace in Shawn’s bedroom through the braiding of his hair. By braiding the boy’s hair the way in which he requested, Kam enables the boy to exercise agency over his body in a way he is unable to achieve within Ontario’s education system. The story, Home(land), concludes with Kam teaching Shawn to read when school officials failed to address his literacy needs. Collins (2000), O’Reilly (2004) and bell hooks (2007) argue that members of women-centred networks help Black mothers establish spheres of influence that resist and undermine oppressive structures, such as the school system. Kam, as with the other study participants, embraced a worldview that valued the intelligence, beauty and strength of Black children. Study participants attested to the power that Black mothers and members of their women-centred networks wielded in ensuring the wellbeing and achievement of Black children in Toronto.

5.3 Fried Bakes & Duppies

An eclectic row of fruit trees lined the street: sugar apple, lime, papaya, and pomegranate. Their leaves bowed to the Barbadian sun. Behind a lime sapling stood Aunt Juju’s single- story house. A pair of wood doves flew about its tinned roof and landed on the verandah’s wrought iron grill. The afternoon light spilled through the windows and filled the white kitchen. Juju’s best friend, Stacey, opened and slammed the kitchen cupboards. A yellow headscarf covered Stacey’s dark coils and dipped below her eyebrows. She piled paper bags and glass jars of flour, nutmeg, salt, vanilla, baking powder and sugar onto the table. The ingredients bumped one another spilling bits onto the tiled floor. Tamara, Stacey's ten- year-old goddaughter, joined with a bowl of water and a wooden spoon. Stacey and Tamara sat on black stools and curled over the oak table. They mixed, sifted, and kneaded

63 the ingredients into the ceramic container. The duo sat and chatted as they prepared fried bakes for the evening wake: Aunt Juju’s send-off to heaven22.

“Aunt Stacey, you and Aunt Juju were friends, right?” Tamara asked. Flour sprinkled around the girl's fingers and up her arms. Her dark skin gleamed through the white powder.

“Me, your mum and Juju are more like sisters. Gran23 raised all of us right here in Bridgetown,” Aunt Stacey grinned.

“You must really miss her, then,” Tamara said. Sweat framed the young girl's face. Her once pressed hair bent and curved under the island's heat.

“I miss our morning chats to work the most,” Stacey said with a sigh. “Aunt Juju took a taxi to the courts in Bridgetown and I rode the 102A bus in Scarborough24.” Stacey said as she rose from the plastic stool. She wandered to the window and surveyed the yard of fallen fruit. She grabbed the straw broom leaning on the sill.

“I heard mum on the phone last night,” Tamara said. The little girl’s voice shrunk with each word. “She was talking to pastor. Mum said Aunt Juju killed herself. Is that true?”

“Children have no right in big people business!” Stacey hissed. She swept under the table. The straw bristles scratched Tamara’s toes and knocked the stool’s legs.

22 “The power of Black women was the power to make culture, to transmit folkways, norms, and customs, as well as to build shared ways of seeing the world that insured our survival” (Radford-Hill, 1986, p. 160). 23 “A woman elder who mothers both adult and children assumes community mothering... She assumes leadership roles and she becomes a consultant for her community” (Wane, 2000b, p. 106). 24 “For some immigrants, their transnationality disrupts meta-narratives of nation, nationhood and citizenship. "Here" and "there" are contested for those who maintain ties and connection to more than one place (real or imagined) at the same time. While this fluidity is expansive, it is complicated by negotiating feelings of belonging and not belonging to different locations resulting in an insider/outsider reality” (Crawford, 2004, p. 100).

“They said Aunt Juju won't go to heaven25. Mum doesn't even think we'll see her duppy26 tonight,” Tamara insisted.

Stacey picked at the broom’s handle. “Juju was sick,” the woman said.

“Like how Gran was sick with breast cancer?” Tamara slumped further into her seat.

“Kinda, except her mind was sick,” the woman explained.

Tamara watched her aunt shuffle about the oven door with the broom. The girl asked, “What do ya mean her mind was sick?”

“Her mind was so sick; she didn't know happiness anymore. She had a mental illness.” Stacey wedged the broom between the cabinet and stove. Rice from last night's feast spilled onto the floor. The night before, on that eighth day, the neighbourhood celebrated Juju’s life with song and food. They also gossiped about her death with whispers and stares.

“She should have gone to the doctor27. That's what doctors are for: to make sick people better,” Tamara reasoned.

“She went.” Stacey brushed the pile of rice onto a single tile.

“Well, did the doctor give her medicine?” Tamara gripped the bowl of batter. Dried dough covered her yellow polished nails.

“He gave her tablets. But even with those, she was still sick,” Stacey replied.

25 “The shadow soul [or duppy] usually remains with the family for nine days to ensure that all the funeral rites are completed. Such souls may also stay indefinitely, depending under what circumstances death occurred. Whilst taking their leave from the family they still remain in the land of the living and communicate with them either through dreams or visions” (Watt, 2004, p. 207). 26 “The survival of certain African-influenced ideas and practices was not an accident but instead resulted from continual resistance whereby the women in particular took it upon themselves to preserve certain customs” (Collins, 2002, p. 206). 27 “In keeping with the National Mental Health Policy of Barbados, the process of integrating mental health care with primary health care has started with the provision of community based services within the polyclinics and the general hospital. These services are delivered through once-weekly clinics in 8 polyclinics, 3 satellite clinics and the prison” (World Health Organization, 2009, p. 6).

Tamara closed her eyes and said, “Mum tells me to read Psalm 2328 when the bad takes over my mind.”

“No amount of prayers29 or tablets made her healthy again. It didn't work for Gran. It didn't work for Juju,” Stacey said.

“Why did Aunt Juju give up? Why didn't she just try harder to be happy30?” Tamara begged the woman for answers. Stacey looked down and saw tears gathered around the young girl’s lashes.

Stacey took the broom and circled the table. She moved from one tile to the next. “She didn't give up. Her illness was just too strong,” the woman explained.

Stacey milled about the kitchen. With tear-stained cheeks, Tamara asked, “Do you think people will come see Aunt Juju’s duppy off to heaven tonight?”

Stacey flopped onto the stool. She rested the broom on the floor. “We’ll be there. I’ll tell you stories and sing songs31 about Juju and I growing up in Barbados to help her duppy get to heaven32,” the woman said.

“I miss her,” Tamara admitted. Her tears landed on the table.

Stacey stood and went to the stove. Tamara wiped her face with the palms of her hands and followed behind with the bowl and spoon. The woman poured oil into the frying pan. She turned on the stove. The oil bubbled and popped. Tamara dropped spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan. Stacey and the young girl watched the batter turn golden brown.

28 “[Black Caribbean] women draw on their spirituality to heal after extremely painful experiences and are moved to transform their lives” (Bobb-Smith, 2007, p. 58). 29 “Spirituality was taught to [Black Caribbean women] as a survival strategy, and not necessarily framed as religious practice. Nevertheless, [Black Caribbean women] are aware that spirituality can borrow from religion and thus religious rituals and practices, such as prayer, are lodged in [their] imagination as tools from which to draw strength and courage” (Bobb-Smith, 2007, p. 63). 30 “Controlling images portray [Black] women as overly strong, aggressive and unfeminine” (Collins, 2002, p. 75). 31 “We sing for death, we sing for birth. That’s what we do. We sing” (Saunders, 2008a). 32 “Be it a grandmother, an adopting, non biological mother, a collective of community mothers- any woman who serves as a source of Motherline knowledge constitutes a link in this intergenerational chain. Women who pass on values of an African-centered worldview...are the Motherline” (King & Ferguson, 2010, p. 23).

5.3.1 Story Insights: Motherline

Fried Bakes & Duppies tells the story of a ten-year-old girl struggling to accept her Aunt Juju’s death. The story takes place in Barbados on the final night of the funerary tradition ‘nine-night’. This Caribbean rite of African origins calls on family and friends to assemble at the home of the deceased for nine nights. At these daily gatherings, mourners celebrate the life of their loved one with food, music and storytelling. As the young girl visiting Barbados from Canada prepares fried bakes for the wake, she wonders: Will the circumstances surrounding Aunt Juju’s death prevent her duppy from making its way to heaven? The girl’s godmother, Aunt Stacey, practices cultural work to help her understand Juju’s suicide. Aunt Stacey engages in what Lowinsky (1992) calls passing knowledge through the motherline. Lowinsky (1992) explains, “the motherline is a body knowledge, and birth story and family story and myth...Every woman who wishes to be her full female self needs to know the stories of her motherline” (p. 141). Study findings affirm that Black women's motherwork involves the transmission of intergenerational knowledge. In their interviews, participants maintained that this passing of cultural capital equips Black women and their children to think critically of the society in which they live.

Participants’ narratives of the motherline as a source of activism compliment Sheila Radford-Hill’s (1986) observation that “the power of Black women was the power to make culture, to transmit folkways, norms, and customs, as well as to build shared ways of seeing the world that insured our survival” (p.168) Participants contended that the motherline teaches Black mothers and children how to resist subjugation through self-love, social critique, and a belief in a self-determination that can change the world. Collins (2000), O’Reilly (2004), Trotman (2010) and King (2010), Ferguson (2010), and other feminists suggest that Black mothers' work as cultural bearers is a form of activism that supports Black women and their families’ ability to thrive in North America. Ultimately, Fried Bakes & Duppies conveys participants’ conceptions of Black mothers as social activists who use cultural capital to cultivate self-love and healing amongst Black women and children.

5.4 Three-Ten

Frozen rain knocked against the bedroom window of apartment 310. Sounds from the co- op housing complex leaked into the room. Mommas hustled children to church and buses screeched to next stops: Hurry pickney, we cyaan miss di bus. Church soon start!

Jennifer sat on the bedroom floor. She stretched her legs and rubbed her bare feet against the television stand. Her toes and the stand were both brown with hints of yellow. Dark spots, leftovers from lunchtime curries and stews, marked her jeans. Jennifer cradled a comb, a bottle of coconut oil, and a can of Dr. Miracle’s Hair Gro in her lap. Her schoolbook, Medieval Europe: A Short History, lay at her hip. The metal bedframe stabbed into her back. She twisted against the side of the bed. Ryan hopped from the floor, over her head and landed on the mattress. He leaned against the headboard. Floral bedsheets bunched under his feet. Ryan watched the muted T.V., following each jump, dunk, and crossover. The Chicago Bulls were playing the L.A. Lakers. His baritone grunts and claps cued the goals and misses of the basketball game. On the other side of the room, Ricardo settled into the corner. He squeezed his 30-year old frame between a pile of discarded women’s clothes and the door. He hit the keyboard on his BlackBerry. He snickered and nodded. His eyes remained focused on the cellphone. As with every Sunday afternoon, they waited in Tania’s bedroom for their cornrows, locs and plaits.

Tania, the local hairdresser, strolled past Ricardo. A tattoo of the name Juju circled her ankle. She leaped into the bed and landed next to Ryan.

“Jennifer, whatcha yuh wan’ do wit yur hair33?” The hairdresser squirmed to the edge of the bed. Her shorts inched upwards. She straddled her dark brown legs around her client’s body. Jennifer rested her head on Tania’s bare thighs. She inhaled sweet smells of Keri lotion—the original one, in the blue and white bottle. Escaped drops of water rolled off her coils and down her forehead and landed on the parquet floor.

33 “For [Black women], hair is not just something to play with, it is something that is laden with messages, and it has the power to dictate how others treat you, and, in turn, how you feel about yourself” (Thompson, 2009, p. 80).

“I jus’ wanna look good for school. You know these white people love ask questions about our hair34.” Jennifer snatched the grey towel off the floor and wiped the water from her face.

“You’re in university35 now. I can’t have you lookin’ ratchet. You gonna look classy with these braids.” After years in Canada, Tania found no need to mask her Bajan drawl.

*****

Jennifer and Tania first met in their narrow high school hallway. The one upstairs with large windows overlooking the courtyard. Tania and another girl hurled slews of yuh mahdas at one another. Fists flew and voices rocked. Jennifer's reactions mirrored those of the crowd: they cheered at each strike and gasped at each thump. In the end, Tania stood in triumph. The other sprawled in a stream of blood and tears. Both girls were suspended36. That was Tania’s first week in Canada37.

*****

Jennifer raised the coconut oil to Tania. The glass jar grazed the hairdresser’s knee. She scooped the oil into her palms and rubbed it into Jennifer’s hair. The oil coated individual strands from base to tip. Jennifer lowered the container. Oil vaulted over the rim and plunged to Medieval Europe: “Rules of Courtly Love: He who is not jealous, cannot love.” Jennifer wiped the pages of the book.

Tania tapped her client’s shoulder—a signal for the comb. Jennifer's neck crumpled as the hairdresser raked the comb through her afro.

34 “[A Black woman's hair] style could lead to acceptance or rejection from certain groups and social classes, and its styling could provide the possibility of a career” (Rooks, 1996, p. 6). 35 “Black females [in Toronto] were about one and a half times more likely to confirm university compared to their male counterparts in 2006” (Robson, Anisef, Brown, & George, 2018, p. 50). 36 “[In Ontario] the Safe Schools Act was enacted into law in 2000, which created a set of regulations around the punishment and suspension of students for disciplinary infractions. Not long after the act came into force, a steady rise in suspensions and expulsions was observed in ministry statistics, which climbed yearly” (Robson, Anisef, Brown, & George, 2018, p. 53). 37 “In 2005, the Ontario Human Rights Commission found that the discipline-related policies were being disproportionately exercised against racialized students and students with disabilities (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2005). In 2007, the Safe Schools Act was amended so that expulsions were no longer mandatory and mitigating factors had to be taken into consideration by the principal. This resulted in a steady decrease in the number of suspensions” (Robson, Anisef, Brown, & George, 2018, p. 53).

"You have to keep your head still!”

“Why you have to be so rough?”

Tania used the comb to etch lines onto her client's scalp. Bunches of curls, different sizes and lengths, appeared. She gathered and separated bundles of hair. Dr. Miracle’s Hair Gro38 balanced in Jennifer's palm. Tania dipped her finger in and out the can.

“This will help your hair grow39.” The hairdresser’s fingers ran up and down her client's scalp.

“How long yuh gonna take with Jennifer’s hair? I gotta see my girl tonight!” Ricardo piped from his corner. His eyes fixed on his cell.

“Which girl yuh seeing tonight? You have so many. Don’t act like any of dem special!” Tania snipped. Her jabs didn’t interrupt her hands at work. Every Sunday night, Tania called Jennifer upset that Ricardo didn’t notice her pum pum shorts, pedicure and styled hair. Jennifer responded with uh huhs and you’re too good for him. Tonight, she had no time for one-sided love when a paper on marriage in Medieval Europe was due.

Tania grabbed sections of hair. Jennifer's coils were wrapped over, under and across. Braids developed and designs formed.

A bang followed by muffled screams from the apartment next door seeped into the makeshift salon. Tania’s high school pictures and a mirror rattled against the white wall. The sound of furniture scratching across the floor came next. A man’s roar accompanied a woman’s wail40.

38 “In America, Black hair care (non-natural) is an estimated $1.8 billion to $15 billion industry” (Thompson, 2009, p. 85). 39 “...we are inundated with images of women whose hair is very long, silky, flowing and mostly blonde. In the media, many of the Black women who are glorified for their beauty tend to be women who also have long, wavy hair” (Thompson, 2009, p. 82). 40 “According to police-reported data in 2016, women aged 15-24 present the highest rates of intimate partner violence” (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 2017).

“Tania, what’s going on with your neighbour? She alright? Didn’t she just move up here from Jamaica?” Jennifer loosened from the hairdresser's grip and Ricardo stared at his cell and Ryan watched the basketball game. Tania yanked her client's hair, “Keep your head still. Don’t you wanna look nice for school tomorrow?” Thuds, sobs and shouts grew louder.

“So y’all gonna act like you don’t hear what’s going on next door? We got to do something,” Jennifer flailed her arms.

“That’s none of our business,” Ryan mumbled.

Jennifer turned to Ricardo, “Can’t you go next door? Just ask if everything’s ok. Please.” Tears rushed. Jennifer couldn’t move. She didn’t want Tania to mess up. Her braids needed to look good for tomorrow.

“I’m not getting in the middle of that. Next thing, he comes after me,” Ricardo said still looking at his cell.

Tania weaved in and out of the woman’s hair and Ricardo typed messages on his cell and Ryan cheered at the Chicago Bulls’ win and Jennifer flipped through pages on love in Medieval Europe. Smacks and shrieks shook the bedroom walls.

*****

Jennifer got up and walked to the mirror. It hung between graduation41 portraits and the T.V. She dropped her head and moved it side to side, admiring her braided hair. Jennifer smiled as she mapped out the rows of braids with her fingers. Ricardo scooted between Tania’s legs ready for his plaits. He rested his cell in his lap. His head fell just below her shorts. Ryan gripped the black remote. He scanned channels for another game. The neighbour’s door slammed. Heavy footsteps walked away. A woman’s whimper spilled into Tania’s bedroom in apartment three-ten.

41 “Students who identified themselves as Latin American, Black, or Mixed have lower [high school] graduation rates (76%, 77%, and 84% respectively)” (Toronto District School Board, 2017).

“I’d kill a bastard if he ever beat me like that,” Tania blurted as she untangled Ricardo’s afro.

*****

The next day, Tania and her twelve-year-old daughter, Tamara, stood in front of door 308. Tania knocked. Tamara’s fingers traced circles around the metal knob. A chair shuffled against the floor.

“Sharon, it’s me, Tania, your neighbour and president of the co-op,” Twelve-year-old Tamara hopped from one foot to another. Her pink slippers clapped the ground.

Tania leaned into the closed door, “I know you’re there alone.”

She continued, “tomorrow afternoon, I’m doing my friend Monique’s hair. She’s a social worker42. She works in one of those women shelters43.”

Feet dragged to the door and stopped44. Silence.

“Come by. You should meet her. I can even braid your hair after.” Tania and her daughter turned and headed to their apartment.

42 “There are distinct possibilities in the state’s involvement in addressing violence against women. Research with immigrant and racialized women reveals a need for community-based alternatives in which the strengths of informal support networks are used based on first understanding the contradictions and complexities within communities. Service providers must consider working with members of women’s informal support networks to provide both emotional and instrumental support” (Abraham & Tastsoglou, 2016, p. 577). 43 “The Canadian criminal justice response does not take into account the special vulnerabilities to domestic violence of immigrant and racialized women, which are due to the systemic intersections of their gender with race, ethnicity, class, faith practice, immigration, and social status in Canada. As a result of this, their responses to violence and access to justice and supportive services may be significantly compromised. It is through broader systemic actions and omissions of the Canadian state that discrimination against these women is perpetuated, and their susceptibility to domestic violence increased. For example, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) constructs many women who are entering Canada as being the legal dependents of male sponsors” (Abraham & Tastsoglou, 2016, p. 572). 44 “Black women are reluctant to report their abusive partners/husbands, for fear of Black men being unjustly treated by police officers and the criminal justice system. Those who choose to report abuse are labeled as “traitors to the race,” and face possible isolation and ostracism from their family and friends” (Crawford, 2007, p. 122)

5.4.1 Story Insights: Site of power

Maynard's (2017) book, Policing Black Lives, highlights Black women’s longstanding activism dating from the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple Canadian institutions, such as education, immigration, employment and judicial systems. Hartman (2008) explains, “Black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, impoverishment” (p. 6).

