Articles

I became a teacher because in high school a close friend of mine was assaulted. She was walking home at night when a man stopped his truck, leapt out, and tried to force her into his vehicle. She fought back with all her strength, but he would have overpowered her if not for another car that happened to come along. He fled. She escaped.

Each school year, at least one male student shares with me a version of this story: While walking — sometimes to school, sometimes to or from work — the student is stopped by police. The police officer turns out the student’s pockets, empties his book bag if he has one, demands ID, sits him on the curb and makes him wait while they check him for priors or outstanding warrants. All of this happens absent probable cause.

After years of decline, men are finally getting back into primary teaching — lured by family-friendly hours, good salaries and the satisfaction of making a difference.

Nowhere is their resurgence more apparent than at Melville Primary School in Perth's southern suburbs.

Vincent Cobb II and Rashiid Coleman are the founders behind The Black Male Educators Convening, an organization on a mission to triple the number of highly-effective black male teachers in Philadelphia public schools to 1,000 by 2025.

It’s an oft-shared statistic in the education world: Only 2 percent of America’s teachers are Black men.

And, according to Philly.com, 54 percent of students in the Philadelphia School District are Black, yet only 5 percent of their teachers are Black men.

Jawaun Williams always felt a void growing up on the South Side, going to schools with a predominantly black student population.

When he graduated from high school, he was one of the top 15 students in his class and in the honors society.

Still, something was missing.

A few years ago, when I started to seriously consider a career in teaching, the possibility of specialising in teaching the under-sixes didn’t even cross my mind. For me the choice was whether to train as a secondary English or primary school teacher.

Principal Damon Smith remembers a time when his students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Massachusetts had a black principal, black assistant principal, black mayor, black governor, and black president – all at the same time. But he sees a need for black men to push open the door to the next frontier: the kindergarten classroom.

"We need more practitioners of color, particularly black male teachers, in our classes K-12." he explains in his office on a recent afternoon. "President Obama is just a step. It shows you what is possible,"

Thomas Johnson III knows he's been lucky to have great mentors — adult role models who taught him how to succeed. After graduating from California State University, Northridge and preparing to embark on a career in education, he's eager to serve as a mentor for the next generations of students.

More than 40 percent of public school students in New York City are boys of color but very few of their teachers look like them. That discrepancy is one reason Aaron Harris is a teacher.

Did you know teaching is one of the oldest and most powerful careers in the world?

Are you interested in learning about how you can transform the world and your community through teaching?

There are twice as many students of color, by percentage, as teachers of color in Virginia's public schools. What's more, the Commonwealth has the fewest male teachers, proportionately, of any state in the U.S.

Most of us would agree that our elementary school years were led and taught by an almost exclusively female faculty. Although there is nothing wrong with an all-woman teaching staff, it does beg the question—where are the male elementary school teachers? Due to social stigmas, generations of being taught solely by women at younger ages, and underwhelming income, the presence of men in grade school is unsurprisingly absent.

The teaching profession in America remains largely white and female. That means young African American males can go through school without ever seeing a teacher who looks like them.

Not only can this mean a lack of black role models, but it also means teaching doesn’t get held up as a profession that’s desirable for black men to pursue.

African-American boys make up a significant percentage of Detroit Public Schools Community District’s student enrollment but large numbers of them aren’t taught by black men.

Does that fact deny them the opportunity to be academically successful?

Not necessarily but a recent study suggests that when black men teach black boys the student has a greater opportunity to be successful.