We need black men to step up and become teachers

Dennis Richmond, Jr. | The Journal News

Show Caption Hide Caption North Rockland teachers diversity Ileana Eckert, Superintendent of the North Rockland School District, talks about diversity in the teaching staff

As a graduate student in teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, I am a student teacher in the Yonkers Public Schools. I am fortunate to be teaching in a fourth-grade class alongside my host teacher, Gavin Curtis. Mr. Curtis also writes and illustrates children’s books and graphic novels, offering a unique perspective as he introduces these literary tools in his classroom. Additionally, Mr. Curtis and I are both black men. As black men, we represent less than 2 percent of educators. This has to change.

Education in America has a long history of inequality. For starters, when most black men and women in America were held in bondage as slaves, they were stopped from learning to read or write. After the Civil War, dozens of black institutions of higher learning, the still-thriving "historically black colleges and universities" or HBCUs, began to take shape. W.E.B. DuBois would consider these college students the future leaders of the black community, his "talented tenth." But many whites did not look favorably upon a bunch of former slaves and their children learning to read and write. Let alone teach.

As the Great Migration to the North took place, many black men needed work away from the farm, and sought work in factories, in house-cleaning positions, in any job that would take them. Most were not prepared for college, and couldn't afford to go if they were.

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Black men have always taught each other. In Africa, on the slave ship, on the plantation, and in emancipation, black men always learned from one another.

But for a long time, teaching wasn't an option. Even when more black men started to attend college, the classroom wasn't really on the radar.

In 2018, I would say there are several main reasons that most black men don't consider entering education programs. First, and perhaps most important, many young black men have had negative experiences in school. To this day, a disproportion of black boys are suspended from school. Many black boys have also faced teachers who were racist, intentionally or otherwise.

As a result, many black men do not want to see the inside of a classroom.

An overlooked reason that black men are not in the classroom, though, is because the job is looked upon as feminine. Caring for children. Being there when students cry. People think of elementary school teachers as motherly — women, or perhaps men who are not of color. They do not think of men like me.

We need more men of color in the classroom because the lives of our young boys depend on it. Studies show that African-American boys in elementary school are less likely to be suspended or expelled if they have a teacher who is black. Many students who are constantly suspended or expelled eventually end up behind bars. Black teachers in essence can help stop the pipeline to prison.

This is real.

The more black men teaching, the more father figures for fatherless black boys. The more black men teaching, the closer we are to closing the “education gap.”

I can say that black boys in my school look at me with amazement — just based on me being there. One black boy who is not even in my class gives me a handshake when we see each other. Another black boy smiled when he saw me. I get these looks all across elementary schools I visit. These children are seeing something they rarely see, a black man, the kind of man who many in America say is a criminal, teaching them.

Black men need to be in the classroom because the only way to change the climate of America is to educate our children. Who better to educate young people of color than older people of color?

The writer, a lifelong Yonkers resident, is a graduate student in The Art Of Teaching Graduate Program at Sarah Lawrence College, and founder and director of The New York-New Jersey HBCU Initiative. @HBCUinitiative

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