Got Skillz? Recasting and Negotiating Racial Tension in Teacher–Student Relationships Amidst Shifting Demographics

This paper reports on a curriculum designed for Black students whose school teachers and administrators sought to address concerns about students’ academic underachievement and behavioral challenges. In order to design the curriculum, we examined Black students’ reactions to race- and academic-related stress as a result of their interactions with mostly White teachers and peers in an increasingly diversifying predominantly White, middle-class community. Grounded in principles of Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST), a paradigm for understanding the racial coping strategies utilized by individuals to contend with racial stress and well-being, the study sought to elucidate racial tensions found in schooling relationships that foster racial disparities in classrooms. Specifically, our team conducted focus group sessions with Black parents and students which were guided by our use of the Cultural and Racial Experiences of Socialization Survey (CARES), a racial and ethnic socialization measure that elicits responses from students about the kinds of messages students receive about race and ethnicity from people parents and teachers. Data from the sessions subsequently informed the design of Let’s Talk? (LT), a racial conflict resolution curriculum for Black adolescents. In this paper, we share what we learned about students’ school experiences and coping mechanism through their participation in LT.