Family-School-Community (Dis)Engagement: An Indigenous Community's Fight for Educational Equity and Cultural Reclamation in a New England School District Author: Shaneé Adrienne Washington Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108518 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2019 Copyright is held by the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0). Boston College Lynch School of Education Department of Teacher Education, Special Education, and Curriculum and Instruction Curriculum and Instruction Doctoral Program FAMILY-SCHOOL-COMMUNITY (DIS)ENGAGEMENT: AN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY’S FIGHT FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUITY AND CULTURAL RECLAMATION IN A NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT Dissertation by SHANEÉ ADRIENNE WASHINGTON submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2019 © Copyright by Shaneé Adrienne Washington 2019 Abstract Family-School-Community (Dis)Engagement: An Indigenous Community’s Fight for Educational Equity and Cultural Reclamation in a New England School District Shaneé Adrienne Washington Dr. Lauri Johnson, Chair This exploratory case study examined family-school-community engagement in a small New England school district and town that is home to a federally recognized Indigenous Tribe that has inhabited the area for 12,000 years and whose children represent the largest group of racially minoritized students in the public schools. Using Indigenous protocols and methodologies that included relational accountability, individual semi-structured conversations, talking circles, and participant observation, this study explored the ways that Indigenous families and community members as well as district educators conceptualized and practiced family-school-community engagement and whether or not their conceptualizations and practices were aligned and culturally sustaining/revitalizing. Family-school-community engagement has been touted in research literature as a remedy to the problem of low achievement that prevails in many schools serving minoritized students, including Indigenous students. However, a more pertinent reason to study this topic is due to “ongoing legacies of colonization, ethnocide, and linguicide” committed against Indigenous families and their children by colonial governments and their educational institutions (Brayboy, 2005; Grande, 2015; McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). This study was thus conducted and data were analyzed using a decolonizing lens and culturally responsive leadership (Johnson, 2014), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014), and culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (McCarty & Lee, 2014) as theoretical frameworks. Findings revealed distinctions in the priorities and engagement practices of educators versus Tribal members. While educators conceptualized and reported to practice an open-door model of engagement in which families have a plethora of opportunities to get involved in the schools, Indigenous parents and community leaders engaged as ardent advocates for the equitable treatment of their children and for the expansion of language and culture-based programming for tribal students in educational spaces within and outside of the public-school system. Also, Educators and Tribal members alike acknowledged that district staff lack cultural awareness and sensitivity and needed to be better educated. These findings and others offer important implications for local Indigenous communities and school districts serving Indigenous families. Acknowledgements To the Wampanoag, Lakota, and Nipmuc parents and community members and to the teachers and administrators who participated in this study, thank you so much for welcoming me into your communities and for trusting me with your stories! Without you, this dissertation would not have been possible. To my beautiful and brilliant daughters, Nia-Lael and Imara Wangia, thank you for your patience, love, understandings, support, and encouragement throughout my doctoral studies and the writing of this dissertation. You are the inspiration for all that I do, and I dedicate this work to you. To Dr. Lauri Johnson, my dissertation chair, you have been my greatest blessing in this work. Thank you for being the best mentor and chair that a scholar could ask for. Thank you for your guidance, for always being available, for pushing my thinking, and requiring me to always consider more and do better. Thank you for keeping me accountable and for our many unhurried meetings about this and other work. Your close reading of my dissertation, thoughtful and critical feedback, and constant questioning played a major role in this final product. To Dr. Leigh Patel, Dr. M. Brinton Lykes, and Dr. Gabrielle Oliveira, thank you for agreeing to serve on my committee and for your guidance, feedback, and encouragement from the birth of this dissertation through its completion. Dr. Patel and Dr. Lykes, I will forever be grateful that I took your Critical Race Theory and Participatory Action Research courses respectively, in the fall of 2016. It was through these courses that I first became aware of and had the privilege of reading and learning i about decolonizing and Indigenous protocols and methodologies. Your courses also gave me the opportunity to explore these methodologies further by conducting my own additional research, and your feedback on my work has been invaluable. Thank you, Dr. Lykes, for meeting with me and offering useful feedback during my initial consideration of this topic for dissertation. Also, thank you for your constant encouragement and support. Thank you, Dr. Patel, for always helping me to think more critically and for requiring me to read and reread to gain a firmer grasp of perspectives, theories, and methodologies that were new to me. Thank you for your unwavering encouragement and constant reminders that I’ve been called to this work and must continue in it. Thank you, Dr. Oliveira, for completing my dream team of a committee. Thank you for pushing my thinking regarding my questions and methods. Also, thank you for believing so strongly in my work and for encouraging me to consider various publications. To Dr. Andy Hargreaves, Dr. Dennis Shirley, Michelle Forge, Michael O’Keefe, and all the leaders and participants of the CODE Consortium, thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve with you and for being one of the inspirations for this study. Andy and Dennis, thank you for your mentorship and unwavering confidence in me and support of my work. To Mom (Nancy Washington), Renata Love Jones, Juan Cristóbal García- Huidobro, Dr. Francina Kerr, Selena Washington, Dr. Michael O’Connor, Dr. Yalda Kaveh, Paul Madden, Anne Vera Cruz, Dr. Chris Bacon, Nicholl Montgomery, Pastor Deborah Love, and Elder Carmen Greene, my heart swells with gratitude to all of you for your intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and material support. Thank you for all of the ways that you have supported and encouraged me throughout my doctoral studies. I will ii forever be indebted to you for your gracious and generous availability, advice, and assistance, which have been tremendous, and I am so grateful. Mom, Renata, Juan, Selena, Dr. Kerr, Pastor Deb, and Elder Lady Carmen, thank you for checking in on me, praying for me, sending me encouraging messages, and for simply loving me in a tangible way. I love you immensely! To my amazing cohort, Allison, Anna, Anne, Caitlin, Chris, Juan, Kate, Paul M., Paul X., Qian Qian, and Renata, you are my colleagues, friends, and we will forever be bonded as family. You all have been a godsent in this journey from nervous and uncertain doctoral student to still nervous and a little more certain Doctor of Philosophy. I have deep gratitude for each of you for making this journey more bearable, rewarding, and fun. To TEFIAS, Megina, Meredith, Michael, and Renata, I will forever be grateful to Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith for putting us together in her Practitioner Research course and that we loved working together as an inquiry community so much that we continued to meet every month for three years. Thank you, Dr. Annie Homza, for joining us and for being a wonderful addition to our community of critical scholars. Our monthly meetings and use of protocols to facilitate conversations and feedback about our research and teaching helped shape me into the scholar that I am today. To Dr. Susan Bruce, Dr. Patrick McQuillan, Dr. Katherine McNeill, Dr. Patrick Proctor, Dr. Martin Scanlan, Dr. Lillie Albert, Dean Elizabeth Sparks and the many other faculty members in the Lynch School of Education who believed in me, supported my work, gave me opportunities, and served as informal mentors and advisors to me, many thanks! iii A special thanks to the Lynch School of Education Faculty Awards Committee for gifting me with the 2018-2019 dissertation fellowship. This fellowship gave me the precious gift of time and made it possible for me to complete my dissertation in time to begin my new position as an assistant professor. Last, but not least, to my parents (Nancy and Andrew Washington), siblings (Marcus and Lee Washington, and Brandi Bacchus), extended family and friends, and church families, thank you for your unwavering love and support and for cheering me on in person and from a distance. iv Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgements i Chapter One……………………………………………………………………..……..