Think back to your experience as a K-12 student. If you had to recall the number of Black teachers whose classroom you sat in, how many of those teachers come to mind? Some of you may have had a great amount of Black teachers during your school years; but, for many of us we may only be able to recall one or two or, unfortunately, none at all.
Currently, our nation is experiencing a national teacher shortage that has disproportionate effects on students, particularly students of color and those living in poverty. A greater shortage of teachers of color adds to this inequity. While the national number of teachers of all races is rapidly declining, there has been a steady decrease in Black teachers since the desegregation of schools. Prior to Brown vs. Board of Education, Black teachers occupied up to 50% of the teaching force in the nation’s segregated school systems. Fast-forward to present day, Black teachers hold 7% of teaching positions in our nation’s public schools (Will, 2019; National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). After Brown, Black schools were closed and most Black educators were forced out of the profession.1 Historical practices and current experiences of Black teachers are based on a legacy of discrimination including racism, microaggressions, biased policies, lack of peer support, and lack of administrative support. For decades, such experiences have caused Black teachers to leave the profession at higher rates than their white peers due to racially related issues, such as not feeling as valued as their white peers, frustration over having to take on extra duties regarding racial issues without being compensated, and not having necessary professional or collegial support systems in place (King, 1993; Ladson-Billings, 2021). In contrast, some Black teachers do stay and thrive in our nation’s schools. We are curious to understand why these educators tend to stay and what it takes for Black teachers to thrive in our K-12 schools. Let’s begin with Carol’s story.
And there you have it, I’d been shot down again. “Why don’t you try that out and let us know how it goes. Maybe we can do that next year.” The bell punctuated the end of our weekly team meeting in which I was proposing we change our Social Studies units so more time was dedicated to studying the culture and politics of South America, Asia and Africa—that is to say three continents that not only contained the majority of global population, but were filled with people who looked like me and many students in our school. I will just do it alone, I thought to myself. This is an amazing opportunity to reach students who so often don’t see themselves in our curriculum. Students who honestly couldn’t care less about the text I’ve taught for the last 8 years nor the folder filled with worksheets I pulled out year after year. And frankly, I felt the same way. So I proceed to tuck away my modified lesson planning calendar, plant a fake smile on my face and mentally check out of the team meeting; just like students check out in classrooms where they don’t feel they belong and their voices are muffled.
With the exception of a colleague here and there, this was my experience for much of my career since I started teaching first grade in a suburban area of Texas in 1996. I’d become a teacher in order to make the world a better place by helping children find and hone their gifts, but I was ground down by years filled with attending both team and site meetings where there was one world view, undiscussable topics such as the abuse and erasure of wrongs done to those with black and brown bodies and resistance to change. So many times I’d been shot down and in effect, silenced. Like the time that I proposed we stop doing “country of origin” projects because those of us whose ancestors were enslaved don’t know where we’re from. Or the time I suggested we have parent conferences in the evening so that working parents without the luxury of paid time off would be able to participate. As the one Black staff member who was often the only adult speaking on behalf of students who looked like me and those in other minority groups, my assumed role became that of opposition, as was evident each time I raised my hand in meetings, heard the sighs and saw the eye rolls my peers thought I didn’t see. The ironic part of it all is that I had been offered/voluntold/volunteered for a number of leadership roles on campus, but lacked the collegiality, kinship and support that I craved. I was somehow respected without being befriended, tasked with important roles, yet dismissed and looked to for answers without having my own heart listened to.
It became increasingly clear that I had very different ideas about what class should look like from my colleagues, especially for my students who were not white or “high performing.” I knew each student needed to be seen for their unique gifts and challenges. They needed to experience a multitude of examples of texts and activities and cultural aspects of their art, music and food brought into our classrooms. They did not need to have their teacher dismiss their differences. They did not need to feel different at school than they did in their homes. Their whole selves came with them into the classroom and were not being honored by their teachers or administrators who tried to mold students into a one-sized version of success.
Isolation of pedagogical thought wasn’t the only way I was made to feel like a satellite orbiting the rest of the staff. My presence as “the one” Black member of staff was either met with an assumed role of expert in all things Black or it was assumed I was an expert on sourcing school appropriate materials and that I would automatically plan the Black History Month lessons. This was a role given to me after I pointed out that the widely-circulated premade MLK and Rosa Parks lessons were performative, saviorist and did not show students the power and brilliance in everyday folx and the power that lies within themselves. Add to that discipline issues, and my position as the “other” was complete. Yes, I intervened when I saw Black and Brown children being spoken to or about in a manner that othered them. Yes, I called out bias and inconsistencies when these same children were devalued and dehumanized. Because that child was, and forever will be, me. But why did I have to spend emotional labor shielding kids from unnecessary harm? Who was there to shield me?
