Perennial concern about racial inequities in US K-12 schooling has intensified since the pandemic and racial reckoning of 2020. In suburban school districts, which have become more racially diverse (Chen et al., 2021), school board members play a pivotal role as policymakers whose choices affect the education of minoritized students. Drawing on the sensemaking perspective from sociology (Weick, 1995) and social construction of policy targets from political science (Schneider et al., 2014), this multiple case study explores how school board members in three suburban New York districts make sense of changing student demographics and develop related policy. I find suburban school board members’ expressed support for equity, aligned with institutional expectations, coexists in tension with negative ideas about minoritized students and limited understanding of racism. Combined with institutional ideas about the narrow role of the board and heightened attention to actual and potential feedback from white groups, this results in limited benefits to the education of minoritized students. The state’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework (2019a), intended as a guide, has little impact in these settings.

Research demonstrates that Black students deserve teachers who utilize culturallyresponsive pedagogy (CRP) and antiracist pedagogy to offer a high-quality education that is both engaging and affirming of their culture and life experiences. Unfortunately, many Black students are instead forced to navigate schools that do not center their culture or ways of knowing, but rather perpetuate the racism embedded within the U.S. education system. In suburban schools in particular, Black students rarely have access to teachers who represent their racial and cultural backgrounds, and this lack of representation and understanding amplifies the need for CRP and antiracist pedagogy. Further, existing research shows that preservice and current teachers rarely have access to the training and staff development that would prepare them to utilize these pedagogies (Warren, 2018). To offer the field more understanding about how teachers become culturally responsive and antiracist, this study explores the process that suburban public school teachers progress through to adopt these pedagogies, and the factors that inform this process. This study is informed by a theoretical framework that includes critical race theory, BlackCrit, and sociocultural context, and builds on the existing scholarship on Black students’ schooling experiences, teacher-student relationships, and CRP and antiracist pedagogy. Drawing on this existing research, I utilized qualitative data to explore suburban teachers’ perspectives, experiences and sense-making related to the process of becoming culturally responsive and/or antiracist. I conducted one-on-one interviews with 15 teachers who represent different racial/ethnic backgrounds, as well as a range of grade levels (K-12) and academic subjects. The participants all self-identify as educators who are committed to becoming culturally relevant and/or antiracist educators. They currently teach, or previously worked directly with, Black students in public suburban schools in the NYC metro area. The data from this study yielded three major takeaways. First, I found that the process of becoming a teacher who embodies culturally responsive and antiracist pedagogies is a journey that is informed by several factors, including lived experiences, key people that influence growth, and exploration of one’s own racial identity. To offer a clear illustration of how teachers progress through this process, I map the journey by offering specific details about the perspectives and practices that align with the beginning, middle and advanced phases of the journey. Importantly, this journey is nonlinear and unending, as being culturally responsive and antiracist requires continual learning and growth. Second, I find that strong teacher-relationships based in care play a key role in my participants’ journeys to adopting culturally responsive and antiracist pedagogies. I also find that teachers utilize unique approaches when demonstrating care and building relationships with Black students, as the teachers understood that Black students have unique experiences in school settings, especially those in suburban contexts. Further, I found that several factors inform teachers’ relationship-building approaches, with personal experiences and relationships being the most impactful. Importantly, I also find that when teachers work to build strong teacher-student relationships while also progressing through their journeys to adopting CRP and antiracist pedagogy, the relationships and pedagogies reinforce one another. The last key finding from this study explores the barriers that teachers encounter in their journeys to adopting culturally responsive and antiracist pedagogies. While the data demonstrated that several participants have successfully progressed through the journey to the point where they can now effectively implement CRP and antiracist pedagogy, I found that participants also faced two major barriers that impede their ability to effectively implement these pedagogies within their school contexts. The first barrier is the lack of focus on CRP and antiracist pedagogy in both teacher education and professional development sessions, including a lack of focus on the connection between student-teacher relationships and these pedagogies. The suburban contexts that the participants work within pose a second barrier, as the environments are rarely welcoming or conducive to work intended to advance racial equity. This study’s findings point to several implications for the field, including a need for changes to policy and practice, as shifting our schools toward becoming culturally responsive and antiracist requires significant support and resources. The findings also point to several opportunities for future research to further build the field’s knowledge about preparing teachers for CRP and antiracist pedagogy. Once our field knows more about this process, research such as this will help to better prepare teachers to offer Black students a high-quality education.