Race, Emotions, and Woke in Teaching

This chapter queries the meaning and arc of social justice for teachers engaging in mindfulness pedagogy and pursuing the role of emotion in classroom instruction. In particular, this chapter problematizes the relationship between being “woke” and having emotional granularity in relation to one's practice as a teacher. Among other questions, it investigates: How may teacher educators support prospective and new teachers in thinking through what their emotions mean for teaching students who differ from them racially, ethnically, in social class, and in other dimensions of identity? How can prospective and new teachers enact curriculum and practices that embrace students as intellectually able, promising scholars? One cannot fully understand the world in which we live without trying to integrate and understand its emotions. (Dominique Moisi, 2009, p. x)