Black Men Teaching In Urban Schools

This volume follows eleven Black male teachers from an urban, predominantly Black school district to reveal a complex set of identity politics and power dynamics that complicate these teachers’ relationships with students and fellow educators. It provides new and important insights into what it means to be a Black male teacher and suggests strategies for school districts, teacher preparation programs, researchers and other stakeholders to rethink why and how we recruit and train Black male teachers for urban K-12 classrooms.

This edited volume offers sound suggestions for advancing diversity in the teaching profession. It provides teacher education programs with needed training materials to accommodate Black male students, and school district administrators and leaders with information to help recruit and retain Black male teachers.

A New York Times Best Seller "Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education."—Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner author of South To America An award-winning educator offers a much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven Cs” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.

Discussions and research related to the salience of Black male student needs and development in relation to their general success and well?being is well?documented in many fields. Indeed, many studies have found that healthy masculine identity development is associated with a number of positive outcomes for males in general, including Black males. In school counseling literature, however, this discussion has been relatively absent—particularly regarding those students living in urban contexts. Indeed, research devoted to the study of Black males in the school counseling literature focuses almost exclusively on race and issues associated with its social construction with only cursory, if any, attention given to their masculine identity development as a function of living in urban communities and attending urban schools. Based on this lack of information, it is probably a safe assumption that intentional, systematic, culturally relevant efforts to assist Black males in developing healthy achievement and masculine identities based on their unique personal, social, academic experiences and future career goals are not being applied by school counselors concerned with meeting students’ needs. School counselors are in a unique position, nonetheless, to lend their considerable expertise—insights, training and skills—to improving life outcomes among Black males—a population who are consistently in positions of risk according to a number of quality of life indicators. Without knowledge and awareness of Black males’ masculine identity development in urban areas, coupled with the requisite skills to influence the myriad factors that enhance and impede healthy development in such environments, they are missing out on tremendous opportunities which other professions appear to understand and, quite frankly, seem to take more seriously. As such, this book proposes to accomplish two specific goals: 1. Highlight the plight of Black males with specific emphasis on the ecological components of their lives in relation to current school culture and trends. 2. Encourage school counselors to give more thought to Black male identity development that takes into consideration differential experiences in society as a whole, and schools in particular, as a function of the intersection of their race, as well as their gender. The first rationale for this book, then, is to highlight the plight of Black males with specific emphasis on the ecological components of their lives in relation to current school culture and trends (e.g., standards?based accountability practices) in urban environments. However, I recognize the role of school counselors has never been fully integrated into educational reform programs. As such, their positions are often unregulated and determined by people in positions of power who do not understand their training, job?specific standards and, thus, potential impact on the lives of Black male students. As a result, their vast potential to develop strong interventions designed to address the myriad racial and masculine factors that serve to enhance and impede Black males’ academic achievement is often unrealized. Therefore, the second reason for this special issue is to include the scholarship of professional school counselors and counselor educators with policy change in mind. Scholars will be invited to contribute manuscripts that explore race, masculinity and academic achievement in relation to the role of school counselors. This is designed to encourage school counselors and counselor educators to give more thought to Black male identity development that takes into consideration differential experiences in society as a whole, and schools in particular, as a function of the intersection of their race, as well as their gender.

This edited volume offers sound suggestions for advancing diversity in the teaching profession. It provides teacher education programs with needed training materials to accommodate Black male students, and school district administrators and leaders with information to help recruit and retain Black male teachers.

This book reflects the diversity and possibility of critical research in education, with an emphasis on the examination of the intersections of social identities for men teachers of color, and the relationship between social identity and struggles for political and professional agency. The authors address race and race inequality in education and provide a strong theoretical foundation for filling the empirical gap on men teachers of color by engaging in questions such as: How do critical considerations of the intersection of race, gender, and profession inform the future of teacher education? What does it mean to be ‘men’ or ‘of color’ in the context of the teaching profession in the U.S. and abroad? What are the aims of ethnoracial diversity in the field of education? The research included in this edited volume explores topics including, but not limited to, men teachers of color and their perceived pathways to the profession; their perceptions of and partnerships with colleagues of other genders; their sexual and gendered identities and performances; and how they embrace, reject, or negotiate the expectations of performing as a role model in classrooms. Moreover, the chapters provide explicit implications for teachers, teacher educators, university, and PK-12 administrators, education activists, and/or education policymakers. In sum, this volume charts a new landscape in education research for all men teachers of color. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Race Ethnicity and Education.

Intersectional Care for Black Boys in an Alternative School is an exploration of the possibilities that exist within educational spaces for Black male students when teachers care for these students while also acknowledging the intersectionality of Black male identity and the potential oppression and resilience that they experience as the result. Through examples from adolescent Black males and their teacher in an urban alternative school for those pushed out of traditional high school settings, ways that teachers can embody and enact intersectional care are revealed. This book explores the importance of the ethic of care in teacher student relationships for young Black men and the influence of identity constructions that produce positive and negative educational experiences of Black boys who are outside of traditional schooling. The voices of the young Black men are centered in this story as they describe experiences of marginalization in traditional high schools prior to attending their alternative school, which for them was a caring space. Cultivating positive environments and student teacher relationships with intersectional care represent important strategies to engage young Black men in education.

According to Robert L. Smith, "the achievement gap separating black boys from just about everyone else springs from a powerful, anti-education culture rising in the black community. Parents who undervalue education, and a mass media that peppers youth with the quick, shallow rewards of hip-hop lifestyle, are steering alarming numbers of boys down a dead-end path." Erik Eckholm explained that "terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs, and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black male youth." They also appear to be a large part of the reason why "nationwide, the percentage of black male teachers is 2.4 percent," according to the National Education Association in 2008. Rather than becoming teachers, Bernard Carver explained that "a growing and alarming number of African American males are either become victims of negative circumstances (e.g., dropping out of school at an early age, being sent to penal institutions, or succumbing to urban violence) or becoming participants in activities that are counterproductive to their development (e.g., involving drugs and gangs)."Black males are generally alienated as students by and from the American public education, and, as a result, are also alienated as potential educators. Janice Hale explained that "African American [male] children do not enter school disadvantaged, they leave disadvantaged. There's nothing wrong with the children but there is clearly something wrong with what happens to them in school." For one, the absence of Black male role models in the classroom is serious obstacle to the education of Black boys. "In order to be a Black man, you have to see a Black man," wrote Jawanza Kunjufu, who estimated that Black men make up less than 2 percent of all public school teachers. "Without Black men role models, our boys learn to see school as for girls and sissies."In addition, Tawannah Allen wrote that "African American male students have traditionally received the most negative treatment by public educators" and, consequently, chronically underachieve academically. Welsing confirmed that "it is little wonder that 98% of all of the Black male children I talk with, who have reached the junior high school level, hate school. Schools and their personnel, like all other aspects of the racist system, do their share to alienate Black males from maximal functioning."