UCLA

The goal of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of Black high school students who participated in Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles in 2020. While research has been conducted on the effects of student participation in school-based protests, and in political-engagement assignments couched within a school curriculum, little information is available on the effects of student participation in independent extra-institutional political actions. The study aimed to shed light on the protest experiences of students and how their participation potentially influenced them. The hope was for findings to provide communities and schools with information that might help them better support Students of Color. Engaging a conceptual framework steeped in Yosso’s (2005) concept of Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) and Freire’s (1970, 1993) critical consciousness (CC) and critical action (CA), the act of protest and the perceived learning its spaces cultivated were viewed with an eye to Transformative Resistant Capital (TRC). The study found that, as a result of participating in protests, participants reported they were able to process past and present racial traumas, cultivate a critical lens in relation to the world around them, and activate their voices and creative expression, with the support of educator mentors. These findings were significant in that (1) perceived learning occurred in an independent, extra-institutional experiential protest context, (2) a conceptual framework emerged from participant narratives that might contribute to future pedagogical approaches to effective TRC-based programs such as YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research), and (3) these findings speak to a new post-pandemic, post-BLM historical moment of potential educational reform. Implications suggest that schools serving BIPOC students offer opportunities for experiential and arts programming that emphasizes social-emotional processing of racial traumas, and critical action, with a focus on culturally responsive, trauma-informed educator training.