So, I learned to work in isolation. I was close to my students and pleasant, yet distant from most staff. I created student-centered lessons that offered voice and choice where, for example, my students created a project after deciding they wanted to hear stories of real life heroes after studying mythology. They went to elders in the community and after learning the art of the interview, collected data and wrote memoirs they gifted back to those individuals. Students determined the types of individuals they deemed wise, developed interview protocols, determined what part of their story became the memoir and wrote nuanced tales of strength in which we could all draw from. I met someone years later who had been interviewed who told me it was the best interview she had ever been part of.
I ensured each student felt seen by me no matter their background, interests or abilities. I became the teacher I always wished I had and created an environment where we all could be our authentic selves, if only in the four walls of my classroom. I created an environment where students could thrive and one I wish was replicated in my experiences at work. It was not unusual for students I’d taught in middle school to come back to visit upon their graduation from high school. Young Black men like, “S” who I’d pulled aside one day after hearing some of his [white] teachers speak hopelessly about his behavior challenges and low academic progress. I kept the card he gave me that day that states, “Thank you for all your support, always lending a helping hand to me…Always keeping it 100.” However, despite my relationships with students, all the love they poured into me and little things like their begging to stay in class with me even after the bell and time to move to the next period, I did not thrive. I did not feel community. I farmed and created my own resources and felt professionally stagnant and sometimes disconsolate.
However, hope, inspiration and an energy-infused career trajectory came despite these experiences. I was a member and eventually conference presenter and Board member for the California Teachers of English (CATE). It was at CATE where I found my people—well, people who were more like-minded professionally. While still a minority in that space as a Black woman, I didn’t feel like one. The conversations we had, the initiatives we pursued and the openness to new ideas I experienced when working with them gave me hope, energy and resources to hold fast in the classroom and pursue my passions while guiding students through the same. My first time attending the CATE annual conference was due to a board member in CATE that I had worked with at a writing camp for kids seeing the work I was trying to do and nominating me for a scholarship so I could attend. A similar experience occurred when I found myself participating in a six week intensive writing institute with the San Marcos Writing Project. It was there I found my voice and there I found more of my people. It was there I was encouraged to dream, to write and to shout out my ideas to anyone who would listen. I was fueled by my time there and tapped again to lead other teachers. It was there I learned I could and enjoyed teaching adults and there the seed was planted to continue my formal education. My hopes were raised, I began to dream. I was surrounded with resources and people who encouraged me to grow and question and lead and continue to learn. I was finally seen, encouraged and pushed toward a future I hadn’t seen for myself. But not at my district, not at my site. Not by my school leaders nor my peers.
“Why is it so loud in here?” This is what my former principal asked as he swung my classroom door open. He had just walked in on about 25 excited fifth graders playing a game of Jeopardy to review their understanding of the parts of a cell before the next day’s science assessment. He became a witness to young girls and boys jumping enthusiastically out of their seats for a chance to answer a question and extending their hands high in the air to make sure their team had the opportunity to demonstrate their brilliance as well as add points to the scoreboard. Voices boomed as they answered each question with joy and excitement. I was well aware of the volume levels in the classroom, but I didn’t mind as I was thrilled that my students were engaged and having fun. My students’ laughter and screams of “Oh, I know it!” or “I disagree” flowed throughout the classroom and into the hallways, which prompted my principal to enter. What I perceived to be a productive classroom, my principal perceived it to be a classroom out of control. Later that afternoon, I was pulled by my principal and reprimanded for what took place—a hard blow to my confidence as a beginning teacher.
Throughout my first three years of teaching, I felt that there was an unspoken expectation that I should be a master at managing a classroom of students simply because I was a young, Black male teacher. My administrators were equating my Blackness, and being male, to being an authoritarian in how I should approach classroom management. There was an expectation that my classroom should feel orderly in which students were quiet, seated in rows, and did not deviate from what many of us know as the traditional norm of school. This expectation left me to constantly compare myself to fifth grade colleagues, who were all white and female, and who seemed to have things figured out. For example, I loved having my students sit in table groups of four. But, the majority of my colleagues had classrooms set up in rows or tables of two. One teacher even had a daunting management system called “The Book,” where students would write their names in for any misbehaviors or infractions, and no one wanted their name in the book! These teachers were left alone by the administration because they cultivated the culture that the administrators wanted to create and continue. Because of such comparisons, and because I deviated from the norm, I felt like I did not know who I was as a teacher—I felt lost. Most importantly, there was no one who looked like me at my school to support.