The experiences of Black mothers continue to be a focal point in research within the academy. Researchers like Onuora (2012 & 2015), Byrd (2011) and Green (2011) explore how women mother in the midst of marginalization and impart pedagogies to their children. In particular, Onuora’s (2012 & 2015) work investigates the ways that Black women’s motherwork effectuates cultural, social, and identity consciousness within children who experience social, economic and political barriers as they navigate the Canadian landscape. Unlike prevailing scholarship, this study attested to the ways that Black motherwork engages Black women in a form of collective care that prioritizes Black mothers and other Black women in addition to Black children. Black feminist scholars like Toni Morrison, Stanline James (1999) and Patricia Hill Collins (2000) argue that Black mothers’ commitment to each other and Black children in the face of discrimination recasts their motherwork as social activism. The story Three-Ten captures the ways in which participants engage in motherwork as a form of activism.

Three-Ten takes place in a cooperative housing building in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. It traces the mission of the co-op's president, Tania, whose position doubles as a community hairdresser, to protect Black women within her network from physical and psychological violence. The story attests to participants’ beliefs that the Black mother’s realm of work is not limited to children, but also extends to the care of other Black women harmed by capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Three-Ten explores the ways that motherwork promotes a generalized ethic of care where Black women are accountable to other women in their community. This expanded form of care positions Black women’s motherwork as activism. Black motherwork as activism, Collins (2002) acknowledges,

73 challenges “prevailing definitions of political activism and resistance” that upholds public, official, visible political activity over unofficial, private, and seemingly invisible spheres of social life and organization” (p. 202).

Black women’s activism consists of struggles for institutional transformation. According to Collins (2000), this dimension of Black women’s activism involves efforts to change discriminatory policies and procedures in government, schools, the workplace, the media, stores, and other social institutions. In the study, participants expressed the ways that Black motherwork directly challenged legal and customary rules. In the story Three-Ten, Tania is the president-elect of the housing co-operative and local hairstylist. Her responsibilities as co-op president are limited to chairing board meetings, making a management plan for the year, ensuring the property is well-managed, accepting new members, and making decisions within the co-op’s bylaws. In the story, Tania takes it upon herself to expand her responsibilities as co-op president to include actively accepting Black women as members to the co-op, as well as safeguarding the physical and mental safety of Black women in the building. The story Three-Ten reveals ways that Black Caribbean women are further marginalized in Ontario’s welfare, immigration and justice systems. Tania, along with all other study participants, maintained the necessity to draw on resources and knowledge within Black women support networks to take action against injustices in such systems.

5.5 A Snippet: Conversation & Hair

Brandy’s Place, Apartment 805, The Woods Co-op Building, 7:33 p.m.

On a Friday evening in November, Kolisha's four sons huddled around an iPhone in Brandy’s family room. Each boy, a different shade of brown, shared the same rounded nose and high cheekbones. The two older boys banged on the cell directing an avatar to a stash of two handguns, a grenade, and three assault rifles in the game. The younger two watched, gasping at each turn and dancing at each kill. Brandy's teenage daughter, Mel, gossiped on snapchat from the couch. Her orange-tipped toes tapped the leather cushions and her head leaned into the pillow. The girl shushed, "Boys, keep quiet. You’re messing

74 up my snap story!" Cheers and bickering filled the two-bedroom apartment while the 32- year-old mothers, Brandy and Kolisha, found refuge in the master bedroom.

In the largest bedroom, a white plastic stool branded with grey scuffs stood next to Brandy's queen-sized bed. With a comb in hand, Kolisha dropped onto the stool and planted her bare feet onto the parquet floor. Brandy, armed with a pair of scissors, leaned and snipped at the black threads binding the month-old-weave to Kolisha's hair45.

Brandy: Hold your head still. It’s not easy taking out this weave.

Kolisha: Tania was serious when she did my hair. She sews the weave in so tight.

Brandy: How did it go with CAS46?

Kolisha: The worker came over yesterday. She looked around the place and then we talked.

Brandy: Keep your head down. I gotta cut this part of the weave.

Kolisha: Take your time with my hair.

Brandy: Did she tell you why CAS was called47?

Kolisha: Yup and you won't believe this shit. The school48 complained that I was neglecting Jalani.

Brandy: Are you serious?

45 “The intimacy of sitting close to someone and talking about life while they style your hair is a sense of familiarity many Black people grew up with at home” (Harvin, 2020). 46 Children’s Aid Society 47 “In 2013, approximately 8% of Black children in Ontario were the subject of a child welfare investigation for maltreatment, compared to 5% of White children. This may be driven by high numbers of referrals” (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2018). 48 “African Canadian educators who participated in the consultations emphasized that the duty to report requires that teachers contact child welfare when they have reasonable suspicion of neglect or abuse, and that often because of stereotypes and anti-Black racism, that bar is significantly lower for African Canadian children and youth than it is for white and other racialized children and youth” (Turner, 2016, p. 61).

Kolisha: Remember the other day the school called saying Jalani’s eye was swollen and red.

Brandy: Yeah, the vice principal wanted you to come pick him up.

Kolisha: I told the vice principal that it's just allergies. He gets it every spring. I said put a cold compress on his eye and he’d be fine. It was my first day of work placement49 at the hotel. I couldn't leave over allergies!

Brandy: Did you tell all this to the CAS worker?

Kolisha: Of course, but you know, it's a job to them50 and I’m just another angry Black woman51 who shouldn't be having kids in the first place.

Brandy: Turn your head this way.

Kolisha: Make sure you're cutting the weave and not my hair!

Brandy: Keep your head still, and you won't have to worry about what I'm doing.

Kolisha: I just cried right in front of the worker. The vice principal is a Black woman. I thought she cared about me and the boys.

Brandy: Sometimes, it be our own that hate us the most52.

Kolisha: Ain't that the truth.

49 “Typically, Work Experience students are not entitled to paid vacation days or paid sick leave. If you must miss work due to an illness or a real emergency, you must inform your employer as soon as you become aware that you will not be able to be at work. You will be required to make arrangements to make up lost time, or your pay may be reduced, and you should also make arrangements for documentation (doctor’s note, death certificate, etc.)” (George Brown College, 2018, p. 18). 50 “Participants raised concerns about [child protection] workers who lacked empathy or cultural understanding, or who they thought were blatantly racist” (Turner, 2016, p. 70). 51 “African Canadian mothers, when advocating for themselves and their children [to child protection workers], are often seen as ‘angry Black women’ and their voices are not heard, or worse, are criminalized” (Turner, 2016, p. 70). 52 “All my skinfolk ain't kinfolk” (Zora Neale Hurston)

Brandy: She could be black, orange or purple—she's not living our life. She doesn't understand our struggle53.

Kolisha: The vice principal knows I have four boys. From the start of the school year, I told her that I get no help from their fathers. I've been in her office so many times just to talk— you know like Black woman to Black woman. Told her my struggles with my studies and work and being a single mother. And she still calls CAS54 on me over allergies55. That's some bullshit.

Brandy: That's why we can't chat our business to these people56!

Kolisha: I thought I could trust her.

Brandy: Pass the comb.

Kolisha: I never had to deal with CAS before. I don't wanna lose my kids57.

Brandy: When I lived in London Ontario, one of Mel’s teachers called CAS on me58.

Kolisha: You never told me this.

53 [Black] policy managers like officers and middle managers empowered to execute or withhold racist and antiracist policies can be racist because Black people do have power, even if limited” (Kendi, 2019, pp. 141- 42). 54 “For many Black families [in Ontario], school is the first place concerns about parenting, or problems with a child’s behaviour are raised” (Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, 2019, p. 11). 55 “Teachers are quicker to call CAS when there is a concern about an African Canadian student, while similar concerns about non-Black students would be directed to parents” (Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, 2019, p. 11). 56 “Despite the provisions of any other Act, if a person, including a person who performs professional or official duties with respect to children, has reasonable grounds to suspect one of the following [abuses], the person shall immediately report the suspicion and the information on which it is based to a society” (Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017). 57 “In Toronto, 41% of the children in foster care are Black, even though the Black population of Toronto is only 8%. This means that Black children are nearly five times overrepresented in foster care” (Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, 2019, p. 9). 58 “There are no significant differences in the overall incidence of child maltreatment between White and people of African descent. However, professionals and individuals are more likely to report people of African descent than White to child welfare” (Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, 2019).

Brandy: Imagine proving to a stranger that you’re a good mother. I started to doubt myself. How was I supposed to feel safe in my own home59?

Kolisha: If I could stay home with the boys, things would be so much easier.

Brandy: You put in too much to just turn around and quit school.

Kolisha: You're pulling my hair. Take it easy.

Brandy: I gotta cut this last piece of weave out. Don't move.

Kolisha: I have to make it until the end of the school year. Then, I'll be done with college60.

Brandy: We'll make it. We're a good team.

Kolisha: Without you watching the boys and looking out for me, I could never chase this college dream.

Brandy: The boys don't call me Mama Brandy for nothing!

Kolisha: I got this essay that was due last week. I'm only now starting it. There's not enough time.

Brandy: Tomorrow, send the boys over to watch something on Netflix, while you do your schoolwork.

Kolisha: And people think I'm joking when I call you the co-parent61!

59 “Since sexism delegates to females the task of creating and sustaining a home environment, it has been primarily the responsibility of Black women to construct domestic households as spaces of care and nurturance in the face of the brutal harsh reality of racist oppression, of sexist domination” (hooks, 1990, p. 42). 60 “Black females were nearly one and a half times more likely to attend college than White males. Between 2006 and 2011, this relationship strengthened, with Black females even more likely to confirm college than White males” (Robson, Anisef, Brown & George, p. 50). 61 “...othermothers look after children whom they have no blood relations or legal obligation” (Wane, 2000b, p. 106).

Brandy: Go wash your head. There's shampoo in the washroom. When you’re done, I'll tell you how I got CAS off my back. I made sure the school would think twice about pulling that shit again with me.

Kolisha jumped from the stool, opened the bedroom door, and crept into the hallway. The children, now piled on the leather couch, fixated on the television. Kolisha hurried into the apartment's sole washroom and slammed the door. She leaned into the tub and turned the metal knobs. Warm water gushed from the spout. Kolisha's tears and snippets of black thread from her hair fell into the tub, mixed with the water and swirled down the drain.

5.5.1 Story Insights: Homeplace

The story A Snippet: Conversation & Hair centres the friendship of two Black mothers grappling with a Children’s Aid Society investigation. The story depicts the ways that Black mothers dedicate time and space to organize in the face of racism, classism and sexism. A Snippet: Conversation & Hair echoes participants’ insistence that motherwork involves the establishment of a homeplace where Black mothers are affirmed. Study findings suggest that such a homeplace is necessary to subvert oppressive systems and uphold Black mothers.

In the story, two Black women exchange experiences of being labeled as “bad mothers” by school officials. The two friends discuss the ways that a Black school administrator enacted policy that resulted in the branding of their motherwork as criminal. In so doing, the mothers connect their personal encounters with anti-Black racism, sexism, and classism to broader social agendas. The two friends understood the Black principal’s actions as contributing to the reproduction of racism and marginalizing of Black mothers.

I preface this discussion with the recognition that Black principals, historic and current, have practiced school leadership in ways that have been affirming of Black students and their families (Khalifa, 2015). That being said, Black principals are not monolithic and an essentialized “Black school official” identity may not help to critically understand and inform the relationships between Black school officials and Black mothers (Khalifa, 2015). In the book In the Wake, Professor Christina Sharpe (2016) explores the impact of anti-Black racism on Black women’s motherwork. Sharpe (2016) presents institutions like schools and

79 child welfare systems as being rooted in anti-Black racism. Sharpe (2016) argues that Black mothers and their children are living in the afterlives of slavery. In these afterlives, Sharpe (2016) maintains, anti-Black racism is endemic in North American institutions and profoundly shapes the health and wellbeing of Black mothers and their children. Sharpe (2016, p. 78) writes:

In the afterlives of partus sequitur ventrem what does, what can, mothering mean for Black women, for Black people? What kind of mother/ing is it if one must always be prepared with knowledge of the possibility of the violent and quotidian death of one’s child? Is it mothering if one knows that one’s child might be killed at any time in the hold, in the wake by the state no matter who wields the gun?

Anti-Black racism is embedded in institutional practices and policies that govern the welfare of Black children and their mothers (Sharpe, 2016). The story A Snippet: Conversations & Hair, highlights the role of White supremacy and racism in schools and districts, despite the presence of Black school principals. State officials, who hold a position of formal power, act as agents of the state. As agents of the state, school officials, regardless of their identities, are required to implement policies that are structured to put Black lives in peril.

Scholarship provides further insights into Black student and parental perceptions of Black school principals’ exclusionary practices (Khalifa, 2015; Reed and Evans, 2008; Rosenbloom & Way, 2004; Wester, Vogel, Wei, & McLain, 2006). Khalifa (2015) posits that districts seek out a certain type of Black principal to uphold district practices, even when they are oppressive toward Black students. Scholars also suggest that as Black principals engage in their own process of racial sense-making, they can distance themselves from stereotypes of Black families they believe are present in the school (Anyon, 1997; Reed & Evans, 2008; Khalifa, 2015). Others have concluded that Black professionals experience tension and stress as they struggle to situate their own socio-racial identity within the institution (Khalifa, 2015; Reed and Evans, 2008; Rosenbloom & Way, 2004; Wester, Vogel, Wei, & McLain, 2006). Such scholars recognize Black school officials as being hyperaware of their white colleagues’ perceptions of them. Khalifa (2015, p. 271) writes:

They were concerned that their white colleagues may perceive them as being partial toward Black students—but not just any Black students, rather the hyperghettoized,

low-income Black students— and thus, that their own credibility and chances at being accepted by the dominant group may be jeopardized.

Participants described their commitment to challenge injustice. Echoing participants’ views, Collins (2000) explains, “[Black] women employed a range of strategies in challenging the rules governing our subordination. In many cases Black women practiced individual protest against unfair rules and practices” (p. 216). Participants discussed their reliance on members of their women-centred networks for affirmation, institutional knowledge, and guidance in addressing injustices. Study participants, as depicted in A Snippet: Conversation & Hair, saw women-centred networks as necessary in the struggle for institutional transformation in Ontario's child welfare system. A Snippet: Conversation & Hair bolsters Jenkins’ conclusions that Black motherhood acts as a homeplace “where [Black women] can develop a belief in their own empowerment. Black women can see motherhood as providing a base of self-actualization...and as a catalyst for social activism” (Abbey and O’Reilly, 1998, p. 206).

Chapter 6 How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationship with school officials? 6.1 Chapter Introduction

The short stories in this chapter respond to the question: How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationships with school officials? Each story illustrates the impact of Black women's motherwork on their relationships with one another, as well as with school officials. Study findings, as documented in the upcoming stories, present the relationship between Black mothers and school officials as political spaces rife with power imbalance. The stories chronicle Black mothers’ work to leverage knowledge and resources from their support network to protect their children's rights to safe, respectful, and inclusive schooling environments. The stories in this chapter also capture participants' insistence that school officials’ work included community parenting. The stories illustrate the diverse ways these public servants took on, and at times abandoned, such labour.

The upcoming stories use quotations from the interviews to present study findings. As in the previous chapter, each story is followed by a discussion section entitled Story Insights. The discussion sections in this chapter intentionally situate study findings within Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy (2010). In so doing, this study demonstrates to readers how Black women’s motherwork challenges Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy’s (2010) conceptualization of parent. The discussions draw on the components of the conceptual framework (communal mothering, motherline, homeplace, and site of power) to analyse, interpret, and synthesize the findings presented by means of storied accounts.

6.2 Bus Dreams

On a Wednesday morning in February, 30-year-old Jennifer and her purple knapsack slumped into a window seat on the 102A bus. Snowflakes framed the window and shone like diamonds in the afternoon sun. With her fingertips, the mother of two mapped out the snow crystals pasted on the glass. Two decades earlier, her fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Smith, explained, “Each snowflake is unique.” Jennifer pulled her knapsack to her chest as the bus

81 82 raced down Markham road jerking over mounds of snow. At the Lawrence Avenue stop, three teenage girls raced onto the bus, each gripping a Burger King bag in their bare hands. The Black girls flashed the driver their passes. Laughter, the smell of fries, and snow stained brown and grey traced the girls’ path to the back of the bus. They congregated behind Jennifer near the rear doors.

“Hey, lady,” one of the teens yelled, “I think your phone’s ringing.”

Jennifer turned to the young woman, “Thanks,” she murmured.

Jennifer looked at the girl: a round face, plump cheeks, and a nose ring sheltered by a trio of pimples. The ring sparkled against the teenager’s dark skin, like a firefly at night. The group of girls cackled. Jennifer spun away wondering if she stared too long at the girl. Jennifer opened her bag, pushed aside her Medieval Europe textbook and grabbed her cell.

“Hi, grandma. I’m on the bus going to the subway. I'm headed to the university library. I gotta finish this essay for class.”

“How did things go with the doctor?”

“She said Mark doesn’t have ADHD. I paid for a report. Imma take it to the school meeting on Friday.”

“You want your grandfather to go with you to the meeting?”

“My Caribbean Studies prof62 said she’ll come with me, but it would be good to have grandpa there, too.”

62 “Academic “othermothering” is constituted by several behaviors, including: comprehensive academic and socioemotional support, active advocacy and student support, and high academic expectations (Griffin, 2013).

“I’ll tell him when he gets home from the barbershop. He spends all day at that shop, and he barely has hair on his head to cut63. I’ll tell him to pick you up and drive to the meeting, too.”

“My prof was right about getting a second opinion from a doctor and for making sure the superintendent comes to the meeting64.”

“That teacher and principal had no right to test Mark without your permission65. And they aren’t even doctors. How would they know if he has ADHD or not66?”

“The principal even said that Mark should be on medication67 to control his behaviour. He's only in Grade 4!”

“If Mark didn't tell us what was happening, we would never know68.”

“Imagine. He spent all that time in the office getting tested, instead of in the classroom learning!”

63 “Black barbershops are the bastion of Black folk traditions and ritualized space. In them are found the traditions of Black male membership, creating a kind of fraternal lodge where knowledge can be traded, disputes resolved, theories tested without penalty, and class schisms disappear. It is a place where Black men "find sustenance" (Wilson, 1995). The traditions of Black male folkways in the space of the barbershop are, Alexander (2003) observes, the nature of building community and perpetuating culture across generations” (Davis, 2013, p. 138). 64 “Several [Black professors] go beyond the efforts they generally make to support their Black students, offering psychosocial and academic support informed by participants’ similar experiences based on their shared membership in the Black community. In many ways, this study supports previous research, which suggests Black faculty are able to offer a deeper level of support to Black students based on their similar struggles and barriers faced in education” (Griffin, 2013, p. 187). 65 “Psychological assessments are only carried out with the explicit permission of the parent/guardian (or when appropriate, student). The professional from Psychological Services will contact parents/guardians or student prior to the assessment to obtain their consent” (Toronto District School Board, 2019). 66 “An assessment may be done by a child and adolescent psychiatrist, (developmental) pediatrician, psychologist, neurologist or a family doctor who is trained in ADHD” (Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada, 2019). 67 “Only physicians, not psychologists, may prescribe medication treatment” (Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada, 2019). 68 “Regulation 181/98, clause 6(6)(a), requires the principal, in developing the individual education plan, to consult with the parent and, where the pupil is age 16 or older, the pupil” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2004).

