Very few of the nation’s K-12 classrooms today are helmed by Black men.
America’s teachers are overwhelmingly white and female, despite the fact that America’s students are mostly people of color. The statistics are stark: Fewer than 7 percent of teachers are Black, and just 2 percent are Black men. And teacher turnover rates are especially high for Black men.
That’s because schools can be unwelcoming places for Black men , experts say. Studies show that many Black male teachers are pigeonholed into disciplinarian roles instead of being recognized for their pedagogy and content expertise. Also, many teachers of color are concentrated in hard-to-staff schools serving high-poverty communities, where there can often be a lack of resources and support.
Yet sitting in a classroom helmed by a teacher of color can have a significant positive impact on students. Black students, especially Black boys from low-income households, are more likely to both graduate from high school and enroll in college when they have just one Black teacher in elementary school. Research has shown that Black teachers have higher expectations for Black students , and that Black students are less likely to receive detentions, suspensions, or expulsions from Black teachers.
Education Week spoke to three Black male educators about the challenges of working in a white- and female-dominated profession, and about what it might take to recruit and retain more men of color. These excerpts from those conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
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We actually analyzed our own actions as classroom teachers and school leaders, and we were not surfacing this invitation early and often either. We may do it randomly or respond to a student query or something, but we weren’t assertive about, “Hey, here’s why I teach,” or, “You should consider teaching,” or, “You know what, that’s great leadership,” or, “Thanks for helping your peer with that problem. That’s something teachers do all the time.”
We just committed to start sharing that with our students, and eventually one of the guys, Raymond Roy-Pace, started a Why I Teach tour, and we would visit high schools and colleges to speak to Black youth about becoming teachers, particularly Black boys. Sometimes they would share, “We don’t want to be a teacher,” because of the negative experiences they’ve had. “Why would I want to come back to this as a profession?”
Our friend Dr. Chris Emdin talks about this idea that for some Black youth, returning to a school to teach is like returning to the scene of a crime against themselves, and how painful and traumatic and how triggering some of this must be. You can’t just do it in isolation, it has to be part of an entire effort to address the inequities.
What we learned was there were a couple of things that really seemed to resonate with the Black youth. We would tap into their activism, tap into their sense of justice and fairness, and say, “Hey, if you had a great teacher, pay it forward, but if you had a bad experience, consider becoming the teacher you wish you had and knew you needed.”
And this idea of being a vanguard for younger youth: Even if you don’t come back, who’s teaching your little brother and little sister? Who’s teaching your younger cousin or younger neighbor? This idea of community—Mary Church Terrell, one of those Black educator hall of famers, would say “lifting as we climb” when she would speak about education and school and learning. That seemed to resonate: “Even if I’m going through a struggle, I can still lift as I climb.”
Teaching Profession 'No One Else Is Going to Step Up': In a Time of Racial Reckoning, Teachers of Color Feel the Pressure
Madeline Will , July 21, 2020 9 min readRemove Save to favorites
