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Comics and graphic novels can disrupt traditional texts by challenging the “worship of the written word” (Torres, 2019), a feature of white supremacy that perpetuates textual hierarchies within educational spaces. Giving all of our students access to contemporary literature that centers Black youth perspectives is not only important in decolonizing literature education but also in presenting a holistic view of Black childhood. They can be used in the classroom as subjects to challenge stereotypical depictions by centering experiences, ideas, and concepts that are often marginalized in traditional curriculum. Within this chapter, we focus on comics and graphic novels as tools to enact students’ multiliteracies and to analyze visual stories depicting BlackBoy adolescence, using the frameworks of BlackBoy Crit Pedagogy (Bryan, 2022), an equity framework that interrogates the interdisciplinary ways that Black boy students' literacy learning can be formed through the teaching and learning of Blackness, maleness, and the schooling experiences of Black boys. We utilize this framework to analyze the use of diverse comics and graphic novels to facilitate critical conversations of bringing inclusive visual texts into the classroom. We invite practitioners to reimagine curricular ideas and content centered on empowerment and Black boy adolescence and how those ideas are presented to youth through a variety of visual narratives.

Black boys report experiencing more school-based racial discrimination than any other group (Butler-Barnes et al., 2019). Additionally, Black boys are viewed as older and less innocent than their peers beginning as early as 10 years old (Goff et al., 2014). Black boys are also suspended and expelled at much higher rates than other students (Graves & Wang, 2022). As such, there needs to be an investment in asset-based research designed to understand the factors that can help Black boys cope with these perceptions. Consequently, this chapter will discuss strengths based protective factors that will aid in the promotion of positive outcomes in Black boys.

School counselors are committed to serving students' social-emotional, postsecondary, and academic needs while they navigate primary and secondary school (American School Counselor Association, 2019). Much has been said about the ways in which school counselors can impact postsecondary outcomes and social emotional health. It is important that we also address the ways school counselors can impact positive academic outcomes as it is intertwined in postsecondary options and success. For Black males, academic success has traditionally been met with systemic barriers (i.e., school-to-prison pipeline, lower graduation rates, lower incomes, higher unemployment rates, and lower college going rates (National Center for Edcuation Statisitics, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b) and low expectations. School counselors are charged to be leaders and change agents for social justice and equity in our schools by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA, 2019) and can impact systemic change. This chapter will explore ways in which school counselors can impact positive academic outcomes for Black males. School counselors as change agents and advocates are positioned to make a real impact for Black male academic success. The authors will also provide some recommendations and best practices for elementary, middle, and high school counselors as they work with students, teachers, and families from an anti-deficit model as outlined by Harper (2012).

The purpose of this paper is to further theorize BlackCrit to include a deeper focus on the framing idea of Black liberatory fantasy via Afrofuturism.

To develop the theoretical connections, the author revisits their previous scholarship on Black girls’ Afrofuturist storytelling practices to elucidate how the girls used their speculative narratives to critique the antiblackness present in their schools and the world at large and to create future worlds in which they have the power to create the world anew.

This paper discusses the relationship between BlackCrit and Afrofuturism by considering three interrelated ideas: how Afrofuturism acknowledges the antiblackness embedded in the USA; how BlackCrit makes space for liberatory Black futures and otherwise worlds; and how each theoretical idea inherently complements the other.

This paper creatively uses a hip hop album as a foundation for the portrayal of the intricate connections between Black pasts, presents and futures. As a conceptual paper, it pushes educators and researchers to consider the call and response between antiblackness and Black futurity.

While the literature on twice exceptionality is growing, it often focuses on twice exceptionality generally, overlooking within group differences that may create unique experiences for students. As such, there is a need to explicitly detail these differences to push the knowledge base forward. This chapter focuses on the unique needs and experiences of twice exceptional (2E) Black boys as they navigate K-12 schools. Further, this chapter details the ways in which school counselors may respond to their needs through comprehensive, antiracist school counseling practices. Finally, implications for policy and research are discussed.

This chapter takes a panoramic view to explore the lives of collegiate Black men. We begin with brief reflections from our own experiences to position ourselves to and alongside Black men's lives and college years. After setting the stage through our own reflections, we explore the literature on Black men's lives during their college years and pay particular attention to their social statuses, campus engagement, and health and well-being. Two critical components in many Black men's collegiate experiences are how they are projected in wider US society through deficit-based perspectives and repositioned away from educational success. We interrogate these realities and advance a discussion on ways to improve the conditions, environment, and understanding of their college journeys and possibilities. We conclude with recommendations for research, practice, and policy.

The authors focus on using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a lens through which to analyze the holistic welfare development of Black male student-athletes, namely their identity development and overall college and career readiness. The authors contend that if structured and delivered well with the appropriate supports, athletics can be more of a mobilizing mechanism for Black males versus an exploitive one. Specifically, athletic identity does not have to be exclusive, but rather one aspect of the student-athletes' multidimensional sense of self. To this end, the authors outline specific research, practice, and policy recommendations that address the unique challenges of Black male student-athletes in K-16.

In this chapter, we explore group counseling interventions for Black males and explain the Achieving Success Everyday (ASE) group model for racial and mathematical development. We use critical race theory (CRT) as a framework to analyze school counseling (SC) and mathematics literature that focuses on Black male students to inform the reconceptualization of the ASE group model for school counselors. We examine the programs and interventions that have been published with Black male participants in school settings within the SC literature. We also examine programs and interventions that have been specially designed to improve Black males' mathematics skills. We specifically focus on gathering findings that provide successful outcomes for Black males in public schools. We examine literature that reflects the role school counselors (SCs) take when supporting Black male students' academic, social, emotional, college, and career identity development. We believe uncovering ideas to capture Black males' experiences in school settings could shed light on how to foster Black excellence. Gaining an understanding of programs and interventions for Black male students through a CRT lens could inform future research, policy, and practice in SC while combating ongoing racism that continues to persist.