“Mark spends all day at the school. So the principal and teacher69 need to come to an understanding with us about what’s best for Mark.”

“Yeah, we gotta figure things out cuz right now I don’t trust the school70.”

“You sure your professor doesn't mind going to the meeting?”

“Naw, she wants to be there. In class, she talks about racism in schools all the time.”

“She's not too busy?”

“She says she has the time. She's West Indian. She just wants to help.”

“What time are you gonna pick Mark and Coby up from my place?”

“Can the boys sleepover71? I'll get them tomorrow after school. I really need to finish this paper.”

“Anything to help you finish school.”

“I'm so tired and my classes aren't easy72.”

“I pray73 every day for you and the boys.”

“I know you do.”

69 “Respectful, ongoing communication and transparency are essential if we are to fulfill our vision of parent engagement” (Ontario Ministry of Education, Parent Engagement Policy, 2010, p. 26). 70 “Members of the Ontario College of Teachers, in their position of trust, demonstrate responsibility in their relationships with students, parents, guardians, colleagues, educational partners, other professionals, the environment and the public” (Ontario College of Teachers, Ethical Standards, 2019). 71 “The centrality of women in [Black] extended families reflects both a continuation of African-derived cultural sensibilities and functional adaptations to intersecting oppressions of race, gender, class, and nation” (Collins, 2000, p. 178). 72 “[Using data from two cohorts of Grade 12 students in Toronto, the Ontario University Applications Centre (OUAC) and the Ontario College Applications Centre (OCAS)], in the bivariate analyses, Black students were found, on average, to be less prepared for [post-secondary education] as indicated by their having lower grades and higher rates of [special education needs], and they were less likely to be in academic courses” (Robson, Anisef, Brown & George, 2018, p. 51). 73 “...Caribbean Canadian women realize that positive outcomes are often inexplicable, hence, the emphasis on prayer demystifies the source of energy for resistance, and projects the presence of a higher power responsible for success” (Bobb-Smith, 2007, p. 63).

“Your grandfather’s gonna be home soon and he loves his food hot. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, grandma.”

“Make sure you eat something.”

“I will. Bye.”

Jennifer tapped the image of the red telephone receiver flashing on the screen. The conversation ended with Jennifer listening in on one behind her. In between mouthfuls of Burger King fries, the three teenage girls recited a reggae song: My dream, my dream, my dream, Tell you my dream is fi live my dream Hail the Most High inna mi sleep when me see Him

An old Indian woman sat across from the teenagers. Her faux fur-trimmed hood grazed her eyebrows. The old lady's silver hair dropped past the shoulders and came to a rest at her elbows. She grimaced at the girls and their ruckus. The group didn't notice or didn't care and stomped their boots to add bass to the song.

Jennifer looked down at her cell. She pressed a set of numbers; the name Dorothy scrolled across the screen. Last time she spoke to Dorothy, her biological mother, was eleven years ago.

******

“Mom, I'm pregnant74.”

“I'm not ready to be a grandmother.”

Jennifer dropped out of high school, moved in with her grandparents and gave birth to Coby. Her grandfather helped her fill out the paperwork for social assistance and her

74 “Having a child under 19 increases the likelihood of having an income level below [Canada’s low income cut-off] by 67 percent for couples, by nearly 100 percent for male lone parents and by more than 150 percent for female lone parents” (Ornstein, 2000, p. 87).

86 grandmother crocheted a tablecloth for her new place at the co-op. A couple years later, Mark was born.

“I don't wanna be poor75 anymore,” she cried to her grandfather one night. She nuzzled her face deep into the crook between his jaw and shoulder. Her tears streamed down his neck, dampening the collar of his Trini 2 Di Bone t-shirt. She hated the judgemental glances from the social worker76. Jennifer cringed at the worker’s grunts when she confessed to knowing one babyfather's date of birth, but not the other’s. When Mark was three years old, she applied to a bridging program at the University77. The program was meant for people like her: no high school diploma and a dream.

*****

The telephone rings were replaced by voicemail. A woman’s voice listed a set of instructions in the message. Jennifer did not leave Dorothy a short message, her name, or a number to call back. She opened her knapsack and exchanged her cell for the book on medieval Europe. The 102A bus, covered in snowflakes, skidded into the subway station.

6.2.1 Story Insights: Communal Mothering

Throughout the years, the provincial government has developed policies as one way to articulate its views on parent engagement in the education system. For example, in 2010 the government put forward Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy. The purpose of this policy was to “help ensure that [parents] have the skills, knowledge, and tools they need to engage fully in their children’s education and in the life of their schools” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 5). Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy encourages school officials to learn about families’ backgrounds, cultures, and views of their children as a strategy to secure parent support for the province’s core priorities in education (Ontario Ministry of

75 “In Canada, 70.8% of African, Black and Caribbean families headed by female lone parents with one or more children live in poverty” (Ornstein, 2000, p. 88). 76 “...Caribbean Canadian women continue to face racist and sexist discrimination at all levels of Canadian society that erode their identities and have a negative impact on their physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing” (Bobb-Smith, 2007, p. 62). 77 “The Academic Bridging Program allows individuals, who have been away from formal education for some time and are at least 19 years of age, to pursue degree studies at the University of Toronto” (University of Toronto, 2020).

Education, 2010). The policy does not mention members of support networks as those involved in the parenting of children. Instead, the policy implicitly directs school officials to focus their relational efforts to those with legal ties to the child. The policy also overlooks the ways in which Black mothers organize with members of their networks outside of the school setting to ensure their children’s rights to learning spaces free from discrimination are upheld.

The story Bus Dreams illustrates the central role that members of Black mothers’ support networks play in the relationship between school officials and Black families. The story asserts participants’ views that authentic school-parent relationships must include members of Black mothers’ support networks. In the story Bus Dreams, readers accompanied Jennifer, a mother and full-time university student, on her bus ride to the library. Jennifer’s telephone conversation with her grandmother revealed the tenuous relationship they have with officials at her son’s elementary school. Jennifer, with her community of support, organized to challenge the school’s assessment of her son for ADHD. They demanded school officials enact policies and procedures in ways that ensure their children’s access to opportunities and help them realize their potential within school and beyond.

Participants' insistence on the overrepresentation of Black children in special education programs are in line with the literature. Canadian researchers Gillian Parekh (2010) and Robert Brown (2010) revealed Black students are overrepresented within special education programs in Toronto. For example, at the Toronto District School Board, of the students who spend up to half their day within a special education class, 22% self-identify as Black (Yau, O’Reilly, Rosolen & Archer, 2011). This is despite Black students only making up 12% of the school board’s student population (Yau, O’Reilly, Rosolen & Archer, 2011).

Given the prominence of collective childrearing in Black motherwork, participants noted that communities of support play active roles in identifying and addressing violations to their children’s rights made by school officials. According to participants, members of their support networks’ practice of identifying and addressing discrimination aligns with the role of community parents. Bus Dreams highlighted the multiple forms of capital that arise when members of differing professions, age, class, and gender come together to care for Black children.

Black women’s motherwork expands the identities and roles of parents as presented in Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy. Black women’s motherwork, as demonstrated in the story Bus Dreams, requires school officials to form relationships with Black mothers and members of their support networks. According to study findings, this relationship must recognize the leadership that members of Black mothers’ support networks play in the parenting and schooling of Black children. As explored in the story, members of Black mothers’ support networks are community parents that further empower Black mothers to assume a leadership role in the lives of their children within school settings and beyond.

6.2 Finding Home

A pine tree’s branch scratched the principal’s office window. Kam, a mother of two girls, peered over her shoulder and watched the snow gather at the windowsill. Kam slouched in the chair and balanced a purse on her thighs. Her corduroyed knees rubbed against the principal’s oak desk. Her nails, a metallic blend of red and silver with a hint of green, traced the desk's wooden veins. A door separated the principal’s space from the rest of the school and was left ajar. Kam peeked past the door, down the hallway and into the school’s main office. Bickering elementary students late for class surrounded Ms. Trento, the school secretary. “Shanna, every day you’re late,” the red-lipped office worker yelled, “I’m calling mom!”

The principal marched into the room, closed the door by its metal knob and plopped into his seat. The man used both hands to adjust his wire framed glasses. The silver wires blended with his skin and matched his hair. His hands came together atop the oak desk. Rows of fluorescent light pointed out imperfections, dents, and scratches on his wedding ring.

“Ms. Williams,” Mr. Clarke cleared his throat, “thank you for coming on such late notice.”

“No problem,” Kam said. She peeked at the cellphone in her purse. The phone read seven minutes past nine. Her accounting class78 in the north of the city was beginning.

“Your daughter, Chastity, is the top Grade 7 student in the school. Meagan is exceeding all Grade 1 expectations.”

Kam didn't mention the time spent at Walmart searching for math worksheets. She didn't share the cost of the weekly calls to Aunt Carmen in Jamaica79 for advice on spelling books. Instead, she simply nodded.

“Chastity’s been acting up in class,” revealed Mr. Clarke.

Kam straightened in the chair. She leaned over the oak desk towards the principal. Hoop earrings brushed her caramel cheeks. The mother asked, “What do you mean acting up?”

“She's yelling in class and refusing to do any work80,” the principal paused and looked into Kam’s dark eyes and continued, “she's not acting like herself these days.”

“That's not like her at all,” said the mother.

The principal wondered, “Have there been any changes at home?”

“No, not at all. She's fine at home81.” Kam fiddled with her bangles.

*****

78 “The Toronto District School Board’s five adult high schools support more than 12,000 learners to find a career pathway and to meet their academic goals every year” (Toronto District School Board, 2019). 79 “[Transnational families refers to] the dispersal of members of kin groups across national boundaries (often oceans and continents), along with the active and continuous maintenance of these kin ties by means of constant communication and travel and the exchange of goods, services and personnel” (Ho, 1993, p. 34). 80 “‘The motherhood mandate’ is that [Black] mothers should be able to exert control over their [children’s] behavior” (Elliott & Reid, 2019, p. 200). 81 “[Black] mothers expressed a sense that they would be judged as moral failures for not adequately passing on moral values to their children” (Elliott & Reid, 2019, p. 200).

Kam and her daughters left Jamaica and arrived in Canada five years ago. After a failed living stint with a cousin, the small family moved into a four-bedroom house, just off Markham road, with a girlfriend’s Trinidadian family. Her friend's mother, Mama Roo, was a retired church caretaker whose presence was seen and heard. The young girls cuddled into the folds of the older woman's arms. Kam found solace in Mama Roo's unwavering belief in Jesus82. So, even when Mama Roo's daughter moved out, Kam and the girls remained. Yesterday, like most days after school, Chastity reviewed her school lessons with Kam83 and completed three pages from the Walmart math book. The young girl made curry chicken for dinner with Mama Roo and read the book The Best Nest to her younger sister, Meagan84. Kam and Mama Roo volleyed questions to Chastity about her school day. The young girl pursed her lips and retreated to her bedroom.

*****

“The other day, Chastity cried in class. She couldn’t stop crying.” Mr. Clarke reclined in the chair. “The teacher buzzed the office in a panic.”

“Yes, that’s what you said over the phone. Me and Mama Roo—she's the woman we live with—ask about her day. She doesn't want to talk about it.” The mother picked at her nails. Chipped polish piled onto the desk.

“I brought her to my office just to calm down.” The principal pushed his hair off his forehead and to the side. A patch of moles dotted above his brows.

“Did she tell you what happened? Is someone bothering her in class85?” Tears tumbled down the mother's face.

82 “In [the Caribbean], African religious ideas were syncretized with the Christianity of Euro-America to produce what Raboteau describes as ‘a distinctively Black form of Christianity” (Watt, 2004, p. 209). 83 “Compared to the overall population, Black parents are as or more involved in their children’s education in and outside of school” (Toronto District School Board, 2011). 84 “This task of making homeplace was not simply a matter of Black women providing service; it was about the construction of a safe place where Black people could affirm one another and by so doing heal many of the wounds inflicted by racist domination” (hooks, 1990, p. 42). 85 “At school, 45% of Grade 7-12 students reported having been bullied in one or multiple ways all the time, often, or sometimes” (Toronto District School Board, 2014).

Mr. Clarke reached into the desk’s top drawer and pulled a box of tissue. “We had a long chat. She misses her father.” Kam snatched two sheets and wiped her stained cheeks.

Kam confided, “the girls have different fathers.” She recounted the time Chastity first went to stay with her father. The girl was eight years old and traveled by plane from Pearson Airport to her father’s New York home. “After two weeks,” Kam sobbed, “he refused to return her.” Kam explained, “It was a whole confusion for Chastity to get back. So, after that I said I would never send her to her father again.” But last month, Kam caved to Mama Roo’s demands and Chastity went to New York to be reacquainted with her father. “I just sent her for a few days at Christmas,” Kam explained.

“Ms. Williams, I respect you. You’re doing a great job with the girls,” Mr. Clarke handed her a tissue.

“Mama Roo helps a lot. She created a home for us86 here in Canada,” the mother confessed. She blotted her eyes, mouth and nose. Her lips stained the tissue copper.

“How can I help Chastity be that happy girl again?” The principal watched Kam ball the tissue into her fist.

“Chastity loves talking to you. Maybe me, you, and Chastity can talk about what’s going on?” Kam suggested.

“Let’s call her down to my office and figure out how we can work together,” Mr. Clarke said, with a clap of his hands.

“Mama Roo needs to be here, too,” Kam piped, “She’s like a grandmother to Chastity.”

“Of course! When can she make it to the school?” the principal asked.

“She's at home. She can be here in minutes.” Kam dug in her purse for the cellphone.

86 “We could not learn to love or respect ourselves in the culture of white supremacy, on the outside; it was there on the inside, in that “homeplace,” most often created and kept by Black women, that we had the opportunity to grow and develop, to nurture our spirits” (hooks, 1990, p. 42).

“Perfect!” Mr. Clarke rose from the chair and walked into the main office. Ms. Trento’s voice cracked over the P.A. System, “Chastity Williams please come to the office.”

Kam grabbed her cell and dialed. Mama Roo answered on the second ring. Kam blurted, “Come down to the school. I'm with the principal. We're gonna talk to Chastity to figure out what's going on. We need you here87.”

“I'll be right there,” Mama Roo replied and hung up.

Kam placed the cell on the table. The phone buzzed and shimmied across the wood. She grabbed it and typed a message: Can't make it to class. Let me know the homework. She pressed the yellow send icon and rested the cell, once again, on the oak wood desk. She turned to the window and watched a teacher and a group of children, bundled in coats, hats and mittens, dance around the snow-covered pine tree.

6.2.1 Story Insights: Homeplace

In Ontario, all teachers, school administrators, and superintendents are certified by the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT). As members, these school officials hold positions of trust and are required to “demonstrate responsibility in their relationships with students, parents, guardians, colleagues, educational partners and the public” (OCT, 2020). The College calls on school officials to ensure that their relationships with students and their families embody care, respect, trust, and integrity.

Participants echoed the College’s stance and affirmed that the role of school officials goes beyond instruction and includes being caring adults in the lives of the community’s children. Participants argued that this layered identity—instructional leader and caring adult—results in school officials assuming the position of community parents. For Black women who engage in motherwork, Wane (2000b) explains, community parents are understood as those who “take care of the community” (p. 112). These communal parents assume leadership in the health and development of the community’s children. School officials,

87 “When parents are engaged and involved, everyone—students, parents and families, teachers, schools, and communities—benefits, and our schools become increasingly rich and positive places to teach, learn, and grow” (Ontario Ministry of Education, Parent Engagement Policy, p. 5).

93 concluded participants, are ethically and professionally obliged to work with the Black community, notably the mothers, in support of their children's health and academic achievement.

The sole participant to note a positive relationship with her child’s school was Kam. The story, Finding Home, centres Kam’s experiences with her daughter’s principal. In the story, Kam forms a relationship with the principal to support her child’s wellbeing. In the study, Kam shared that she strove to outwardly portray the dominant ideals of a mother to the school. The ideal mother, according to patriarchal motherhood, reinforces dominant systems and cultures (Beatson, 2013). Within a school system that privileges White middle- class norms, aesthetics, and parenting styles, Black mothers’ parental relationship practices are often pathologized (Allen & White-Smith, 2017, Collins, 2002; Waters, 2016). Kam maneuvers her relationships with the principal by not readily sharing her living conditions, education level or family structure with school officials. In the story, the principal praises Kam for the ways that she and her daughters assimilate into the school culture. Kam chooses not to share the extent to which members of her support network, in Canada and Jamaica, ensure the health, academic achievement and security of her and her children.

The story, Finding Home, depicted the diverse strategies that participants and members of their support networks used to navigate institutions and a school culture that exclude Black Canadians. Participants stressed that, as community parents, school officials’ relationships with Black mothers and their community of supports should demonstrate empathy and care. Finding Home shows how school officials, Black mothers, and their communities of support come together to create a homeplace for Black children.

6.3 Won’t be Beat

Lisa pulled the metal door to Pine Ridge Public School. Warm air from the single floor building rushed her face. The mother stomped her feet and snow scattered from her boots onto the mat. She passed the office and turned at the Welcome to Parent-Teacher Interview sign. Her boots squealed against the tiled floor. She marched down the hall,

94 passing open classroom doors. Each room donned a uniform: cutout pink hearts pasted on walls and student writing pinned on bulletin boards. All were remnants from Valentine's Day.

Lisa arrived at classroom 12. She knocked at the open door and peered into the room. Desks lined the centre of the classroom in rows. Mrs. Henry hunched behind her desk. She looked down and flipped through a pile of green folders. The Grade 5 teacher’s ruby nails clashed with her purple dress. Her blonde hair, streaked with brown, covered her penciled brows and shielded her blue eyes. A pair of chairs faced the teacher’s desk. Mrs. Henry raised her head and nodded at Lisa. She waved Lisa into the room and motioned for the mother to take a seat. Lisa entered and sat on the chair closest to the door. The mother unzipped her coat, turned, and draped it behind the chair. Lisa sported her No Frills work outfit: black shirt with the lettering “Won’t be Beat” scrolled boldly in yellow across her chest.

“Ms. Robinson, thank you for being here.”

“It worked out well coming on my lunch break.”

“Mick didn't want to join us?”

“Naw, he's playing with kids at the co-op. A neighbour’s watching them.”

“Did you review Mick's report card?”

“Yeah, I did and I’m not happy with his marks.”

“This term, Mick struggled in language and social studies.”

“This is the worst report card Mick has brought home.”

“Ms. Robinson, may I be frank with you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Mick is a smart boy. His downfall is reading. Your son is reading below grade level88.”

“I know Mick isn’t the best reader. But isn’t that your job to help him get better?”

“You need to be reading with him at home89.”

“Ms. Henry, let me be frank with you. I struggle with reading. So how am I supposed to help him?”

“Well, you need to figure something out because he’s falling behind in school.”

