Finding a flourishing community in Black history education

UB is the biggest campus doctoral student Dawnavyn James has ever set foot on.

And yet, thanks to the connections she’s made here, it doesn’t feel that way.

“I just like how I know everybody. My classes are small, I see the same people, we get to know each other's research, and we get together outside of school, too,” James says. “I really appreciate having this small community of people that I can learn from.”

Connections are what brought her to UB to begin with. A former kindergarten teacher from Kansas City, Mo., James entered into the Curriculum, Instruction and the Science of Learning program in the Graduate School of Education at the beckoning of her now-adviser, LaGarrett King.

As a graduate fellow with the Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education, which King directs, James assists with the center’s annual conference and its Black History Nerds professional development series. “I help to run the meeting with whoever the ‘nerds’ are for the week and stay available in the chat, and then with the conference, I’m involved in getting it all set up and helping people navigate the space, and also participating and presenting.”

She also runs the center’s Instagram page, work for which she’s well suited considering her own social media following — almost 50,000 on TikTok alone. “It's a way to build community with people who aren’t living in the same space as you,” she says.

James finds value in all kinds of True Blue relationship-building, listing just a couple of the ways. “Even though I’m in the Graduate School of Education, I took a class recently in the Department of Africana and American Studies and got to meet other people there. And I made a connection within the history department, and then when they held a conference last year, I was able to be a part of that,” James recalls.

Still, the Teaching Black History conference remains a standout, in large part because of the community that comes with it. The event, which King started in Missouri, convenes hundreds of teachers to learn curricular and instructional best practices.

“I really liked that I got to meet other educators here in Buffalo, but also see people who came to the conference when we were in Missouri as well,” she says. “The space we were in on South Campus was really dope, and it was cool having people come here and see what Buffalo’s like.”