I wrestled with the idea of leaving teaching. Thoughts such as, “You aren’t good enough,” “How will you get all of your kids to meet the standards on the state test,” “You can’t even get some of your students to stay focused for a full lesson,” and “No one is supporting me” were running through my head. As I wrestled with the idea of possibly leaving teaching, I had just begun a masters of education program. Fortunately, before I made a definitive decision on my career, I took an action research course led by Dr. Joi Spencer at the university I attended. Dr. Spencer enjoyed having one-on-one conversations with her students, either in-person or by phone. She and I had a call to check-in on the progress of my research.
That day I had decided that I had enough of trying to figure things out on my own as a teacher and decided to be vulnerable with her, so I asked her, “How do you manage a classroom effectively?” It felt like a waterfall of thoughts flowing as I began to share with her my struggles and my thoughts of leaving the teaching profession. As she listened to what I had to share, she immediately responded, “Managing a classroom is all about who you are and what you expect from your students.” This simple statement was so profound to me as it resurfaced the idea that I needed to know who I am as a teacher and my values. She then asked me a series of questions: “Who are you?” “When you see your students, how do you greet them?” “How do you expect them to behave and be with each other?” “What do you value about learning?” and more. As she asked her questions, I felt like a veil was lifted and I could see myself more clearly.
My professor supported me in understanding that my identity as an educator should not be significantly different from who I am as a human being. For example, if I love to smile, then smile when I greet my students. If I want to have my students sit in groups because I believe in collaboration, then have students sit in groups. And if I want my classroom to be active, then it can be. In addition, she supported me in surfacing the expectations and hopes (such as learning is a collaborative process and students should have ownership of their learning) that I had for my students.
From the conversation with Dr. Spencer, I felt supported and cared for in my growth as a young educator (what I was not receiving from my administrator). This support gave me the push I needed to continue teaching and, most importantly, I learned that I did not have to conform to someone else’s ideas to be a wonderful teacher.
Our situation is mirrored in countless experiences of Black and Brown educators in K-12 schools, particularly when they are underrepresented on a given campus. Neither received the multi-tiered systems of support that are pertinent to career happiness, longevity, and a thriving career. Identity marker mismatches (that is, different, race, gender, age, sexual orientation), lack of cultural awareness by school leaders and stereotypical biases often negatively affect experiences of Black and Brown teachers which inhibit their ability to thrive as educational professionals. In order to retain Black teachers, happiness, well-being, and a positive work environment are necessary components of the K-12 setting. For our students to be well, the teachers must also be well (Love, 2019).
The Bridge to Thriving Framework, developed by Kia Darling-Hammond, centers marginalized communities by going beyond resilience and emphasizing the need for supportive affirming communities, knowing the true self, abundant access to resources, and pleasurable activities that create a thriving model of simply being (Battle, 2022). Possibilities for thriving increase when people are invited to see themselves as someone who is entitled to thrive, imagines what thriving can look like, and receive affirmation about their thriving filled dreams (Darling-Hammond, 2021). When educators feel free to truly be themselves, they bring dimensions of community, selfhood, abundance, pleasure and relief into their work spaces (Darling-Hammond, 2021). The Bridge to Thriving Framework includes five tenets:
Community encompasses spaces where there is affinity and mutuality with those around you, social justice is centered and there is a critical consciousness among what is often chosen family.
Relief and Pleasure include the often absent professional moments of joy, purpose and play, and spaces that center well-being and freedom.
Selfhood and Abundance are the final two tenets which include both knowing self and feeling able to authentically pursue hopes and dreams with supporting resources available.
Carol’s experience with the outside organizations that energized and boosted her experiences in the classroom are centered around the concept of abundance. Hopes, dreams, resources, truth-telling and expansiveness are elements that encompass this roadmap on the way to wholeness and well being. It was not the peers or administrators on site, but self sought after organizations that provided fuel for Carol’s professional hopes and dreams. It was these outside organizations that provided resources for Carol to excel in her classroom and beyond and it was those outside of her school site that breathed life into future professional possibilities. Imagine the benefits to the school site had Carol received abundance from her peers and administrators.