“I know reading is important. I want him to be happy and be a somebody90.”

“Mick has the potential to be a great student. He just needs to work on his reading.”

“Are there any programs at the school that can help him? I only ask because when I went to college they had all these services to help me.”

“Reading Recovery is only for grade one students. He's already in the home school program91 half the day.”

“So there's nothing else?”

88 “Compared to the overall population, fewer Black students meet or exceed the provincial standard (Level 3) on Gr. 6 Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) tests for Reading and Writing, and even fewer meet the standard on the EQAO Mathematics test; also, fewer pass the Gr. 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT)” (Yau, M., et al., 2011). 89 “Parental involvement is a broad term and includes such things as good parenting, helping with homework…” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2005, p. 10). 90 “Compared to the overall population, Caribbean-born parents are more likely to expect their secondary school children to go to college rather than university” (Toronto District School Board, 2011). 91 “The Home School Program (HSP) provides support to elementary school students from Grades 4-8 in their neighbourhood school for at least 50 percent of the school day. HSP offers support from a special education teacher in the neighbourhood (home school). It focuses primarily on Language and Mathematics” (Toronto District School Board, 2020).

“The only thing that Mick might qualify for is a laptop92 with a program that reads to him. But there's a process. And that takes time.”

“Is there anything that we can do now to help him? I don't want him to become like me. All my life, I've had problems with reading. It's embarrassing.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don't understand. My friend had to help me read Mick’s report card. You can't even begin to imagine how ashamed I am to ask someone else to help me read my kid's report card.”

“Does Mick have enough books at home?”

“Every Saturday, Mick and his friends spend the morning at the library.”

“Is there someone he can practice reading with?”

“He reads with some of the mothers at the co-op. I guess that’s not enough.”

“There is a program called Reader Eggs. It helps children learn how to read.”

“Is it like a reading game on the internet?”

“Sort of. You have to pay. It is expensive. I’m sure you can't afford it.”

“Don’t worry about what I can and cannot afford. Does it work?”

“It definitely works. My daughter uses it and she’s a great reader.”

"Mick loves to play games on the computer. That reading game might help."

“Let’s talk about free ways that you can help Mick with his reading.”

92 “The Special Equipment Amount (SEA) provides funding to school boards to assist with the costs of equipment essential to support students with special education needs where the need for specific equipment is recommended by a qualified professional. This equipment is to provide students with accommodations that are directly required and essential to access the Ontario curriculum and/or a board determined alternative program and/or course and/or to attend school” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2018, p. 2).

“Like what?”

“Well, at the community centre, there’s an afterschool homework club. Mick would benefit from this.”

The teacher listed free activities that Mick could join. Lisa nodded as the teacher stressed the importance of reading and homework. The school bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch break. Lisa shook Ms. Henry's hand and mumbled that she'll do better with Mick. Lisa grabbed her coat, hurried down the school hall and rushed across the street to work.

******

That night, at her kitchen table, Lisa and her friend, Tania, went on the laptop and logged onto the Reader Eggs’ website. The two mothers watched videos of happy children reading. Tania clicked on the Order Now! tab and whipped out her credit card from her red leather wallet. She typed in her credit card number and the expiry date.

“You sure about this?” Lisa watched her friend fill out the order form.

“Girl, if the tables were turned, I know you’d do the same thing for my daughter,” Tania smiled. Her eyes focused on the screen.

“I would,” Lisa admitted, “It's just a lot of money.”

“Pay me back,” Tania scooted the laptop mouse across the screen and clicked the order button.

“I will,” said Lisa, “It'll take some time though.”

6.3.1 Story Insights: Site of Power

Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy positions school officials as the leaders in the relationships between parents and schools. The policy requires school officials to promote specific parent involvement practices that the ministry has deemed as positive influences on student learning and achievement. Such practices involve school officials promoting school councils and encouraging parents to complete surveys on school climate. The policy also promotes school officials providing workshops and tip sheets for parents and students

98 to help them develop skills and knowledge that support a positive learning environment (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 29). The policy fails to highlight the ways in which Black mothers and members of their support networks carry out innovative strategies to nurture their children’s wellbeing and academic achievement. This is especially poignant when understanding the historical and present-day tenuous relationship between Black Canadian mothers and the education system (see chapter 1.4).

When school officials interact with Black mothers, the mothers’ behaviours are regularly misinterpreted as confrontational and uninformed (Abrams & Gibbs, 2002; Diamond & Gomez, 2004; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Noguera, 2001). Nine out of the ten participants in this study described schools as a site where they felt unwelcome and excluded. These participants described a school culture where mothers were expected to defer to judgements placed onto their children by school officials. Participants contended that resisting discriminatory practices levied by school officials aligned with their conceptualization of Black motherwork.

In the study, eight out of the ten participants identified as working-class Black mothers. The story Won’t Be Beat enables readers to witness ableism, racism, and classism converging to shape how the teacher takes on community parenting. In the story Won’t Be Beat, Lisa, a working-class Black mother, meets with her son’s teacher. The teacher accuses Lisa of being uninterested in her son’s schooling. At the meeting, the teacher questions Lisa’s ability to form meaningful relationships with schools in ways that support Ontario’s core priorities for education. Lisa, along with other participants who identified as working-class, described instances of teachers and principals dismissing their contributions to their child’s education. This was especially true for two participants who self-identified as dyslexic. These participants shared instances of school officials devaluing their motherwork due to their disability and socioeconomic status. In the study, participants understood their relationship with school officials as political spaces. Despite the power differential, participants shared narratives of the ways they exercised agency. Won’t Be Beat follows a Black mother’s quest to navigate power structures embedded in her relationship with school officials.

6.4 Recipes

February 17, 2017

To Superintendent Nadia Singh:

My name is Marjorie Braithwaite. I write this letter imploring you to take action against the deplorable learning conditions endured by my grandniece, Brenda Mitchel, at Oak Meadow Public School. Since birth, I have raised Brenda alongside her mother, and I am disgusted at our treatment by the school.

In 1971, at the age of sixteen, I left my grandmother's home in Barbados to be reunited with my parents in Canada. Back home, I boasted the highest marks on the Island and was given numerous awards to celebrate my high academic achievement. Despite these accolades, my Canadian high school teachers were cruel: they ridiculed my dreams of becoming a lawyer, tried to diminish my curiosity and campaigned for me to be put back two grades all because I was a Black girl from the Caribbean. Unfortunately, what I went through in high school is not unique. Black women and girls that I grew up with faced similar treatment in Canadian schools93. Since slavery, Black girls and women have been fighting for our dignity94 and rights to an education.

Thankfully, I had unwavering support from my family, especially my father. My father instilled a level of pride that not only got me accepted into university, but also helped me land a government job at Ontario Disability Support Program as a caseworker. I didn't become a lawyer, but my job gave me the chance to advocate for the rights of others. I'm now retired and happily raising my grandniece full-time. I share all this to let you know that I am intelligent, educated, and have personally experienced injustices in the Canadian school system95.

93 “Racial subjection, incarceration, impoverishment and second-class citizenship: this is the legacy of slavery that still haunts us today” (Hartman, 2002, p. 776). 94 “I would argue that [Canada] has its own memories of slavery that, together with other histories of slavery in the Atlantic world, merge to constitute part of the global history of anti-Black violence and Black resistance” (Mugabo, 2019, p. 94). 95 “[Black motherwork] is not content with survival alone but insists that we recall our ability to thrive” (King & Ferguson, 2011, p. 24).

100

In Grade 1, we notified the teacher of Brenda's struggles with reading96. Our worries were ignored, and we were told, “Some children don't learn how to read97 until later on.” Brenda is now in Grade 6 and has never quite figured out how to read. Every year, we request that Brenda get tested for dyslexia and other learning disabilities98. Every year, the teachers, principals and special education consultants push back and put forward other suggestions99.

Last year, these so-called education experts recommended that Brenda be removed from French Immersion. She is now in the school's English stream and only gets to be with her friends at recess. Plus, she has yet to grasp reading. This year, the consultants informed us that Brenda will only get the much-needed support and testing when she demonstrates that she is working two grade levels behind!

Yesterday, her teacher told us that Brenda spends the school days with her head on her desk crying. Her difficulties at reading have negatively impacted her self-esteem and achievement in all subjects. Just last week, she came home in tears at the thought of writing a social studies test. I spent all evening reading the textbook aloud for her. I even did an audio recording of the textbook on her cell so that she could listen to it on the bus ride to school. We try our best to help her improve her reading. However, without knowing her disability, we don't know what resources she needs to help her be successful.

Every day, I send my greatest blessing, Brenda Mitchel, to a school where she is treated as inadequate and undeserving of access to high quality services. She dreams of becoming a

96 “As stated in Policy/Program Memorandum No.11, “Early Identification of Children’s Learning Needs”, boards must have in place “procedures to identify each child’s level of development, learning abilities, and needs”, and they must “ensure that educational programs are designed to accommodate these needs and to facilitate each child’s growth and development” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2017, p. B6). 97 “All students in Grade 1, regardless of their social identity, will be able to read with confidence, fluency, understanding and enjoyment” (Toronto District School Board, Multi-Year Strategic Plan, 2018, p. 22). 98 “Once a child has been enrolled in school, the parents have the right to request that the principal refer their child to an IPRC (Identification, Placement, and Review Committee). According to the regulation, the principal of the student’s school: must refer the student to an IPRC upon receiving a written request from the parent; may, with written notice to the parent, refer the student to an IPRC (See Ontario Regulation 181/98, subsection 14(1))” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2017, p. D3). 99 “[Our goal] is to strengthen collaboration with parents and engage effectively in the decision making process regarding their child’s program, placement and well-being” (Toronto District School Board, Multi-Year Strategic Plan, 2018, p. 24).

101 chef. I will do everything in my power to help her dreams become a reality100. Superintendent Singh, I beg you to force the school to get Brenda tested and have access to the things she needs to be the best version of herself.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Braithwaite

6.4.1 Recipes: Motherline

Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy concedes to the existence of barriers that hinder the relationships between parents and school officials. The policy maintains that a successful parent engagement policy “must break down barriers that exist for many parents in order to help support all parents with the skills and knowledge they need to be engaged and involved in supporting student achievement” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 15). The policy prioritizes resources and learning opportunities for parents that take into account barriers resulting from language, recent immigration, poverty, and newness to Ontario’s school system. Although the policy does recognize discrimination as a barrier to parent engagement, it fails to articulate the ways that educational policies and practices reinforce beliefs, attitudes, prejudice and discrimination towards people of African descent. Ontario's Parent Engagement Policy does not take into account the ways in which Black enslavement in Canada (see chapter 1.4) continues to influence educational policies, board initiatives and school practices.

In the story Recipes, Marjorie, a retired public servant, writes a letter to a Superintendent of Education. Marjorie begins the letter by listing the ways that she and women before her have resisted anti-Black racism and sexism in Ontario’s school system. In so doing, the letter connects historical exclusionary practices enacted against Black Canadians to the present-day discrimination that Marjorie’s niece faces in her Toronto public school. Marjorie

100 “...The [Black mother] serves the essential role of teaching Black girls and women how to address this systematic politics of subjugation—through self-love, social critique, an astute opposition to oppression, and a belief in a self-determination that can transform our world” (King & Ferguson, 2011, p. 24).

102 details how her advocacy for her niece's education rights have been deemed as unwarranted and hostile by school officials.

Literature confirms that when educators interact with Black parents, the parents’ behaviours are regularly misinterpreted as confrontational and uniformed (Allen & White-Smith, 2017; Diamond & Gomez, 2004; Lareau & Horvat, 1999). Participants maintained that barriers, such as racism and sexism, led to mistrust in their relationships with school officials. The explicit aim of participants’ motherwork involves Black mothers navigating, managing, and resisting racial marginalization and preparing their children to do the same (Allen & White- Smith, 2017; Mandara, 2006; Vincent et al., 2012). Accordingly, participants understood the need to rely on capital sourced from their support networks to help guide their relationships with the school. Participants attested that through the sharing of experiences with one another, Black mothers understood the ways that systems shaped their relationships with school officials, schools, and society at large. Recipes recounts how knowledge shared amongst Black women and their communities of support provides them with socio-historical knowledge needed to ensure their children's rights to a schooling experience void of discrimination is upheld.

Chapter 7 How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials? 7.1 Chapter Introduction

A growing body of scholarship explores the experiences and characteristics of Black women in educational leadership positions. Leading scholarship on Black women educational leaders prioritizes those in formal school and district administration (e.g., principals, vice-principals, superintendents, professors, deans, etc.). For example, recent research conducted by scholars like Bass (2012), Horsford (2016), Tillman (2016), and Lamotey (2019) use critical race and Black feminist theories to investigate how Black women principals' conceptions of care and justice-seeking efforts impact Black student achievement. Although work by other scholars such as Cooper (2009), Latunde (2016) and Clark-Louque (2016) centre the perspectives of Black mothers and their relationships with school officials, discussion around educational leadership revolves around school teachers and administrators. Unlike previous scholarly work, the focal point of this study is Black mothers’ maternal practice. This study upholds Black mothers as invaluable educational leaders in their homes, communities, and schools. In contrast to earlier studies, this dissertation presents Black mother educational leadership as a defining feature in the relationship between Black communities and schools.

King and Ferguson’s book, Black Womanist Leadership: Tracing the Motherline, compiles personal narratives shared by fourteen Black women professors. Each professor uses memories of their mothers to define Black womanist leadership and interpret Black motherwork’s influence on their own education leadership development. King and Ferguson (2011) open their book by signaling to readers, “in constantly meeting the demands for survival and fending off the noxious stimuli of discrimination, it is altogether possible for Black women to not be cognizant of their own performance as leaders” (p. 5). Although study participants did not use the term ‘leader’ in the interviews, their stories of Black motherwork and relationships with school officials nonetheless demonstrate the ways in which we, Black mothers, structure the meaning of our leadership capacities, skills, and

103 104 approaches in our everyday life. King and Ferguson (2011) define leadership as, “the desire, ability, and efforts to influence the world around us, based upon an ethic of care for self and other and fueled by a vision that one sustains over time” (p. 11). Participants’ narratives documented in this chapter illustrate how Black mothers realize a form of educational leadership where the personal and collective liberation from oppression is the central, unambiguous focus. The stories shared by participants in this chapter recast the privileged notion of leadership (Komives & Wagner, 2009) as one that resides in our own Black motherwork.

Through a series of overlapping short stories, this chapter presents key findings to the question: How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials? Participants affirmed the integral role that communities of support play in their relationships with the school system. Participants stressed that their communities of support helped them navigate their relationships with school officials by mothering them. Through the act of mothering each other, Black mothers and their networks of support practiced an ethic of care for themselves, their children, and other Black women. Such an ethic of care, as explored by the stories in this chapter, helped Black mothers heal from past and current violence, as well as instill a collective determination for Black women to assume a leadership role in the schooling experiences of their children.

7.2 All Falls Down

On the first Tuesday in February, a storm made up of wind and sleet took over Scarborough. That evening, the wind screamed. Inside her third-floor apartment unit, Tania, clad in a blue sweatsuit, curled onto the sofa and held a needle and thread to the ceiling light. She grunted as the thread missed the needle’s eye. Monique sat cross-legged on the parquet floor in front of Tania. The thirty-four year old woman leaned back into the foot of the sofa. Her pinstripe pants, hiked midway up her calf, revealed thermal socks with holes in the heels.

105

“Tania, do you need help threading the needle?” Monique asked as she looked up at her friend. Monique scratched the top of her tapered afro. Her wedding ring and dark coils entangled. The diamond peeked through a mass of black curls.

“Nah, I got it.” Tania threaded the needle and set it on the couch. Monique’s coat and handbag were piled onto a single cushion and draped over the couch’s arm. The black thread landed on Monique’s parka and laced over the woman's purse.

“I hope you’re right about this hair. These bundles weren’t cheap,” Monique said. Three bundles of Remy Straight hair lay across Monique’s lap. She twiddled the tips of the black hair extensions.

“We’ve been friends since high school. I always have you looking like a queen101,” Tania quipped.

“True,” Monique chuckled. Tania held clumps of the woman’s hair and wrapped them over and under. She repeated until the tufts formed twelve cornrows.

“Pass me some hair,” Tania said. Monique handed Tania the fourteen-inch hair extension. Monique lowered her head until her chin and chest met, giving Tania access to a cluster of cornrows just behind her earlobe. Tania grabbed the needle and thread and stitched the Remy Straight atop her friend’s naturally kinky hair.

“I brought some brochures about the women’s shelter for your neighbour. There’s a waiting list. She needs to get at me soon so I can help her get in102.” Monique reached for her purse on the couch and pulled a handful of pamphlets—each stamped with bold lettering on a neutral backdrop. She placed the pile beside the hairstylist.

“I told her to stop by,” Tania said nudging her friend’s head towards the window. Monique winced as she watched ice pellets hit and slide down the window.

101 “[Black women] resist by creating their own self-definitions and self-valuations in the safe spaces they create among one another” (Collins, 2002, p. 205). 102 “[The Black woman’s] participation in a Black female sphere of influence [gives] her different tools to resist, and she stimulates institutional transformation by undermining the rules governing her work” (Collins, 2002, p. 206).

106

“My neck’s been hurting. I haven't been sleeping much either. I'm stressed out.” Monique’s fingers circled and prodded her nape.

“Whatchu worried about?”

“I'm worried about Egypt. A mother's work ain't easy,” Monique sighed.

“What's going on with baby girl?”

“Egypt's struggling at school. Her teacher says that she’s not picking up French. But I mean, she’s only in kindergarten.” Monique spun her wedding ring about her finger.

“I hear you. Tamara’s struggling in French immersion103, too,” Tania confided.

“It’s not the same.” Monique squirmed under Tania’s sewing hands. She explained, “Egypt goes to a French-language school104. It’s better than your daughter’s French immersion program.”

“How’s it better?” Tania wondered.

“First off, there’s no ‘hood children with behaviour problems. She’s the only Black kid in her class. Plus, at least one parent has to be from a French country,” Monique said.

“I know you don’t speak French105. Where’s Egypt’s dad from again?” Tania continued to sew tracks of hair onto her friend’s head.

“Pierre’s Haitian,” Monique proclaimed.

103 “Students, parents, and teachers in all French programs mentioned that they did not feel there were enough supports for students struggling in French, students with special learning needs, or English-language learners” (Sinay, Presley, Armson, Tam, Ryan, Burchell, & Barron, 2018, p. 67). 104 “In [French-language] schools the curriculum is taught exclusively in French, with the exception of English language courses. French-language schools in Ontario have a mandate to protect, enhance and transmit the French language and culture” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2019). 105 “66% of right-holder students in Canadian minority French schools come from exogamous couples with one [non-francophone] parent, which indicates a large number of [non-francophone] parents involved in French minority language schools” (MacPhee, et al., 2017, p. 80).

107

“Egypt will be good, then. Her dad can help her with the French,” Tania reasoned.

Monique confided, “He’s too busy travelling between Toronto and Montreal for his job.” She shrugged her shoulders and added, “Tomorrow after work, I’m meeting with Egypt’s teacher and principal. They've been pushing me to put her in an English school106.”

“Everything will work out. God107 will guide you through it,” Tania proclaimed.

