"Were You Born Early?"

Robert Hill (1972) identified strengths of Black families: strong kinship bonds, strong work orientation, adaptability of family roles, high achievement orientation, and religious orientation. Some suggest these strengths sustain physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of Blacks. This study used narratives and survey data from a cohort of high-achieving Black students in a highly selective honors high school and integrated every element of Hill's Black family strengths-perspective to social/structural inequality and diversity rationale ideologies. Results revealed, upon entering racially diverse school-setting, Black students demonstrated by working through initial feelings of apprehension and establishing racial and gender solidarity through social clubs. Implications for promoting racial integration, development of resiliency, and academic success of Black students are provided. Keywords: academic achievement, Black, race, religion, resilience, social clubs The purpose of this study is to explore how young Black students remain resilient in a racially diverse academic setting. Given subjective nature of resilience, for purposes of this paper, we define resilience as the ability to embrace challenges of life and to retain openness to world in face of adversity (Dass-Brailsford, 2005, p. 575). Through analyses of narratives gathered from a cohort of high-achieving Black students in a highly selective honors high school, we examine emotions experienced by Blacks students prior to and once entering a racially diverse setting as well as how these students establish solidarity through social clubs. Studies suggest possessing strong initiative and motivation, being goal-orientated, and experiencing self as having agency positively influences academic performance of Black youth (Dass-Brailsford, 2005; O'Connor, 1997). In turn, a student's high performance directly influences his or her relationship with peers and larger community (Carter, 2005; Dass-Brailsford, 2005; Horvat & Lewis, 2003; Marryshow et al., 2005). Therefore, identifying strengths of a racially homogenous social context for Black youth could help school administrators, teachers, and parents understand how to promote among Black students as well as how they sustain Black racial identity through achievement. This study analyzes narratives from a sample of high-achieving Black students attending an honors science and math academy, which is called SAMA. The primary objectives are to examine how young Black men and women individually and collectively navigate between racially homogenous home schools and a racially integrated setting. The authors are also interested in highlighting how these students' social clubs affirm their racial identity. In what follows, key studies are summarized regarding how Blacks have successfully navigated racially diverse school settings, historical significance of religious institutions and social clubs for Blacks, and position study within context of this work. BACKGROUND LITERATURE Blacks In Racially Diverse School Settings The United States Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), declared state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and students unconstitutional. Since that time, scholars have debated whether racial integration (Orfield, 2001; Reynolds, 2006) or racial segregation/separation (Bell, 1980; McAdoo, 2007) is in best interest of young Black men and women. According to several scholars, racial integrated students feel compelled to act White (Neal-Barnett, 2001), perceive Blackness in certain ways (Peterson-Lewis & Bratton, 2004), attempt to erase their racial identity (racially agnosticism) to better fit attitudes, behaviors, and values of dominant culture (Fordham, 1996; Levin, Van Laar, & Foote, 2006), or develop unique ways of merging aforementioned perspectives (Ford et al. …

Reminiscing by older adults can facilitate beneficial outcomes through the preparation for the end of life, the cohesiveness of life narratives, and the creation of life meanings. Given this, and the historical challenges of communication between generations, the objective of this study was two-fold: (1) to harness the beneficial role reminiscence can play in the mental health of older adults; (2) to facilitate generational learning by documenting and thematically analyzing the experiences and knowledge of older adults. We hypothesized that our interviews, which had the stated goal of helping younger people navigate life challenges, would not only act as a catalyst for the participants to reminisce but also create a corpus of knowledge which could be later transcribed and analyzed into accessible “pearls of wisdom”. The interviews were conducted in Canada with 132 participants who were 60 to 94 years of age with six questions constructed to promote further commentary. Through the interviews, we were successful in producing a large representation of the older adults’ experiences and what they believed would be beneficial for the younger generation. Due to the potential benefits for participants and larger communities, we recommend this approach be adopted for future studies.

Reminiscing by older adults can facilitate beneficial outcomes through the preparation for the end of life, the cohesiveness of life narratives, and creation of life meanings. Given this, and the historical challenges of communication between generations, the objective of this study was two-fold: (1) to harness the beneficial role reminiscence can play in the mental health of older adults; (2) to facilitate generational learning by documenting and thematically analyzing the experiences and knowledge of older adults. We hypothesized that our interviews, which had the stated goal of helping younger people navigate life challenges, would not only act as catalyst for the participants to reminisce but also create a corpus of knowledge which could be later distilled into accessible “pearls of wisdom”. The interviews were conducted in Israel with 102 participants who were between 60 and 93 years of age with six questions constructed to promote further commentary. Through the interviews we were successful in producing a large representation of the older adults’ experiences and what they believed would be beneficial for the younger generation. Due to the potential benefits for participants and larger communities we recommend this approach be adopted for future studies.

This research explored how participatory action research (PAR) specifically youth participatory action research (YPAR) could be utilized to help inform and bring change to an alternative high school’s trauma-informed care. The study was informed by critical race theory (Yosso, 2005), trauma-informed care (Day et al, 2017), and youth participatory action research (Halliday, 2019; Goessling, 2020). The YPAR project was conducted at an urban/suburban alternative education high school in Marin county California with nine 11th and 12th graders who engaged in a series of subject-themed forums and then created a podcast informed by an interview they conducted with a community member. Students held a symposium in which they shared the podcasts with administration and other adult leaders and successfully petitioned the school administration to add after school programs. The research found that YPAR is a culturally responsive way to cultivate student agency around school policy and support meaningful exploratory dialogue that informs engaged practices in the delivery of trauma-informed care. These findings have important implications for how teachers can provide the space for students to create change in their school environments, support one another in navigating life challenges and create connections to mentors in the larger community.