Likewise, Curtis’s story of selfhood reflects the need for the freedom to honor self in order to thrive as a Black educator . Being compared to fellow teachers, having labels and stereotypes cast upon him was only disrupted when a mentor helped to foster feelings of joy and determination and movement toward thriving. The strand of selfhood includes knowing self, loving self, asserting self, having a resistant identity and being self-determined. Curtis almost left the profession he’d grown to love, not because of the students, but because of peers and administrators. It was the adults on campus who did not allow him the freedom to teach in a manner that allowed him to lead, guide and speak with students in a manner that was true to himself.
This leads us to the question of how schools could utilize the Bridge to Thriving Framework as a way to improve the recruitment and retention issues regarding Black teachers. We will expound on each of the petals of the Bridge to Thriving Framework by sharing what we, as Black educators, have found in schools that supported our own thriving.
The tenet of pleasure encompasses joy, love, passion, purpose, and play. When school environments focus on adversity or deficits it leaves little space for pleasure to take place. The act of claiming joy or pleasure is healing work, especially when in defiance of the norms of respectability (or what we know as “respectability politics”) that schools may impose on their teachers. For example, this could be the denial of traditional Black hairstyles worn by Black educators, or objection to how Black educators express joy and laughter. When schools push for teachers to “norm” to the dominant culture, Black educators may feel excluded and lack a sense of belonging at their school sites. When schools attend to the tenet of pleasure, it supports in creating a sense of belonging for their teachers especially their Black teachers.
Here are ideas for school leaders to promote pleasure for the upcoming school year:
Relief for Black educators goes far beyond the smaller class sizes, ample resources and support personnel all teachers desire and deem necessary for longevity in the profession. Relief as a tenet in the Bridge to Thriving Framework includes attention to the safety, rest, and resources teachers need in order to maintain careers in the profession. However, this tenet also includes the ability to teach and live with a strong sense of well being. It’s important to create, support and maintain an environment where healing can occur and the freedom to live and work authentically spawning relief from the often oppressive, white, middle class normed environments our schools are governed by no matter the makeup of the students they serve. This is relief from paying the “Black Teacher Tax” many Black teachers experience. The Black Teacher Tax refers to the expectation Black educators will serve as disciplinarians, provide uncompensated time in informal leadership roles, serve as curators of culturally relevant resources and often it is assumed they will fulfill the expectation to teach remediatory courses with the most challenging students (Battle, 2022). This “tax” also includes the extra time and energy needed to navigate tense peer dialogue, explain intentions, and face potential professional retaliation (Battle, 2022) When an environment as such exists, healing can occur and career potential increases exponentially. Relief can only occur when the entire school is a a place where each person can bring their whole selves to work without fear of judgment, being deemed different, difficult or demanding when asking for their needs to be met, and somewhere rest is recommended, healing is heralded and freedom to dream is a force that moves throughout all aspects of a campus.
School leaders can cultivate a sense of relief for the upcoming school year by:
Every human strives for a sense of belonging. The most effective classrooms have a high sense of belonging that has been cultivated between the teacher and their students and their students to each other. The tenet of community ecompasses the feeling of kinship with those who may share similarities in beliefs and backgrounds or finding a chosen family composed of a variety of different characters. The creation of a community should be a priority for schools. As stated earlier, Black educators make up 7% of teachers in our nation’s public schools. This means that many Black educators come into school spaces with individuals who do not look like them or are in a space where many of their colleagues do not come from similar backgrounds as them. This can create a sense of isolation. A strong school culture allows for teachers to authentically be themselves, find their voice, and feel supported by their colleagues which requires vulnerability.
School leaders can cultivate community amongst their teachers by:
The tenet of selfhood encompasses knowing, loving and asserting self, having an identity unshakable by dominant culture norms like changing your hair or clothing styles and self-determination to accomplish one’s goals. It is often these very traits that have gotten the Black educator thus far in a system that was not designed for them to authentically succeed. Black teachers enter the profession with a strong sense of self and determination in doing so, to a great extent, to bring their views and voice into classrooms as a form of social justice (Battle, 2022). Many have had to face isolation, experienced a lack of peer and administrative support and have fought to ensure their voices and views have been heard despite the downplay and outright silencing that often occurs within their professional environments (Battle, 2022).