“The problem is people at the school treat me like I'm one of those ghetto Black mothers.”

“Whatchu mean?” Tania tapped her friend’s shoulder. Monique handed a bundle of hair.

“You know, talking to me like I have no sense and acting like only they know what's best for Egypt. Basically, treating me like a single mother on welfare from Morningside Crossing or some other ‘hood in Scarborough108,” Monique said.

“What’s wrong with being from the ‘hood?” Tania asked as she stitched the final piece of hair.

“My family’s worked too hard to make it in Canada for those school people to think I’m an angry, lazy single mother from the ‘hood109,” Monique exclaimed.

“Well, I live in the hood. And I’m not lazy. You’re here getting your hair done110, aren’t you?” Tania pointed out.

106 “Students, teachers, and parents also stated that students were counselled out of intensive French programming if they were struggling” (Sinay, Presley, Armson, Tam, Ryan, Burchell, & Barron, 2018, p. 67). 107 “...spirituality is one of the strategies integral to survival, and which is used in Caribbean Canadian women’s lives as a form of resistance…” (Bobb-Smith, 2007, p. 57). 108 “At its core, the image of the welfare mother constitutes a class-specific, controlling image developed for poor, working-class Black women who make use of social welfare benefits to which they are entitled by law” (Collins, 2002, p. 78). 109 “In their endeavour to rise above the stereotypes and improve their academic performance, [participants] never really succeeded in challenging the racial identity that was imposed on them by Canadian society. In fact, they appeared to accept that racial identity and made a big effort to stand out from it, largely by regulating their own behaviour or ‘[performing’] in ways deemed more socially acceptable” (Wilson-Forsberg, Masakure, Shizha, Lafrenière & Mfoafo-M’Carthy, 2019) 110 “The presence of an alternative, African-influenced value system allows Black women to live with the contradictions inherent in viewing themselves as worthwhile individuals in a devalued occupation” (Collins, 2002, p. 221).

108

“Doing hair is not the same as working your ass off at university for a degree in social work111. Let’s be real, Tania.” Monique laughed.

“Well that fancy degree isn’t helping you get better treatment at Egypt’s school, is it? The school’s still treating you like shit, just like how they treat me,” Tania yelled. Saliva gathered at the corners of her mouth.

Monique turned to face the hairstylist. The two women stared at one another. Their faces mirrored: mahogany skin with manicured eyebrows. “They’re treating me and Egypt like that only because they think I’m a ghetto Black mom on welfare,” Monique responded.

“Maybe the schools have the problem and not the ghetto Black moms,” Tania said.

Monique returned to her spot on the parquet floor. Tania resumed the work on her friend’s hair.

“You don’t have to live here. I can help with your resume. You can get a job. Maybe take a college course. You gotta work harder112. You have to change the way you think113,” Monique pleaded to her friend.

“I do work hard. I like where I live.”

“You see, that’s the problem,” Monique wailed. She shook her head and asked, “How can you possibly like living here—shootings, stabbings, drugs, terrible schools?”

“My friends are here,” Tania responded.

111 “Social science research typically focuses on public, official, visible political activity even though unofficial, private, and seemingly invisible spheres of social life and organization may be equally important” (Collins, 2002, p. 202). 112 “...the ‘model minority’ discourse tries to steer the discursive field of racial and class oppression away from systemic and structural origins towards an individual’s character such as [their] work ethic” (Pon, 2000, p. 281). 113 “Creating the controlling image of the welfare mother and stigmatizing her as the cause of her own poverty and that of [Black] communities shifts the angle of vision away from structural sources of poverty and blames the victims themselves" (Collins, 2002, p. 80).

109

“Are they really your friends? Or do you just hang with them because they remind you of back home? We aren’t in the Caribbean. You and your friends won’t make it in Canada if you hold onto those old-school ideas from back home114,” Monique said.

“What old-school ideas?”

Monique elaborated, “Oh, you know. You poor Caribbean folk don’t see the value in education, hard work, marriage, things like that115.”

Tania asked, “Aren’t you Caribbean folk, too?”

“My parents are Barbadian,” Monique scoffed.

Tania kissed her teeth. “So you’re Bajan.”

“No, I’m Canadian. I came here when I was 3 years old. I worked hard to assimilate. And for the sake of your daughter, you need to assimilate too. Be a Canadian!” Monique said.

“Or do you mean be white116?” Tania whispered. She tilted her friend’s head towards the ceiling and sewed the final track of hair onto Monique’s crown.

“I’m done with your hair,” Tania said. She reclined into the sofa and wiped her hands into the pants of her tracksuit.

Monique stood up and walked to the mirror. The black framed glass leaned against the wall next to the window. She smiled at her reflection. The hair fell below her shoulders and hugged her dark plump cheeks. Monique returned to the couch and handed Tania five twenty dollar bills from her purse.

114 “The image of the welfare mother provides ideological justifications for intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class. [People of African descent] can be racially stereotyped as being lazy by blaming Black welfare mothers for failing to pass on the work ethic” (Collins, 2002, p. 79). 115 “[The welfare mother] is portrayed as being content to sit around and collect welfare, shunning work and passing on her bad values to her offspring” (Collins, 2002, p. 79). 116 “...constructions of ‘deserving’ immigrants as those who assimilate into white, middle-class society and ‘undeserving’ immigrants as those who assimilate more slowly, not at all, or into other segments of society are common in the media and policy realms” (Yukich, 2013, p. 303).

110

Tania shoved the money into her pocket117. “We don’t agree on lots of things. And I know you see me as just another lazy baby-mother living in the ‘hood,” Tania began. “But me and my friends have gone to battle with schools over how they treat us and our kids. I can help you figure things out with Egypt's school118.”

“So what!” Monique shouted. The woman continued, “I’m not you or your ‘hood friends. I have a job, a house, a car and a husband. We aren’t the same. I don’t need your help!” Monique snatched her coat and purse from the sofa. Monique marched to the front door and shoved her feet into her boots.

Tania hopped off the couch and yelled, “No amount of Remy Straight hair will stop them from treating you like a nig–” Tania fell onto the sofa and buried her face into a cushion. Monique hurled the door open by its metal knob and left. Cries, from both Tania and the wind, engulfed the third-floor apartment unit.

*****

Just above her muffled sobs, Tania heard two knocks at the door. A woman’s voice called out, “It’s Sharon, your neighbour. You told me to stop by to see your friend about the shelter.”

7.2.1 Story Insights: Using data

The Ontario Leadership Framework is a roadmap designed to help school officials across the province “grow and refine their leadership skills” (The Institute for Education Leadership, 2013, p. 2). The framework presents school and system leaders with key practices, actions, and traits to effective leadership. The framework introduces five Core Leadership Capacities (CLCs), which the ministry has identified as central to achieving the

117 “Using hair styling skills to gain financial independence is a tradition the community is all too familiar with. It's a means of ‘making a way out of no way’ and planning for a better future—as Black people have done for centuries” (Harvin, 2020). 118 “A [...] leader believes in the possibilities, strength, and wisdom of groups. A […] leader contributes to a group’s development of wholeness by assisting the group in valuing and drawing upon the talents of all its members to achieve an overarching vision that contributes to the group and to the larger society” (King, 2011, p. 87).

111 province’s educational goals. As such, CLCs are embedded in all provincially sponsored professional learning and resources (The Institute for Education Leadership, 2013).

The Ontario Ministry of Education identifies using data as a core leadership capacity (The Institute for Education Leadership, 2013). This capacity focuses on school officials’ use of data to lead and engage school communities in identifying trends, strengths, and weaknesses. The aim, as detailed in the framework, is for data to focus school teams’ actions towards improved teaching and learning. Ministry documents stress the importance of establishing a data culture within educational institutions (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a). In a data-driven school culture, according to the ministry, there is widespread data use by school officials to achieve organizational goals (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a).

Although the Ontario Leadership Framework highlights the importance of consistent use of multiple sources of evidence to inform decisions, the document solely focuses on data collected and analysed by school officials. In accompanying ministry documents to the framework, the government stresses the use of ministry-sanctioned data collection tools (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a). Such tools include report cards, Individual Educational Plans, standardized tests (i.e., EQAO), student profiles, and student EQAO surveys (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a). Data involving parents and community are limited to tools developed and interpreted by school officials. The story All Falls Down challenges school officials to recognize Black mothers as skilled leaders who have established a data-driven culture within their own support networks. All Falls Down showcases the ways that Black women who practice motherwork collect, analyse and make sense of data to achieve their mothering goals.

Black Canadian thinkers like Brand write about the ways that Black women have and continue to share learnings within their networks to help others navigate systemic forces of oppression. Participants detailed the unique ways that they collected and shared knowledge in support of Black children’s wellbeing and achievement. For example, the story All Falls Down centres the experiences of Monique, a Black mother, facing challenges in her relationship with educators at her daughter's school. Monique, a thirty-four-year-old mother, reveals to her friend the obstacles she encounters when advocating for her

112 daughter’s right to attend a French-speaking public school. Monique’s friend and hairstylist challenges her to analyse the ways that controlling images of Black women impact Black mothers and their children’s schooling experiences, health, and fulfillment of their educational rights.

All Falls Down tackles participants’ ideas around using historical and current information to identify trends, strengths, and weaknesses in Canadian society and to use such data to inform their leadership practice. Black Canadian mothers lead and engage one another in gathering and analyzing data to improve their own, as well as their children’s schooling experiences. Participants noted their reliance on data garnered from personal/self-stories, cultural stories, and metanarratives. The story, All Falls Down, expands readers' notions of data to involve findings collected and shared through storytelling. By coming together with members of their support networks around data, Black mothers are able to appreciate the effects of class, race, immigration experiences, and gender on their relationships with one another and school officials and take action to secure their children’s success.

7.3 Ay-Yai

Monique, a thirty-four-year-old mother, hunched over her kitchen table and clasped a glass mug. Steam rose from the chamomile tea, circled her nose and grazed her forehead. Mami, a Haitian grandmother, sat across from Monique, her daughter-in-law. The old woman planted her arms on the table. Both the table and woman were caramel with dark spots and deep grooves. Mami scooped handfuls of cashews from a porcelain bowl into her mouth. Mami’s smacking mouth and the wind’s howls mixed to create a nighttime soundtrack for the two-story house.

“Sak pase?” Mami wiped her hands in her dress. A trail of salt streaked across the red fabric.

“I’m exhausted and I have this crick in my neck that won't go away,” Monique said to her mother-in-law. She raised the mug to her lips and blew.

113

“Egypt was such a good girl, while you were at the school meeting. She caused no trouble to fall asleep.”

“She loves you.” Monique sipped her tea and then rested the cup on the table.

“As she should. I’m her grandmother,” the Haitian woman giggled. Mami pulled the edges of her headwrap with both hands. The yellow foulard covered her eyebrows and the tips of her ears. The grandmother added, “How was the meeting?”

“The principal and teacher still think Egypt should go to an English school. They say she’s struggling with the French,” Monique stated. She twirled the tips of her straight black mane around her index finger. Her diamond wedding ring shimmered under the kitchen light.

“And what do you think?”

“My children’s father is Haitian. They deserve to be in a French school as much as any of those little white girls from Quebec,” Monique replied.

“So that settles it. Egypt stays at the school.” The old woman grinned.

“I wish the principal, the teachers, and secretaries—shit even the caretakers—would treat me like the white mothers,” Monique said. She leaned back into the chair and undid the top two buttons of her mauve silk blouse.

Mami stuffed a fistful of cashews into her mouth.

“Those white mothers have it so easy,” Monique continued. “They don’t have to argue with teachers and beg the principal to keep their child in the school. They aren't ignored by the secretaries. Even the caretakers ask me if I'm lost when I go to the school. Sometimes, I wish I was a white mom. I'd be so happy.”

“You know these white mothers enough to want to be them?” The old woman asked.

Monique gulped her chamomile tea. “No, I guess not. But they’re always smiling and laughing with the teachers in the school yard. I want that,” Monique said.

“Krik?” Mami asked.

114

Monique responded, “Krak119!”

Mami straightened in her seat and dropped her shoulders. Her voice boomed as she told a Haitian folktale120:

One hot day in June, Tonton Bouki121 was hard at work in his garden. He dug up yanm and harvested pwa kongo and picked lam veritable. After hours in the field, he decided it was time to quit.

"I've spent enough time in the garden," Tonton Bouki said. "It's time to make some money at the village market."

He filled a big burlap sack with yams, peas, and breadfruit and set off for the market. In all his haste, Tonton Bouki forgot to eat. When he was halfway to the village, his stomach growled with hunger.

"Oh my, I have to find something to eat," he exclaimed. He walked a little farther and came upon an old woman eating by the side of the road. When Tonton Bouki saw what the old woman was eating, his stomach nearly leapt out of his body. The old woman was relishing her feast, licking her lips and fingers.

"Hello," Tonton Bouki called out. "How are you?"

The old woman didn't respond and continued to eat. You see, the old woman was deaf, so she couldn't hear Tonton Bouki. In fact, she was so focused on her food she didn't even notice him!

119 Krik? Krak! is a Haitian storytelling ritual where the storyteller asks, "Krik?" and the audience responds with "Krak!". 120 “The most respected person in traditional African society was the man or woman who kept the stories (Kouyate, 1989). This person, the griot, was the oral historian and educator. The griot was responsible for maintaining the connection between the cultural or historical past and the present” (Banks-Wallace, 2002, p. 412). 121 Traditional folktale adapted from Nicolas Beatty’s (2014) Uncle Bouki and Ti Malice: A Haitian Folktale.

115

"Please, ma'am," Tonton Bouki stepped closer, "Could you tell me what you are eating?" Again, the old woman didn't answer, and Tonton Bouki's stomach grumbled. "Please," he begged, "just tell me what you call that fine feast?"

It just so happened that right at that moment, the old woman bit down on a pepper so hot that she felt as if her tongue had caught fire. She opened her mouth wide and wailed, "Ay- yai!"

"Thank you!" said Tonton Bouki, "I've never heard of Ay-yai." He smiled and hurried off to the market, determined to buy himself a big bowl of Ay-yai.

At the market, Tonton Bouki quickly sold his yams, peas, and breadfruit. Then, he walked from stall to stall, searching for a bowl of Ay-yai. At each stall he pulled out his coins and said, "Excuse me, I'd like to buy some Ay-yai." Each time, the vendors laughed and yelled, "You must be mad!"

Everybody laughed at Tonton Bouki and whispered behind his back, and that's how Ti Malice heard the story. When Ti Malice learned that Tonton Bouki was searching for a treat called Ay-yai, he had an idea. He hurried home, ahead of Tonton Bouki, and climbed down to the riverbed. There, he cut some cactus leaves and stuffed them into a burlap bag. Ti Malice placed a few oranges atop the cactus leaves. And on top of these oranges he put a pineapple. And at the very top he placed a big potato.

Just before Tonton Bouki arrived home, he saw Ti Malice. "Good day, Tonton Bouki," Ti Malice waved. "And how are you today?"

"I'm dreaming of eating a bowl of Ay-yai," Tonton Bouki said. He asked, “Do you know where I can find some, Ti Malice?"

Naturally, Ti Malice said he did.

"I just happen to have some Ay-yai in this bag," he said. "Here you go." Tonton Bouki could not believe his luck, and without thinking of all the tricks Ti Malice had played on him in the past, he reached into the sack.

116

He pulled out the potato. "This isn't Ay-yai," he cried.

"Reach in again," Ti Malice said. So Tonton Bouki did. This time he pulled out the pineapple. "This isn't Ay-yai," he complained, but he reached in again. Next he brought out the oranges. "And this isn't Ay-yai, Ti Malice. You're making fun of me!"

"I'd never do that," Ti Malice smiled. "Reach in once more. I'm sure you'll be surprised at what you find!" So Tonton Bouki reached in one more time, and this time he touched the cactus leaves. The sharp needles pierced his hands, and he jumped into the air and cried, "Ay-yai!"

Ti Malice grinned. "There you go," he said. "You've found your Ay-yai!"

*****

Between mouthfuls of cashews, Mami warned Monique, “Don’t be tricked like Tonton Bouki122. He wasted his time thinking that another person's food could satisfy his hunger. Tonton Bouki ran around the market in search of Ay-Yai, when he had all the ingredients in his garden to make a fine feast with his family and friends.”

Monique nodded.

The old woman continued, “My daughter, don’t spend your time yearning for a white woman’s happiness. You are surrounded by Black mothers who have spent lifetimes creating happiness with discarded ingredients. Go cook your feast with other Black women123.” Mami stuffed the remaining handful of cashews into her mouth.

7.3.1 Story Insights: Collaborating for Black children

The Ontario Ministry of Education identifies promoting collaborative learning cultures as a core leadership capacity. This capacity is about school officials’ ability to work with and

122 “Stories become for me the foundation for engaging self and others in the process of reflexivity—focusing the lens and method of inquiry on one’s self” (King, 2011, p. 89). 123 “Gates (1989) asserted that using stories to ask and answer epistemological and ontological questions in our own voices has played a critical role in the survival of [people of African descent living in the diaspora]” (Banks-Wallace, 2002, p. 412).

117 learn from educational stakeholders with a focus on improved student achievement and wellbeing. According to the Ontario Leadership Framework, “trust, then, is required for the development of effective collaborative learning cultures” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014b, p. 4). Documents accompanying the framework maintain that an indicator of collaborative cultures is school officials taking the lead to establish school environments that value parents’ ideas, debates and partnerships.

The Ontario Leadership Framework stresses the value of professional learning communities made up of school officials. The document, however, does not explore the pivotal role that collaborative networks existing outside of formal educational institutions, like Black mothers’ support systems, play in student learning. The framework and accompanying resources also fail to provide guidance to school officials around forming trusting relationships with support networks comprising members from marginalized communities (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014b). The story Ay-Yai challenges readers to acknowledge the ways in which Black mothers and members of their community of support collaborate to improve Black women’s educational leadership and student success. Ay-Yai illustrates the innovative strategies that Black women engage in to further their own leadership goals in service of their children’s wellbeing and achievement.

Black Canadian mothers’ educational leadership involves working together and learning from each other with the central focus on improving their children’s achievement and wellbeing, as well as their own relationships with the school system. As with the literature, participants attested to the importance of collaborating with members of their network. For example, in the story Ay-Yai Monique recounts to her mother-in-law, Mami, the hardships she experiences in her relationship with her daughter’s principal and kindergarten teacher. The story opens with Monique sitting at the kitchen table with her Haitian mother-in-law, Mami. While detailing the challenges she faces in her relationship with school officials, Monique proclaims to Mami: I wish I was a white mom. Mami, a member of Monique’s community of support, responds by engaging the young mother in a Haitian storytelling ritual. Mami uses the ‘Krik? Krak!’ call-and-response tradition to impart leadership knowledge to Monique. Mami mentors Monique by invoking a Haitian folklore that highlights the value of working with and learning from other Black mothers to improve their children’s achievement and wellbeing.

118

In the study, participants shared personal accounts, memories, folktales and adages used by their communities of support to transmit leadership knowledge to one another. King and Ferguson (2011) note that adages and folktales shared amongst Black mothers “prescribe ways [for Black women] to lead and to empower self and the communal network” (p. 11). Participants valued such cultural narratives and cited them as essential in imparting leadership skills and healing. Ay-Yai divulges the unique ways that communities of support use motherwork to equip Black mothers with leadership skills in their relationships with school officials.

