Racial justice pedagogy: foregrounding what it means to be an immigrant teacher of color in the United States.

This paper contributes to the discourse on the role of critical pedagogy in the U.S. education system. The paper is inspired by the story of a participant from a larger ongoing phenomenological study designed to explore the experience of immigrant teachers in the United States. The participant was selected because she gained prominence in the larger study as the only teacher who reported that because of the injustices she experienced (personally and vicariously) during her K-12 education, she was inspired to pursue teaching as a career. The participant is a Black female teacher who immigrated from England to the United States, and who has taught for approximately 30 years between both countries. Her experience as a student and her work as a teacher, are reflective of, and analyzed through the lens of critical pedagogy. The participant's experience was carefully and respectfully crafted into a profile that produced three major themes: (1) Racial injustice as an altruistic inspiration to becoming a teacher; (2) the work of the immigrant Teacher of Color in the United States necessarily involves actuating an inclusive and racial justice curricular agenda; and (3) what it means to be an immigrant Educator of Color in the United States is to conceptualize your practice as a deliberate political act that counteracts racial injustice and inequity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]