Love and Meritocracy: Culturally Affirming Care and Cheating at an Urban High School

Purpose: Teachers who demonstrate authentic care make culturally affirming connections with students and critically consider injustice in student communities. Authentic care is distinct from aesthetic care that only emphasizes academic achievement. A full version of care—its academic, cultural, and critical components—expands opportunities for marginalized youth. Few studies have looked at authentic care partially applied. Research Methods: This ethnography of Sunrise High School, an urban school serving nearly all Black and Latinx students, analyzes the incomplete implementation of care. With more than 200 hours of participant observation and more than 50 interviews of students, teachers, and administrators, this study interrogates how care is understood and applied at Sunrise High School, and how students responded to the care they received from their teachers. Findings: Teachers at Sunrise were adept at building deep, culturally responsive connections with their students. These relationships manifested alongside powerful meritocratic messaging. The teachers’ care for their students lacked a critical component and largely ignored the oppressions associated with their urban setting. In response to this partial application of authentic care, students felt at home in the care of their loving teachers and most regularly completed their assignments. However, students elevated work completion over learning with a larger social purpose, and cheating was rampant. Implications: The findings emphasize the necessity of the critical component of authentic care. In addition to caring for students, teachers should be encouraged to care about the ways oppressions associated with race and class affect students’ lives and communities.