7.3 #blackboyjoy

Chantelle stomped into her son's elementary school leaving a trail of melted snow in the corridor. In the hallway, she passed students and teachers rushing to their morning classes. Chantelle flung the office door open. The glass rattled against the wall. She inched her way through a swarm of students to the front desk. The oak desk, running the length of the room, separated the crowd from the office staff.

The thirty-one-year-old mother yelled, “I need to talk to the principal, right now!” Whining students and ringing telephones and the hum of a photocopying machine drowned out Chantelle’s demand. Two secretaries crisscrossed the office shuffling papers from hand to hand. No one, neither child nor adult, glanced at the mother. Chantelle removed her leather gloves and shoved them into her coat pockets. She balled her hands and pounded the desk. A blue bic pen rolled off the nearby visitor sign-in book and dropped to the floor. Its blue lid grazed Chantelle's leather boot. Once again, she yelled, but this time she paused briefly after each word, “I need the principal, now!”

Miss Yu, the junior secretary, hurried to meet the mother at the front desk. The young woman, sweeping her black hair behind her ears, asked, “May I help you?”

“Finally! I thought I was invisible,” Chantelle said. She removed her tuque revealing shoulder-length hair parted into tiny twists. She stuffed the hat into her purse.

The secretary repeated, “May I help you?”

119

“I need to speak to the principal, right away,” Chantelle replied.

“Mr. Cory is busy at the moment.”

Chantelle insisted, “I need to talk to him. It’s important.”

The secretary looked behind Chantelle to the digital clock mounted above the door. It read: 9:33 AM. In twelve minutes, a line of students would pour into the office gripping class attendance folders. “He’s dealing with a fight between some grade six students right now,” the secretary explained.

“Imma just wait until he’s done, then.” Chantelle looked around the office for a spot to sit. Five students occupied the sole seat, a bench wedged between the door and the Welcome to Fern Public School sign. The smallest on the couch, a girl who looked no more than seven years old, dangled her feet off the cushioned seat.

“Let me take your name and some information. I’ll let the principal know you’re here.” Miss Yu pulled a notepad and pen from her pant pocket.

“I’m Chantelle William, Paul William’s mother. Paul's in Grade 3 in Miss Iaccobucci's class. Yesterday, he came home with a book from school.” The secretary recorded the information. The pen bobbed and looped creating a stream of black inked letters.

“You’re upset about a book?” The secretary looked up from the pad. Miss Yu stared at the mother. Her eyes drifted from the woman's dark eyes to her cleft brown chin and then to her pink-stained lips.

Chantelle explained, “I’m angry cuz the book is about a little black boy with two dads.”

“And the problem is?” Miss Yu said as she wrote on the pad.

“Homosexuality is the problem. It's a sin. It’s against our beliefs!” Chantelle shouted.

“I’ll let the principal know you want to talk to him about this book.” The secretary scribbled the mother's complaint on the pad.

120

“I send my child to school to learn how to read and count. Not for him to be indoctrinated with a teacher's personal agenda.”

“I’ll give Mr. Cory the note. It’s going to be a while before he’ll have time to speak to you. It’s better if he calls you when he’s available.” Miss Yu said dryly.

“Alright, he can call me. Make sure you give him that note.”

“I will.”

“Write down my cell number: 647-333-3131.” Chantelle watched the secretary print the number at the top of the sheet.

*****

Chantelle raced out the school and hopped on the 501 streetcar headed west to the university library. This winter marked her last term in the Child and Youth Care program. On the ride, Chantelle recalled Paul’s confession from the night before. Under his duvet covers, Paul asked, “Ma, would you be mad if I wanted to kiss Robert on the lips?” Robert, a Black boy in Paul’s class, was the same age as her son, but a few inches taller and much thinner. Chantelle responded with a kiss on his cheek. That night, she rummaged through Paul's knapsack looking for his lunch dish to wash. She found the glass container with a spoonful of stale rice and the book—a scapegoat to what her heart had long known.

*****

Chantelle got off the streetcar at Victoria Street and walked to the university library. Inside the building, she saw Jennifer sitting at a table beside the stairs. Her friend, bent over an opened textbook and laptop, fiddled with her braided hair. Chantelle grabbed the seat facing Jennifer. The metal chair shrieked against the wood floor and dipped under Chantelle’s weight. Chantelle leaned into the table towards Jennifer and whispered, “Paul asked what I'd do if he kissed some boy at school.”

Jennifer glanced up from her book and said, “You’d love him.” Jennifer shrugged. She flipped a page in her medieval Europe textbook and typed on her laptop. Her uneven nails scraped the keys.

121

Tears gathered atop Chantelle’s cheeks. She unzipped her coat uncovering a gold necklace. Chantelle asked, “But what about me? Aunt Marjorie and everyone at church will say Imma bad mom.”

Still focused on the laptop, Jennifer said, “I won't. I’ll love124 you through it all.”

“I went to the school earlier and blazed them about some book Paul brought home about a gay couple. The principal's gonna call me back,” Chantelle said.

Jennifer looked at her friend and warned, “That phone call needs to be about making sure Paul is a happy confident child and not about you proselytizing against homosexuality.”

“I know.” Chantelle averted her eyes from her friend.

Jennifer reached down into her purple knapsack. “My grandma bugs me about eating lunch.”

A roti in a plastic tupperware emerged from the bag. “It’s Dhal Puri,” Jennifer said. She rested the container on the table and continued to work on the laptop.

Chantelle's purse vibrated on the table. She opened the nylon handbag and peeked in at the ringing phone. The elementary school’s number flashed on the screen. Chantelle closed her purse and tossed it back on the table. She reached for Jennifer’s container, grabbed the roti with both hands and bit into it. A muffled buzz emanated from Chantelle's purse signaling a new voice message.

7.5.2 Story Insights: Goal setting

The Ontario Ministry of Education identifies setting goals as a core leadership capacity. Leithwood and Reihl (2003) recognize successful leaders' ability to “build vision and set directions.” The Ontario Leadership Framework asserts that setting goals involves school officials “working with others to help ensure that goals are strategic, specific, measurable,

124 “[Motherwork] serves the essential role of teaching Black girls and women how to address this systematic politics of subjugation—through self-love, social critique, an astute opposition to oppression, and a belief in a self-determination that can transform our world” (King & Ferguson, 2011, p. 24).

122 attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound and lead to improved teaching and learning” (The Institute for Education Leadership, 2013, p. 8). Documents accompanying the Ontario Leadership Framework maintain the importance of school officials working with teachers, students and parents to ensure their commitment to the school goals.

Although the Ontario Leadership Framework affirms the value of communicating the school’s vision to parents and families, it does not detail parents’ leadership roles in the institution’s goal setting process. Instead, meaningful interactions with parents around goal setting are limited to school officials ensuring that parents are equipped with the necessary learnings to help carryout school’s priorities (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014c). The story #blackboyjoy recognizes the ways in which Black mothers and members of their community of support come together to establish their own goals that align with their motherwork. #blackboyjoy demonstrates the iterative and dynamic process that Black mothers and members of their support networks engage in to ensure that their goals centre Black mothers and their children.

Black Canadian motherwork is a political enterprise that assumes as its central aim the empowerment of Black women and their children. Participants affirmed their leadership skills by citing their extensive collaboration with members of their support network. Participants maintained that working with other Black women helped focus their action on empowering themselves and their children within schools and beyond. For example, in the story #blackboyjoy, Chantelle storms into her son’s elementary school to confront the principal. Through Chantelle’s interaction with the school secretary, readers learn that a picture book depicting a same-sex couple is the catalyst to the mother's anger. Chantelle and a member of her community of support create a homeplace to challenge and expand on notions of Black mothers’ leadership for the wellbeing of Black children.

In the study, participants described instances where they sought mentorship from their support network during an emotional impasse in their relationship with school officials. Participants noted that their community of support offered ideas around Black mothers leading for the improvement of their children’s, as well as their own, achievement and wellbeing. Chantelle and her friend set goals that centre their own mental health and wellbeing, as well as that of Black children. Scholars, Trotman (2011), Lee (2011), and

123

Gibson (2011) note that Black mothers set goals that look after both the collective and the self in the process of leadership. In the study, participants described instances where they listened to and acted on feedback from their women-centred network to ensure that their relationship goals with school leaders were strategic and focused on creating learning spaces where Black mothers and their children can achieve their highest potential. #blackboyjoy illustrates how through the act of mothering one another, Black mothers and their communities of support are able to create a site where the mother and her capacity to lead are affirmed.

7.4 Set it Off

On a Friday night, three women piled into a 2002 silver Camry. Tania settled into the driver's seat and grabbed the wheel. Cold to the touch, she let go of the steering and huffed into her cupped hands. Clouds of warm air circled her afro: cropped sides and fluffy on top. Stacey slumped into the Camry’s centre backseat. Her silver hooped earrings burrowed in the collar of her fur trimmed coat. Her purse, white leather with a silver strap, laid on her lap. Lisa jumped into the passenger side. She unzipped her coat revealing a white satin blouse with a deep plunge. She turned the dials of the radio stopping at G98.7. The song “Nah Sell Out” blared from the car’s speakers:

Mi nah sell out mi fren dem nah go dis mi fren dem Bare blessings mi sen dem Please Jah Guide and protect dem125

“Big tune,” Lisa yelled. She banged the dashboard with both hands. The women sang along. Their arms and hips moved to the beat of the dancehall song. The car sped down Markham Road rushing to Club Liv. The dance club advertised Friday nights as free for women before 11 p.m. who wore all white. The car slid to a halt at the Eglinton Avenue

125 Excerpt from the song “Nah Sell Out” by Khago (2011)

124 stoplights. The streetlight unveiled the Camry’s rust framed doors that were otherwise hidden by the night’s darkness.

Stacey yelled from the back seat, “Lower the music!” Lisa, the car deejay, obliged. Her white tipped nails turned the radio dial until car horns and cackling pedestrians from outside were heard inside the car.

Stacey announced, “I found someone to help the kids with reading. His name is Henry Gordon, a retired teacher from back home.”

“How did you find him?” Tania asked as she weaved the car through traffic.

“He goes to the same church as aunty Marjorie,” Stacey replied.

Tania manoeuvred the curves of the road with one hand on the steering, while flicking the car's heater controls with the other. “How much is this gonna cost?” she asked.

From the back seat, Stacey looked out the window and watched cars pass through the falling snow. She answered, “Cheaper than if we got him to work with the kids one-on-one. Thirty bucks an hour. We can split it three-ways.”

Lisa piped from the passenger seat, “I dunno if I can afford that. Things are tight as is. I might have to pick up more hours at No Frills.”

“I’m in,” Tania interrupted. “Think about how expensive it'll be if the kids don’t figure out this school thing.”

Lisa shook her head. Her long box-braids knocked her brown cheeks and bunched into the hood of her coat. “Why do we have to spend all this money when it’s the school’s job to teach our children?” Lisa asked.

“Yes, the schools are supposed to teach our children,” Stacey exclaimed from the backseat, “But look what trusting schools to actually do their job got us. A bunch of kids who are struggling!”

125

“I hear what you’re saying,” Lisa said turning to Stacey, “But shouldn’t we just pressure the teachers and principals to actually do their job?”

“I’m tired of begging people to do their job,” Stacey sighed, “I’m tired of writing letters to superintendents and trustees about these bad schools.”

Tania chimed in, “I’m tired of feeling like a bad mom cuz my kid’s failing everything except art and gym. We’ve wasted too much time and energy waiting on the school to get their shit together.”

“Well,” Lisa added, “I’m tired of working like a slave at No Frills just to pay bills.”

“That’s just it, Lisa, don’t you want better for your son?” Stacey questioned.

“I do,” Lisa said.

“What’s a Black boy to do if he can’t read?” Tania asked not pausing for answers, “His future is what? Jail? Drugs? Death126? All three127?”

“And how many Black girls do we know that dropped out of school just to go and trick for some man?” Stacey added.

“I’m not against getting this tutor. I just don’t see how it’s fair that I have to put out all this money cuz the schools aren’t doing their job,” Lisa explained.

“Those people don’t care about Black kids and they sure as hell don’t care about us. We need to take things into our own hands128,” Tania said as she turned the car into Club Liv's lot. She steered the car up and down the aisles searching for available parking.

“Exactly. So ladies, are you in to hire Mr. Gordon as a tutor?” Stacey asked.

126 “What kind of mother/ing is it if one must always be prepared with knowledge of the possibility of the violent and quotidian death of one’s child? Is it mothering if one knows that one’s child might be killed at any time in the hold, in the wake by the state no matter who wields the gun?” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 78). 127 “All I know is my father always tells me the dudes who act hard in this town all end up one of three ways: broke sitting under a tree, in jail, or dead” (Charlamagne tha God, 2017). 128 “As Black women’s lives require complex negotiations and the mediation of contradictions, the capacity for leadership has been shown in our ability to create strategies for survival and advancement…” (King & Ferguson, 2011, p.10).

126

“I already told you; I’m in,” said Tania.

“What about you, Lisa?” asked Stacey.

Lisa fiddled with her braids. “I’ll try it out for a month,” she said.

“Great,” Stacey clapped, “I’ll call Mr. Gordon tomorrow morning. The kids will start Sunday afternoon at the library. I’ll text you with the exact time. I’ll walk the kids to the library and stay there until their lesson’s done.”

Tania pulled the car into a spot at the back of the lot. “Good. I don’t care who recommends him, you can’t trust just anybody to be alone with the kids,” Tania said. The women puckered their rouged lips, raised their penciled brows and nodded in unison. Tania pulled the key from the parked car. From inside the old Camry, the women watched a line of people in white, standing amongst mounds of snow, waiting to get into Club Liv before 11 p.m.

7.5.3 Story Insights: Amassing capital

The Ontario Ministry of Education identifies aligning resources with priorities as a core leadership capacity. The Ontario Leadership Framework maintains that effective leaders ensure that “financial, capital, human resources, curriculum and teaching resources, professional learning resources and program allocations are tied to the school priorities” (The Institute for Education Leadership, 2013, p. 8). Documents accompanying the framework affirm the importance of partnering with parents to identify community-based resources to meet organizational priorities (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014d).

The Ontario Leadership Framework encourages school leaders to communicate the school’s priorities to parents and families. However, it does not articulate parents’ leadership roles in developing those priorities. Khalifa, Khalil, Marsh, and Halloran (2019) maintain that Western school leadership ignores the cultural capital of non-white, non- Western families whose ways of being in the world are informed by Indigenous knowledge. The story Set it Off recognizes Black mothers and members of their support system as skilled leaders who amass capital within their communities to fulfill their motherwork mandate. Moreover, Set it Off captures the ways in which Black mothers and members of

127 their support networks engage in a collaborative meaning-making process to determine their own educational priorities for their children.

Participants stressed the importance of dedicating financial, cultural, and social capital to goals that uphold Black children’s physical health and wellbeing, as well as ensure their children’s access to educational opportunities. For example, Set it Off tells the story of three Black mothers who lost trust in their relationship with school officials. One Friday night, the three mothers pile into an old Camry and head to the local dance club. On the car ride, the women discuss their disappointment in the relationships they have with their children's schools. Study participants shared their feelings of abandonment by school officials entrusted to care for their children. In the interviews, participants spoke of their efforts to improve their children’s academic achievement by drawing on financial, cultural, and social capital found within their community.

In Set it Off, the three mothers pool their money and hire a retired teacher from the Caribbean to tutor their children. The characters in Set it Off, like study participants, depict communities of support as providing a foundation for Black mothers to exert leadership in their children’s education when their relationships with school officials fail. Study participants spoke of the ways in which they collaborated with women in their support network to hire tutors, register their children in cultural programs and purchase teaching resources. The characters in Set it Off, like study participants, depict communities of support as providing a foundation for Black mothers to align resources in ways that acknowledge and address historical and present discrimination experienced by Black Canadians within schools and the larger society.

Chapter 8 Conclusions & Recommendations

The purpose of this arts-informed narrative study was to explore with a sample of Black women their conceptions of Black women’s motherwork in Toronto and its impact on their relationships with school officials. The study was particularly interested in the ways that Black motherwork figures in Toronto's Caribbean communities, as all participants, asserted their Caribbean heritage. The conclusions from this study follow the research questions and findings. Accordingly, this chapter comprises three areas of focus: (a) theorizing and practicing Black Canadian motherwork; (b) Black mothers' relationships with each other and school officials; and (c) Black mothers as educational leaders. The chapter begins with a discussion of the major findings and conclusions drawn from the study. This discussion is followed by my recommendations and a final reflection on this research.

8.1 Theorizing and practicing Black Canadian motherwork

The first major finding of this research was that all participants described their motherwork as activism. Motherwork, as practiced by African Caribbean women living in Toronto, is a political enterprise that assumes as its central aim the empowerment of Black women and their children. A conclusion to be drawn from this finding is that Black mothers engage in a form of feminist thinking and theorizing that centres the lives of Black women and their children. The hurts, hopes, and dreams shared amongst Black mothers in their women- centred networks establish a feminist discourse that compels Black mothers to engage in collective action. With one another, Black Caribbean mothers in Toronto think through and develop frameworks to understand the ways in which gender, race, immigration status, and class interact to shape their experiences and responses to multiple forms of social oppression. Black mothers assert ownership over their personal and cultural stories and use their stories as a form of data to deepen their understanding of Black maternal life in Canada.

A further conclusion that can be drawn is that Black mothers’ struggle for both group survival and institutional transformation connects their feminist thinking and theories to action. Black mothers understand that the narrowing of gaps between collective thinking, theorizing and action is necessary to fulfill their goals of establishing social conditions that

128 129 shield themselves and their children from oppression and nurture their potential. In this regard, Black Canadian mothers define their motherwork on their own terms. Black Canadian mothers broach the boundaries of patriarchal motherhood and position themselves as activists whose work is committed to not only protecting the physical health and wellbeing of Black children, but also dedicated to helping Black mothers and their children transcend the maiming of oppression and work towards liberated Black futures.

8.2 Black mothers' relationships with each other and school officials

The second major finding was that participants' motherwork influenced the ways in which they took up their relationships with other Black women and school officials. All participants ascribed to a worldview that understood parenting as collective work, thus identifying school officials as community parents. As with other community parents, school officials impact the achievement, health, and wellbeing of Black children and their families. A conclusion that can be drawn from this finding is that Black students benefit when their mothers and school officials form caring relationships with one another. Such positive relationships respect the rights and agency of Black mothers and their children, and ensure Black students and their families are welcomed, included, and respected in the school system.

Another conclusion to be drawn is that Black mothers work with members of their women- centred networks to address discrimination encountered in their relationships with school officials. All participants recounted comments, actions and decisions made by school officials that resulted in them feeling excluded or uncomfortable, based on their identities as Black women from the Caribbean. School officials enact policies and protocols in ways that knowingly and unknowingly disadvantage Black mothers and their families, such as procedures around special education identification, child welfare, and professional judgement. Black mothers and members of their support network collaborate to identify and address violations to their rights made by school officials. Black mothers and members of their women-centred networks provide vital insights into the ways that policies can be reimagined from a Black feminist perspective. A related conclusion is that, when faced with challenges, Black mothers connect with members of their women-centred networks to

130 leverage economic, political, and cultural capital. These forms of capital enable Black mothers to come together and take action to safeguard their children’s rights to safe, respectful, and inclusive schooling environments.

