<i>I See You, Mama</i>: Low-Income Black Mother Leaders Reimagining Schools as Homeplace for Their Children

Canadian researchers continue to stress the importance of Black parent engagement in the schooling lives of Black children. Scholars, practitioners, and Black families call on schools to partner with Black parents and guardians to further support Black children’s academic achievement, well-being, and development. Although scholarship affirms the integral role of Black mothers, especially those with low income, in the educational lives of their children, limited research centres the work they lead at their children’s schools. In fact, low-income Black mothers’ work is often excluded from Canadian narratives on parent engagement and omitted from educational scholarship on leadership. Ultimately, low-income Black mothers and their contributions to their children’s schools are often rendered invisible in public and academic discourses. This arts-informed study took place at an Ontario school and traced the author’s work in establishing a family reading program with fourteen low-income Black mothers. The study drew on Black motherwork theory, Black feminist notions of homeplace, and Endarkened storywork to further understand Black mothers’ leadership at their children’s school. This article centres the narrative of one Black mother participating in the study describing how she leveraged collective work and technologies to eschew surveillance and establish a homeplace at her child’s elementary school.