2026 Theses Doctoral

What Keeps Latina Teachers in Urban-intensive Public Schools: Counter-Storying Crisis Narratives and Pathologizing Portrayals

Martell, Jessica

Informed by a Critical Race Feminista epistemology that rejects the oppressive logics embedded in dominant research traditions, this dissertation centers the lived experiences, insights, and voices of Latina teachers of Color working in urban-intensive public schools.

Countering majoritarian narratives of teacher attrition that reinscribe ideologies of inadequacy and individual failure, the study focuses on elementary (pre-kindergarten through sixth grade) Latina public school teachers of Color who have remained in the profession beyond their first five years of teaching.

Guided by Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), an extension of Critical Race Theory that foregrounds the racialized experiences of Latinx communities—including language, immigration, ethnicity, and culture—this research rejects deficit-based and crisis-oriented portrayals of Latina teachers. Rather than pathologizing individual educators to explain attrition, LatCrit directs analytic attention to enduring, intersecting systems of oppression and to the knowledge generated through lived experience.

This study reconceptualizes teacher retention by theorizing staying—not leaving—as the analytic center. It shows that Latina teachers’ persistence is not evidence of institutional success, but ethical refusal enacted through relational labor under conditions of structural harm.

The following research questions guide the study: (1) What are the stories of elementary public school Latina teachers of Color in urban-intensive settings who have remained in the profession beyond the first five years of teaching, including who and what influenced their entry into teaching, the people and spaces that shaped their professional journeys, and the moments that led them to reconsider the profession? (2) What sustains Latina teachers of Color in continuing to teach beyond the first five years, including the obstacles they encounter, the sources of support they identify, and the relational commitments that keep them going?

This study uses the term Latina teachers of Color intentionally and consistently to center the specific racialized and gendered experiences of participants. While broader terms such as “teachers of Color” or “Latinx educators” appear in the literature, these categories can obscure important intragroup differences. When broader terms are used in this study, it is to engage directly with existing scholarship; otherwise, Latina teachers of Color remains the primary analytic framing.

Importantly, the participants in this study are veteran teachers, each with extensive experience in the profession. This focus shifts the analytic lens away from early-career attrition and toward long-term engagement. By centering teachers with sustained professional histories, the study highlights how ethical negotiation, institutional constraint, and relational commitment persist across time rather than emerging only in initial years of teaching.

Pláticas are employed as both methodology and method, grounding the research in reciprocity, reflexivity, and collective meaning-making. Data were generated through multiple individual pláticas, participant-constructed journey maps, written reflections, artifacts, and a collective plática centered on consejos for future teachers of Color. Analysis prioritized what participants identified as ethically significant, emotionally resonant, and relationally sustaining across time.

Findings illuminate teaching as an enduring ethical orientation rather than a discrete career choice; staying as an ongoing moral negotiation rather than individual resilience; and belonging as labor enacted through relationships with children, families, and communities rather than conferred by institutions. The dissertation concludes by advancing implications for teacher education, educational policy, and school-based practice, arguing that institutions must move beyond crisis narratives and become worthy of teachers’ staying.