8.3 Black mothers as educational leaders

The final major finding of this research was that all participants engaged in motherwork as a form of educational leadership. Black mothers and members of their communities of support work together to further develop their leadership skills with aims of achieving personal and collective liberation from oppression. A conclusion to be drawn from this finding is that Black mothers use peer networks, mentorship, and storytelling to deepen one another’s leadership stance within schools, their homes, and the larger community. Black mothers engage in leadership by drawing on financial, cultural and social capital found within their women-centred networks to prioritize their children’s wellbeing and achievement.

A further conclusion to be drawn is that Black Canadian mothers work together and learn from each other. Through the act of mothering each other, Black Canadian mothers set goals, work together, organize resources, and use data for the purpose of improving their children's experiences within schools and the larger community. Black mothers' leadership acknowledges and addresses historical and present discrimination experienced by Black Canadians and aims to forge futures where Black communities reap the social, cultural, economic, and political benefits when their children achieve their full potential. In order to create just futures for Black communities, Black mothers recognize the necessity for them to own, collect, and manage their own stories as valid forms of data. This study adds to Black feminist scholarship in Canada by centring the educational leadership of Black mothers within their communities and beyond.

8.4 Recommendations for Black Canadian mothers

Black mothers must establish formal, public platforms to engage one another in archival work and possibility-making around our positions as community and educational leaders. Such platforms will affirm Black identities, nurture collective action and usher political and social changes that benefit Black women, our children, and communities. Black mothers

131 are to use these platforms to organize and lobby for policy reform in ways that address the social, economic, and political experiences of Black communities. The arts (visual, performance, literary), as well as technology continue to provide Black mothers with opportunities to publicly and formally document our thinking, theorizing, and action in ways that acknowledge us as social innovators. Black mothers are encouraged to work with other Black Canadian women to develop research protocols that recognize us as owners of our data (i.e., stories, knowledge systems, etc.). Such work is necessary to ensure that research processes respect and validate Black life, especially Black maternal life. Currently, Llana James (REDE4 Black Lives: Research, Evaluation, Data Ethics, n.d.) and other scholars are spearheading the work towards data sovereignty for Black Canadian communities. James’ work stresses the importance of not only consent being secured with the individual, but also at the community level. I urge Black mothers to exercise our leadership and help establish research, evaluation, data collection, and ethics protocols specific to Black populations in Canada.

8.5 Recommendations for Canadian school systems and school Officials School systems should promote systemic human rights organizational change through policy, research, education, outreach, engagement, and capacity-building. School systems are encouraged to work with Black mothers and our children to ensure that our human rights and responsibilities are protected within the education system. School officials must support Black mothers as the leaders in determining the appropriate actions to be taken when violations occur. School systems are to build the capacity of their staff around their responsibility to identify, address, and report discrimination. School officials should also engage in critical pedagogies as a way to establish optimal conditions to strengthen their relationships with Black mothers and their children. These critical pedagogies will help school officials transform their practice into one where Black mothers are understood as leaders. This will help ensure that Black mother leadership continues to be a defining feature of the relationships between Black communities and schools. I am inspired by Khalifa (2015) and put forward the following critical self-reflection and discussion questions for school administrators and classroom teachers:

132

8.5.1 School Administrators - How will I implement policies in ways that resist the oppression and exclusion of Black mothers at the school?

- What measures will I implement to ensure that Black mothers have opportunities to use their social and cultural capital to enhance the school community?

- (Black administrators) How will I navigate my personal identity tensions of working under the white gaze of colleagues, while responding to the needs of Black students and their mothers?

- How will I establish a school culture that opposes White supremacy and upholds Black mothers, along with members of their support networks, as educational leaders?

8.5.2 Classroom Teachers

- How is my teaching practice informed by Eurocentric worldviews, values, and goals?

- How will I co-lead with Black mothers and members of their support network to craft learning spaces free from discrimination? - (Black teachers) How will I navigate my personal identity tensions of working under the white gaze of colleagues, while responding to the needs of Black students and their mothers?

- What steps will I take to craft a classroom culture that values Black mother educational leadership?

8.6 Recommendations for Canadian policymakers

Policymakers must engage Black mothers as leaders when developing education policies, especially those concerning parent engagement. Officials must enact policies, at the school and district levels, in ways that uphold Black mothers as fellow educational leaders in their children's schooling experiences. Policymakers must recognize fluid definitions of parent and family and acknowledge the leadership roles that support networks play in the schooling experiences of Black children. Education policies in Ontario must explicitly address historic and current oppressions faced by Black Canadians, within the education system and larger society. In recent years, education policy and politics research have

133 emphasized a turn to critical analysis (Diem, Young, Sampson, 2018). For example, scholars have provided critical perspectives on the importance of race in frameworks devised “to understand the cultural politics of race in educational policy formation, implementation, and analysis” (Dumas, Dixson, & Mayorga, 2016, p. 7). These perspectives disrupt traditional approaches to the role of race in the policy process (Diem, Young & Sampson, 2018). I urge Canadian policymakers to remove barriers so that Black mother leaders and their communities can be at the forefront in developing policies grounded in our collective epistemologies. Engaging Black mothers in such leadership roles will help ensure that policies benefit our communities and honour the community as skilled and knowledgeable.

8.7 Recommendations for further research in Canada

Arts-informed methodologies provide scholars of African descent with opportunities to ground research in African Indigenous knowledge systems. Namely, arts-informed methodologies facilitate the use of African Indigenous art, storytelling, memoirs, and creative non-fiction in ways that centre the experiences of African descended Canadians. This dissertation provides researchers with a comprehensive framework to facilitate and expand upon such arts-informed research. I recommend the academy uphold the significance of African Indigenous storytelling for the oppressed and value such approaches to research in formal learning spaces. I urge fellow African Indigenous research artists to continue using our stories as a method of study to enact resistance and secure our liberation (Onuora, 2015, 2012; hooks, 1990). As researchers within the academy, we must continue to give voice to our stories in ways that firmly establishes Black Canadians as creators and theorists. In light of this, I welcome additional creative studies that investigate the relationships between schools and members of diverse Black Canadian communities, who alongside anti-Black racism are marginalized by classism, heterosexism, homophobia and transphobia. In so doing, Black academics will be able to produce “legible work in the academy” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 13) that elicit social and political transformation.

134

8.8 Researcher reflections

I close this study with a reflection on the journey we (study participants, readers, and I) have undertaken. I embarked on this arts-informed narrative study as an ode to African Caribbean mothers living in Toronto. I continue to be in awe at how Black women organize to secure just futures for Black children. This study acknowledges the creativity, innovation, and leadership thriving within communities of Black Canadian mothers deemed as ghetto. Participant insights have helped me better understand the experiences of my mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. This study has forced me to appreciate my own maternal practice as leadership and collective work. My hope is that this study has helped you, as it has done for me, redefine your relationships with Black mothers and engage in practices that serve Black children. Of course, I hope this project encouraged researchers, policymakers, and school officials to esteem the theories in our stories. However, my deepest hope is that this project inspires Black Canadian women and girls, who understand the world through stories, to share their art. For as Wanna (2018), a Black Torontonian writer and mother, reminds us, “We are the trendsetters". This project acknowledges you; acknowledges us. I hope you saw yourself in this project, for that was my ultimate goal.

References

Abraham, M., & Tastsoglou, E. (2016). Addressing domestic violence in Canada and the United States: The uneasy co-habitation of women and the state. Current Sociology, 64(4), 568–585. Abrams, L. S., & Gibbs, T. J. (2002). Disrupting the logic of home-school relations. Parent Involvement Strategies and Practices of Inclusion and Exclusion. Urban Education, 37(3), 384-407. Aladejebi, Funké O. (2016). “Girl you better apply to teachers’ college”: The history of Black women educators in Ontario, 1940s – 1980s (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/33442/Aladejebi_Fu nke_O_2016_PhD.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y Allen, Q., & White-Smith, K. (2017). “That’s why I say stay in school”: Black mothers’ parental involvement, cultural wealth, and exclusion in their son’s schooling. Urban Education, 53(3), 409-435. Alston, J. A. (2012). Standing on the promises: A new generation of Black women scholars in educational leadership and beyond. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(1), 127-129. Anderson, W. W. (1993). Caribbean immigrants: A socio-demographic profile. Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. Anyon, J. (1997). Ghetto schooling: A political economy of urban educational reform. Teachers College Press. Arnold, E. (2006). Separation and loss through immigration of African Caribbean women to the UK. Attachment & Human Development, 8(2), 159-174. Banks-Wallace, J. (1998). Emancipatory potential of storytelling in a group. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 30(1), 17-21. Banks-Wallace, J. (2002). Talk that talk: Storytelling and analysis rooted in African American oral tradition. Qualitative Health Research, 12(3), 410–426. Banks-Wallace, J., & Parks, L. (2001). So that our souls don’t get damaged: The impact of racism on maternal thinking and practice related to the protection of daughters. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 22(1), 77-98. Bass, L. (2012). When care trumps justice: The operationalization of Black feminist caring in educational leadership. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(1), 73-87. Beatson, E. (2013). Engaging empowered mothering: Black Caribbean diasporic (m)othering under patriarchal motherhood. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 4(2), 74-88. Beatty, N. (2014). Uncle Bouki and Ti Malice: A Haitian Folktale. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://nicholasbeatty.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/uncle-bouki-and-ti-malice-a- haitian-folktale/ Berg, B. L.(2004). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences (5th ed.). Pearson.

135 136

Bernard, W.T., & Bernard, C. (1998). Passing the torch: A mother and daughter. Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, 18(2&3), 46-51. Black Health Alliance. (2018). Anti-Black racism. Retrieved April 18, 2020, from http://blackhealthalliance.ca/home/antiblack-racism/ Bloomberg, L. D., & Volpe, M. (2008). Completing your qualitative dissertation: A roadmap from beginning to end. SAGE Publications, Inc. Bobb-Smith, Y. “We get troo...": Caribbean Canadian women's spirituality as a strategy of resistance. In N. Massaquoi & N. Wane (Eds.), Theorizing Empowerment: Canadian perspectives on black feminist thought (pp. 55-74). Inanna Publications. Brand, D. (2001). A map to the door of no return: Notes to belonging. Doubleday Canada. Brown, R. & Parekh, G. (2010). Special education: Structural overview and student demographics (Research Report No. 10/11-03). Toronto District School Board. Butler-Kisber, L. (2010). Qualitative inquiry: thematic, narrative and arts-informed perspectives. Sage. Burczycka, M. (2017). Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002- x/2018001/article/54978/02-eng.htm Byrd, D.L. (2011). Reflections on maternal/feminist service-learning pedagogy. In Deborah Lea Byrd and F. J. Green (Eds.), Maternal pedagogies inside and outside the classroom (pp. 135-156). Demeter Press. Cannon, K. (1995). Surviving the blight. In G. Wade-Gayles (Ed.), My soul is a witness: African American women’s spirituality (pp. 19-26). Beacon. Carrol, S. A. (2017). Perspectives of 21st century Black women English teachers on impacting Black student achievement. The Journal of Negro Education, 86(2), 115- 137. Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada. The assessment and diagnosis of ADHD. Retrieved on April 25, 2020, from https://caddac.ca/adhd/understanding-adhd/in- general/assessment-diagnosis/ Chambers, T. (2009). The "receivement gap": School tracking policies and the fallacy of the "achievement gap". The Journal of Negro Education, 78(4), 417-431. Chambers, T., & McCready, L. (2011). “Making space” for ourselves: African American student responses to their marginalization. Urban Education, 46(6), 1352–1378. Charlmagne Tha God. (2017). Black privilege: Opportunity comes to those who create it. Touchstone. Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 125(1). (2017). https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/17c14?_ga=2.201683089.1078863139.1587850 792-1507324041.1572112530 Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. Jossey-Bass.

137

Cole, A. L., & Knowles, J. G. (Eds.) (2008). Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples and issues. Sage Publications. Colen, S. (1995). Like a Mother to Them: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian Childcare Workers and Employers in New York. In F. Ginsburg and R. Rapp (Eds.), Conceiving the new world order: The global politics of reproduction (pp. 78-102). University of California Press Ltd. Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), S14-S32. Collins, P. H. (1987). The meaning of motherhood in black culture and black mother- daughter relationships. Sage, 4(2), 3-10. Collins, P.H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge. Cooper, A. (1991). Black teachers in Canada West, 1850-1870: A history [Master’s thesis, University of Toronto]. National Library of Canada, Canadian Theses Service. Cooper, A. (2007). The hanging of Angélique: The untold story of Canadian slavery and the burning of old Montréal. University of Georgia Press. Cooper, C. W. (2009). Parent involvement, African American mothers, and the politics of educational care. Equity & Excellence in Education, 42(4), 379-394. Crawford, C. (2003). Sending love in a barrel: the making of transnational Caribbean families in Canada. Canadian Woman Studies, 22(3-4), 103+. Crawford, C. (2004). African Caribbean women, diaspora and transnationality. Canadian Women Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, 23(2), 97-103. Crawford, C. (2018). Decolonizing reproductive labor: Caribbean women, migration, and domestic work in the global economy. The Global South, 12(1), 33-55. Creswell, J. W. (1994). Research design: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage. Daenzer, P. (1993). Regulating class privilege: Immigrant servants in Canada, 1940s- 1990s. Canadian Scholars Press Inc. Daniel, B. (2005). Researching african canadian women. In G.J.S Dei & G.S. Johal (Eds.), Critical issues in anti-racist research methodologies (pp. 54-78). Peter Lang. Davis, O. I. (2013). Barbershop cuisine: African American foodways and narratives of health in the Black barbershop. International Journal of Men's Health, 12(2), 138+. Dei, G. J. S. (1993). The challenges of anti-racist education in Canada. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 25(2), 36-51. Dei, G.J. S. (2011). Indigenous Philosophies and Critical Education. Peter Lang. Dei, G. J. S., Hall, B. L., & Rosenberg, D. G. (2000). Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world. University of Toronto Press. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (eds.). (2003). Strategies of qualitative inquiry (2nd ed.). Sage.

138

Diamond, J. B., & Gomez, K. (2004). African American parents’ educational orientations: The importance of social class and parents’ perceptions of schools. Education and Urban Society, 36(4), 383-427. Diem, S., Young, M. D., & Sampson, C. (2019). Where critical policy meets the politics of education: An introduction. Educational Policy, 33(1), 3–15. Dillard, C. B. (2000). The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen: Examining an endarkened feminist epistemology in educational research and leadership. Qualitative Studies in Education, 13, 661-681. Dillard, C. B. (2018). Let steadfastness have its full effect: (Re)Membering (re)search and endarkened feminisms from ananse to asantewaa. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(9), 617–623. Dumas, M. J., Dixson, A. D., Mayorga, E. (2016). Educational policy and the cultural politics of race: Introduction to the special issue. Educational Policy, 30(1), 3-12. Edwards, A. (2000). Community mothering: The relationship between mothering and the community work of Black women. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 66-84. Elabor-Idemudia. (2000). Indigenous nations and the human genome diversity project. In G.J.S. Dei, B.L. Hall, & D. G. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world (pp. 102-119). University of Toronto Press. Elliot, S., & Reid, M. Low-income Black mothers parenting adolescents in the mass incarceration era: The long reach of criminalization. American Sociological Review, 84(2), 197-219. Etter-Lewis, G. (1993). My soul is my own: Oral narratives of African American women in the professions. Routledge. Fatona, Andrea. (2006). In the presence of absence: Invisibility, black Canadian history, and Melinda Mollineaux's pinhole photography. Canadian Journal of Communication, 31 (1), 227- 238. Flynn, K., & Henwood, C. (2000). Nothing to write home about: Caribbean Canadian daughters, mothers and migration. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 118-129. Gibson, N. (2011). Braiding my place: Developing a foundational selfhood through cross- racial mothering. In T.C. King & S.A. Ferguson (Eds.), Black womanist leadership: Tracing the motherline (pp. 57-66). State University of New York Press. Glaser, L. (2017). My profession chose me: Precarity, pragmatism, and professionalism in Caribbean and West African immigrant domestic workers narratives. North American Dialogue, 20(1), 4–16. Goss, L., & Barnes, M. (1989). Talk that talk: An anthology of African-American storytelling. Simon & Schuster. Goss, L., & Goss, C. (1995). Jump up and say!: A collection of Black storytelling. Simon & Schuster.

139

Griffin, K.A. (2013). Voices of the "othermothers": Reconsidering Black professors' relationships with Black students as a form of social exchange. The Journal of Negro Education, 82(2), 169-183. Hamlin, D., & Flessa, J. (2018). Parental Involvement Initiatives: An Analysis. Educational Policy, 32(5), 697–727. Hartman, S. (2002). The time of slavery. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(4), 757-777. Hartman, S. (2007). Lose Your Mother: A journey along the Atlantic slave route. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Hartman, S. (2008). Venus in Two Acts. Small Axe, 26(June), 1–14. Hartman, S. (2020). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Intimate histories of riotous Black girls, troublesome women and queer Radicals. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. Harvin, D.S. (2020). These Black college students are using an age old tradition to pay for school. Refinery29. https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/black-hair-stylists-college- students Henry, F. (1968). The West Indian domestic scheme in Canada. Social and Economic Studies, 17(1), 83-91. Hine, D. C. (1989). Rape and the inner lives of Black women in the Middle West: Preliminary thoughts on the culture of dissemblance. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14, 912-920. Ho, C. (1993). The internationalization of kinship and the feminization of Caribbean migration: The case of Afro-Trinidadian immigrants in Los Angeles. Journal of the Society for Applied Anthropology, 52(1), 32-40. Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., & Avila, E. (1997). "I'm here, but I'm there": The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood. Gender and Society, 11(5), 548-571. hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman?: Black women and feminism. South End Press. hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. South End Press. hooks, b. (2007). Revolutionary parenting. In A. O’ Reilly (Ed.), Maternal theory essential readings (pp. 145-156). Demeter Press. Horsford, S. D., & Tillman, L. C. (Eds.). (2016). Intersectional identities and educational leadership of Black women in the USA. Routledge. Hurston, Z. N. (1990). Mules and men. Perennial Libraries. Identification and Placement of Exceptional Pupils, Ontario Regulation 181/98, Section 20 (1990). https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/980181. James, C. (2010). Race & well-being: The lives, hopes, and activism of African Canadians. Fernwood Pub. James, S. M. (1999). Mothering: A possible black feminist link to social transformation. In A. P. A. Busia, & S. M. James (Eds.), Theorizing black feminisms: The visionary pragmatism of black women (pp. 44-54). Routledge.

