Fighting, loving, teaching: An exploration of hope, armed love and critical pedagogies in urban teachers' praxis

The purpose of this study was to explore urban teachers' praxis with historically marginalized youth. Specifically I examined of the role of hope and armed love, as well as critical pedagogy as conceptualized and implemented in urban classrooms. The basis for this is the continued educational inequities for urban youth, and an exploration of the roles that hope, caring and armed love in teachers' praxis can play in buffering youth against an oppressive schooling system. I engaged in a qualitative case study with 2 urban teachers, which involved life history interviews and videotaped classroom observations. The theoretical framework was a combination of caring, armed love, and critical pedagogy and data analysis consisted of a Grounded Theory approach. The findings included the importance of understanding, relationship, community and caring, the salience of race, as well as armed love, in supporting historically marginalized youth In addition, critical pedagogical approaches were found, and spirituality and the persistence of hope in spite of challenges was another notable finding.