School leaders that want Black teachers to thrive for the upcoming school year can:
All of the tenets of the Bridge to Thriving Framework feed into the concept of abundance, which includes the ability and opportunity to dream and aspire to what education and humanity could be. Without joy, love and passion, there is no abundance. Without a feeling of safety and opportunities to rest, how can we expect aspirations to be dreamed up and opportunities be taken? Without a sense of kinship and a supportive school family, how can Black teachers feel safe to dream? And without the ability to assert self in the work environment, how do we expect individuals to create and follow full, rich pathways to abundant careers. The Bridge to Thriving Framework not only defines ideology that serves Black educators, but can be used as a blueprint to building school systems that are inclusive, freeing, sustaining environments where every staff member’s dreams are encouraged and fulfilled.
School leaders that want Black teachers to thrive for the upcoming school year can:
Earlier, we stopped both of our stories after we had found support and validation—but not at our schools. So what happened next? After a stint in higher ed at Cal State University San Marcos in a special role as Distinguished Teacher in Residence, Carol left her K-12 classroom, something she never thought she would do. Though she loved working with pre-teens in middle school, a feat in itself, it was the loneliness, disconnection and lack of support that pushed her from her mid-sized suburban school district and out of K12. In essence, it was a community she sought, opportunities she desired, and an environment of growth and change she craved. Her doctoral studies opened doors her classroom experiences did not provide and she found herself at High Tech High Graduate School of Education ( HTH GSE) dreaming of what teacher education could look like and playing an active role in the development of tomorrow’s teachers.
Curtis spent two years teaching 5th grade, then moved to High Tech High where he taught 6th grade math/science for seven years (first at High Tech Middle North County, then as a founding teacher at High Tech Middle Mesa). During his time teaching at High Tech High, Curtis was able to thrive as the conditions for thriving were set by the school principal (Juliet Mohnkern) as well as his colleagues. Curtis was able to find himself as a teacher, was provided the space to be creative in the projects and lessons that he designed, experienced a community of educators that shared similar teaching beliefs, and was able to just “be”. Now, he supports teachers as an improvement coach for the Center for Research and supports novice teachers in their growth as a faculty member at HTH GSE.
Carol’s story and Curtis’ first school are examples of what happens when schools do not attend to the needs of their Black teachers. In schools that have an absence of pleasure, relief, community, selfhood, and abundance, Black teachers either leave the profession or are forced to find these elements outside of their school contexts in order to be uplifted, energized, and fueled. This shouldn’t be the case. Schools should strive to create a sense of community, belonging, and joy for their Black teachers so they, not only remain in the profession, but continue to positively impact the students that they serve. When all of these tenets are attended to, we create an environment where Black educators are free to dream, aspire, feel supported, and, most importantly, just simply BE.
1. To learn more about this, read Madeline Will’s 2022 piece for EdWeek, “‘Brown v. Board’ Decimated the Black Educator Pipeline. A Scholar Explains How”
Battle, C.E. (2022). Black female educator retention: Exploring conditions needed to thrive [Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, California State University San Marcos].
Collins, Mikayla, “The Dialogic Interview: Co-Creating Meaning as an Alternative to Discovering “What Is”” (2016). Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) Student Presentations. 24. https://scholars.unh.edu/urc/24
Darling-Hammond, K. (2021, February 25). Bridge to thriving framework. Wise Chipmunk. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://wisechipmunk.com/2021/02/25/the-bridge-tothriving-framework/.
King, S. H. (1993). The limited presence of african-american teachers. Review of Educational Research, 63(2), 115–149. https://doi.org/10.2307/1170470
Ladson-Billings, G., & Anderson, J. D. (2021). Policy dialogue: Black teachers of the past,
present, and future. History of Education Quarterly, 61(1), 94–102.
https://doi.org/10.1017/heq.2020.68
Love, B. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2020). Race and Ethnicity of Public School Teachers and Their Students [Data File]. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020103/index.asp
Will, M. (2019). 65 years after ‘Brown v. Board,’ where are all the Black educators? Education Week, Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/65-years-after-brown-v-board-where-are-all-the-black-educators/2019/05
Will, M. (2022). ‘Brown v. Board’ decimated the Black educator pipeline. A scholar explains How. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/brown-v-board-decimated-the-black-educator-pipeline-a-scholar-explains-how/2022/05
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