140

James, C.E. & Turner, T. (2017). Towards race equity in education: The schooling of black students in the Greater Toronto Area. York University. Retrieved from https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf Javed, N., & Rushowy, K. (2017, February 17). Nancy Elgie resigns from York school board amid uproar over racial slur. The Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/about/contact-webmaster.html Kashope Wright, H. (2000). Not so strange bedfellows: Indigenous knowledge, literature studies, and African development. In G.J.S. Dei, B.L. Hall, & D. G. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world (pp. 184-201). University of Toronto Press. Kelley, R. D. G. (1997). Yo' mama's disfunktional!: Fighting the culture wars in urban America. Beacon Press. Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. The Bodley Head. Khago. (2011). Nah sell out [Song]. On I’m ok [Album]. Rockers Island. Khalifa, M. (2015). Can Blacks be racists? Black-on-Black principal abuse in an urban school setting. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(2), 259- 282. Khalifa, M., Khalil, D., Marsh, T. E. J., & Halloran, C. (2019). Toward an Indigenous, decolonizing school leadership: A literature review. Educational Administration Quarterly, 55(4) 571–614. King, T. C., & Ferguson, S. A. (Eds.). (2011). Black womanist leadership: Tracing the motherline. State University of New York Press. Klingler, A. (1997). The storyteller in healthcare settings. Storytelling Magazine, 9(4), 21-23. Knight, Claudette. (1997). Black parents speak: Education in mid-nineteenth century Canada West. Ontario History, 89(2), 269-284. Komives, S. R., & Wagner, W. (2017). Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model of leadership development. Jossey-Bass. Konguavi, T. (2019, December 17). School board lifts ban on mother in do-rag feud, denies conduct was racially motivated. CBC/Radio-Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/school-board-lifts-ban-on-mother-in-do- rag-feud-1.5400150 Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations and contexts. University of Toronto Press. Kvale, S. (1996). Interviews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Sage. Lareau, A., & Horvat, E. N. (1999). Moments of social inclusion and exclusion: Race, class, and cultural capital in family-school relationships. Sociology of Education, 72, 37-53. Latunde, Y., & Clark-Louque, A. (2016). Untapped resources: Black parent engagement that contributes to learning. The Journal of Negro Education, 85(1), 72-81.

141

Lebakeng, T.G. (2010). Discourse on Indigenous knowledge systems, sustainable socioeconomic development and the challenge of the academy in Africa. CODESRIA Bulletin, 1 & 2, 24-29. Lee, V. (2011). Sisterlocking power: Or how is leadership supposed to look?. In T.C. King & S.A. Ferguson (Eds.), Black womanist leadership: Tracing the motherline (pp. 45- 56). State University of New York Press. Leithwood, K. & Reihl, C. (2003). What we know about successful school leadership. Temple University. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. B. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analysis and interpretation. Sage Publications. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Sage. Livo, N., & Rietz, S. (1986). Storytelling: Process and practice. Libraries Unlimited. Lomotey, K. (2019). Research on the leadership of Black women principals: Implications for Black students. Educational Researcher, 48(6), 336-348. Lowinsky, N. (1992). Stories from the mothering: Reclaiming the mother-daughter bond, finding our female souls. Jeremy P. Tarcher. Mackey, A. (2000). Return to the m(other) to heal the self: Identity, selfhood and community in Toni Morrison’s beloved. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 42. MacPhee, M., Turnbull, M., Cormier, M., & Miller, T. (2017). The Experience of Non- Francophone Parents in a French Minority-Language School. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 20(1), 115-134. Mandara, J. (2006). The impact of family functioning on African American males’ academic achievement: A review and clarification of the empirical literature. Teachers College Record, 108, 206-223. Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2006). Designing qualitative research (4th ed.). Sage. Massaquoi, N., & Wane, N. (Eds.) (2007). Theorizing empowerment: Canadian perspectives on Black feminist thought. Inanna Publications. Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black lives: state violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Fernwood Publishing. McDonnell, J. (2012). Re-theorizing the integral link between culture and development: Exploring Ghanaian proverbs as theoretical and practical knowledges for development. [Doctoral dissertation]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. McGarvey, D. (2019, May 21). Few details offered on CBE school bullying review as another Calgary mother calls for action. CBC/Radio-Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cbe-calgary-bullying-schools-1.5142536 McLaren, Kristin. (2003). British-Canadian myths of purity and segregated schools in mid- nineteenth century Canada West. Canadian Society of Church History, Historical Papers, 73-86.

142

Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study application in education. Jossey-Bass. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis (2nd ed.). Sage. Mishler, E. (1986). Research interviewing: Context and analysis. Harvard Press. Mkabela, Q. (2005). Using the Afrocentric method in researching indigenous African culture, The Qualitative Report, 10(1), 178–189. Mogadime, D. (2000). Black girls/black women centred texts and black teachers as othermothers. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 222-233. Morrison, T. (1987). The site of Memory. In W. Zinsser (Ed.), Inventing the truth: The art and craft of Memoir (pp. 103-124). Houghton Miffin. Morrison, T. (1984). Memory, Creation and Writing. Thought, 59, 385-390. Mueller, J. (1999). Narrative approaches to qualitative research in primary care. In B. Crabtree & W. Miller (Eds.), Doing qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 221-238). Sage. Mugabo, D. (2019). On haunted places: Encountering slavery in Québec. In W. French (Ed.), Black writers matter (pp. 89-101). University of Regina Press. Nieto, S. (2000). Placing equity front and center some thoughts on transforming teacher education for a new century. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 180–187. Noguera, P. A. (2001). Transforming urban schools through investments in the social capital of parents. In S. Saegert, J. P. Thompson, M. R. Warren & M. Project (Eds.), Social capital and poor communities (pp. 189-212). Russell Sage Foundation. Nyamnjoh, F.B. (2004). A relevant education for African development. CODESRIA Bulletin, XXIX (10), 162- 184. Nzegwu, N. (2006). Family matters: Feminist concepts in African philosophy of culture. University of New York Press. Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. Yale University Press. Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. Race matters in the child welfare system [infographic]. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from http://www.oacas.org/what-we- do/onevisiononevoice/ Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. (2019). Navigating the child welfare system: A guide for Ontario’s Black community. http://preventingcrime.ca/wp- content/uploads/2019/03/Navigating-the-Child-Welfare-System-Guide.pdf Ontario College of Teachers. Ethical standards. Ontario College of Teachers. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://www.oct.ca/public/professional-standards/ethical- standards Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2018). Interrupted childhoods: Over-representation of Indigenous and Black children in Ontario child welfare. http://www.ohrc.on.ca/sites/default/files/Interrupted%20childhoods_Over- representation%20of%20Indigenous%20and%20Black%20children%20in%20Ontari o%20child%20welfare_accessible.pdf

143

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2020). Human rights and family status. http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/human-rights-and-family-status-brochure Ontario Ministry of Education. French-language education in Ontario. Ontario Ministry of Education. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/amenagement/ Ontario Ministry of Education. (2005). Parent voice in education project: Report. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/parentVoice.pdf Ontario Ministry of Education. (2010). Parents in partnership: A parent engagement policy for Ontario schools. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/involvement/PE_Policy2010.pdf Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014a). Exploring five core leadership capacities using data: Transforming potential into practice. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/leadership/IdeasIntoActionBulletin5.pdf Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014b). Exploring five core leadership capacities promoting collaborative learning cultures: Putting the promise into practice. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/leadership/IdeasIntoActionBulletin3.pdf Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014c). Exploring five core leadership capacities setting goals: The power of purpose. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/leadership/IdeasIntoActionBulletin4.pdf Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014d). Exploring five core leadership capacities aligning resources with priorities: Focusing on what matters most. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/leadership/IdeasIntoActionBulletin6.pdf Ontario Ministry of Education. (2017). Special education in Ontario. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/policy/os/2017/spec_ed_3.html Ontario Ministry of Education. (2018). Special education funding guidelines: Special equipment amount (SEA). http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/funding/1819/2018-19-sea- guidelines-en.pdf Onuora, N.A. (2012). Anansesem (Storytelling Nights) African Maternal Pedagogies. [Doctoral dissertation]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Onuora, N.A. (2015). Anansesem: Telling stories and storytelling African maternal pedagogies. Demeter Press. O'Reilly, A. (2004). Toni Morrison and motherhood: A politics of the heart. State University of New York Press. O'Reilly, A., & Abbey, S. (2000). Mothers and daughters: Connection, empowerment, and transformation. Rowman & Littlefield. Ornstein, M. (2000). Ethno-racial inequality in Toronto: Analysis of the 1996 census. Access and Equity Unit Strategic and Corporate Policy Division Chief Administrator’s Office. https://povertyandhumanrights.org/docs/ornstein_fullreport.pdf Owusu-Ansah, F.E., & Mji, G. (2013). African indigenous knowledge and research. African Journal of Disability, 2(1), 1-5.

144

Oyewùmí, O. (2000). Family Bonds/Conceptual binds: African notes on feminist epistemologies. Signs, 25(4), 1093-1098. Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Sage. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Sage. Perryman-Mark, C. A. (2000). Resistance and surrender: Mothering young Black and feminist. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 130-138. Polanyi, L. (1985). Telling the American story: A structural and cultural analysis of conversational storytelling. Ablex. Prentice, Alison. (1977). The school promoters: Education and social class in mid- nineteenth century Upper Canada. McClelland and Stewart. Pushor, D. (2011). Looking out, looking in. Educational Leadership, 69(1), 65–68. Pushor, D. (2012). Tracing my research on parent engagement: Working to interrupt the story of school as protectorate. Action in Teacher Education, 34(5-6), 464–479. Pring, R. (2000). Philosophy of educational research. Continuum. Radford-Hill S. (1986). Considering feminism as a model for social change. In T. de Lauretis (Ed.), Feminist studies/critical studies (pp. 157-172). Palgrave Macmillan. REDE4 Black Lives: Research, Evaluation, Data, Ethics. (n.d.). The call for a protocol our process. https://rede4blacklives.com/the-protocol/ Reed, L., & Evans, A. (2008). “What you see is [not always] what you get!” Dispelling race and gender leadership assumptions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 21, 487–499. Rhodes, Jane. (1998). Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black press and protest in the nineteenth century. Indiana University Press. Rich, A. (1986). Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. Norton. Riddell, William Renwick. (May 1923-Feb 1924). Slave in Upper Canada. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 14(2), 249-78. Robson, K., Anisef, P., Brown, R.S., & George, R. (2018). Underrepresented students and the transition to postsecondary education: Comparing two Toronto cohorts. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 48(1), 39-59. Rodriguez, D. (2006). Un/masking identity: Healing our wounded souls. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(6), 1067-1090. Rooks, N. (1996). Hair raising: Beauty, culture, and African American women. Rutgers University Press. Rosenbloom, S., & Way, N. (2004). Experiences of discrimination among African American, Asian American, and Latino adolescents in an urban high school. Youth and Society, 35, 420–451. Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (2nd ed.). Sage. Ruddick, S. (1989). Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. Beacon Press.

145

Sale, M. (1992). Call and response as critical method: African-American oral traditions and beloved. African American Review, 26(1), 41-50. Saunders, Patricia J. (2008a). Defending the dead, confronting the archive: A conversation with M. NourbeSe Philip. Small Axe, 12(2), 63–79. Saunders, Patricia J. (2008b). Fugitive dreams of diaspora: Conversations with Saidiya Hartman. Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 6(1), 1- 16. Schram, T. H. (2003). Conceptualizing qualitative inquiry. Merrill Prentice Hall. Schwandt, T. A. (1997). Qualitative inquiry: A dictionary of terms. Sage. Sewall, I. (1998). The folkloral voice. Qualitative Institute Press. Sharpe, C. E. (2016). In the wake: on Blackness and being. Duke University Press. Silvera, M. (1983). Silenced. Black Women and Women of Color Press. Sinay, E., Presley, A., Armson, S., Tam, G., Ryan, T.G., Burchell, D., & Barron, C. (2018). Toronto District School Board French as a second language program review: Developmental evaluation (Research Report No. 18/19-03). Toronto District School Board. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/docs/TDSB%20French%20Programs%20Review% 20Mar082019.pdf Stanley, D., & Chambers, T. (2018). Tracking myself: African American high school students talk about the effects of curricular differentiation. International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership, 13 (1), 1-16. Stewart, C. (1997). Soul survivors: An African American spirituality. Westminster John Knox Press. Student Absenteeism and Protection Act, Bill 198 (2018). http://www.ontla.on.ca/bills/bills- files/41_Parliament/Session2/b198_e.pdf Thomas, W. (2000). You’ll become a lioness: African-American women talk about mothering. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 52-65. Thompson, C. (2009). Black women and identity: What’s hair got to do with It? Michigan Feminist Studies, 22(1), 78-90. The Institute for Education Leadership. (2013). The Ontario leadership framework: A school and system leader’s guide to putting Ontario’s leadership framework into action. https://www.education-leadership- ontario.ca/application/files/8814/9452/4183/Ontario_Leadership_Framework_OLF.p df Tobin, Jacqueline L. (2007). From midnight to dawn: The last tracks of the Underground Railroad. Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group. Toronto District School Board. Adult high school. Retrieved on April 25, 2020, from https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Adult-Learners/Adult-Credit-Programs/Adult-High-Schools

146

Toronto District School Board. Special education program. Retrieve on April 26, 2020, from https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Leadership-Learning-and-School-Improvement/Special- Education/Programs Toronto District School Board. (2014). TDSB students (grades 7-12): School and community safety. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/research/docs/2011- 12CensusFactSheet7SchoolSafety02Jun14.pdf Toronto District School Board. (2015). Ethno-racial series: Black students Report. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/research/docs/reports/Portrait_Census2011- 12_Black_FINAL_report.pdf Toronto District School Board. (2017). Grade 9 cohort graduation patterns, 2011-2016 (Fact sheet 2). https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/research/docs/reports/FS2%20Grade%209%20Coho rt%20Grad%20Rate%20Patterns%202011-16%20FINAL.pdf Toronto District School Board. (2018). Multi-year strategic plan: Action plans. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/leadership/board_room/Multi- Year_Strategic_Plan.pdf. Trotman, F. (2011). Legacies from our mothers. In T.C. King & S.A. Ferguson (Eds.), Black womanist leadership: Tracing the motherline (pp. 23-26). State University of New York Press. Turay, T.M. (2000). Peace research and African development: An Indigenous African perspective. In G.J.S. Dei, B.L. Hall, & D. G. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world (pp. 248-264). University of Toronto Press. Turner, T. (2016). One vision one voice: Changing the Ontario child welfare system to better serve African Canadians. Practice framework part 2: Race equity practices. Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. http://www.oacas.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/One-Vision-One-Voice-Part-2_digital_english-May- 2019.pdf United States of America Department of Education. (2015). Family educational rights and privacy act. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html?src=ft University of Toronto. Academic bridging program. Retrieved on April 25, 2020, from https://fas.calendar.utoronto.ca/section/Academic-Bridging-Program Vincent, C., Rollock, N., Ball, S., & Gillborn, D. (2012). Being strategic, being watchful, being determined: Black middle-class parents and schooling. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33, 337-354. Walcott, R. (2003). Black like who?: Writing Black Canada. Insomniac Press. Walcott, R., & Abdillahi, I. (2019). BlackLife: Post-BLM and the struggle for freedom. ARP Books. Wane, N.N. (2000a). Indigenous knowledge: Lessons from the elders- A Kenyan case study. In G.J.S. Dei, B.L. Hall, & D. G. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world (pp. 54-69). University of Toronto Press.

147

Wane, N.N. (2000b). Reflections on the mutuality of mothering: Women, children, and othermothering. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 2(2), 105- 116. Wane, N. N. (2005). African Indigenous Knowledge: Claiming, Writing, Storing, and Sharing The Discourse. Journal of Thought, 40(2), 27–46. Waters, B.S. (2016). Freedom lessons: black mothers asserting smartness of their children. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(6), 1223-1235. Wester, S., Vogel, D., Wei, M., & McLain, R. (2006). African American men, gender role conflict, and psychological stress: The role of racial identity. Journal of Counseling and Development, 84, 419–429. Wilson, A. (1995). Foreword. In D. Belton (Ed.), Speak my name (pp. xi-xii). Beacon. Wilson-Forsberg, S., Masakure, O., Shizha, E., Lafrenière, G., & Mfoafo-M’Carthy, M. (2019). Great expectations: Perspectives of young west African immigrant men transitioning to the Canadian labour market without postsecondary education. Journal of International Migration and Integration. https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1007/s12134-019-00718-4 Winks, Robin. (1997). The Blacks in Canada: A history. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Wong, K. (2015). Implementing Parent Engagement Policy in an Increasingly Culturally Diverse Community of New Immigrants: How New is “New”? Canadian Journal of Education / Revue Canadienne De L'éducation, 38(3), 1-30. World Health Organization. (2009). Mental health system in Barbados. https://www.who.int/mental_health/barbados_who_aims_report.pdf?ua=1 Yau, M., O’Reilly, J., Rosolen, L., & Bryce, A. (2011). Census portraits: understanding our students’ ethno-racial backgrounds. Toronto District School Board. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/research/docs/reports/PortraitsBlack.pdf Young, D. (2007). Rivers...and other blackness...between us. Women’s Press Literary. Zheng, S. & De Jesus, S. (2017). Expulsion decision-making process and expelled students’ transition experience in the Toronto District School Board’s caring and safe schools programs and their graduation outcomes. (Research Report No. 16/17-15). Toronto District School Board.

Appendix A Sample of recruitment flyer

Seeking Black Canadian Mothers!

What: We are seeking Black Canadian mothers for a study about the relationship between Black mothers and school officials.

Why: To help us understand the relationship between Black Canadian mothers and school officials. This study will investigate the ways that Black Canadian mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationship with school officials.

Who: Women who self-identify as: - African descent; - 18 years old or older; - living in Canada; and - engaging in motherwork.

When: We are seeking Black Canadian mothers to participate in a face-to-face interview. Interviews will last 45 to 60 minutes. Interviews will be scheduled at your convenience.

How: Please contact Stephanie Fearon Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto 252 Bloor Street West [email protected]

Black Mothers & Schools Study [email protected]

148

Appendix B Sample of participant consent form

149 150

Appendix C Sample of interview guide

I: Demographic & Biographical Information II: Conceptions of Mothering 1. How old are you? 1. What does the term mother mean to 2. Where were you born? you? 3. Where is your place of residence? 2. Who is a mother? 4. How many children do you have? 3. What roles do Black mothers play in 5. How old is your child(ren)? the lives of their child(ren)? 6. What is the gender of your child(ren)? Community? 7. How would you describe your 4. What has led you to understand relationship with your child(ren)? mothering in this way? 8. What is your relationship status? 5. How do your ideas of mothering fit with your family origin/tradition? 6. How do you live out your role as a Black mother?

III: Communities of Supports IV: Relationships with School Officials 1. Do you have a support system for 1. What does formal schooling mean to your mothering? Describe that system you? to me. 2. What, do you believe, are the roles of 2. How did you establish your support schools? School officials? system? 3. How do you learn about the schooling 3. What type of supports does this experiences of your child(ren)? system provide? 4. Has the school been a place where 4. How has your support system affected your mothering practices have been the way that you mother? supported? Challenged? 5. What impact does your support 5. How would you describe your system have on the schooling relationship with officials at your experiences of your child(ren)? child(ren)’s school? 6. How do you handle difficulties in your relationship with school officials? Successes? 7. Who supports you in overcoming difficulties with these officials? How? 8. Who helps you to ensure that your child(ren) has a positive schooling experience? How?

V: Conclusion 1. Is there anything that you would like to add? 2. Is there something that you want to make sure that I understand about your account?

151