Last week’s back-to-back police shootings of Black men is sending tremors among teachers—particularly those who educate African-American students,

Ron Clark, founder of The Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, expressed his exasperation with figuring out how to keep his kids safe when they encounter police officers:

Anna Garnaas, a teacher at the St. Paul, Minnesota, elementary school where Philando Castile worked, told The Washington Post that she’s preparing for the questions her elementary school students will ask when they return from summer break.

“I think that’s when we’ll see them crying and wondering and asking questions, the first day of school in September,” she told The Post. “Where’s our buddy? Where’s the guy who takes care of us and makes sure we have our most fundamental needs met?”

Clark is the director of a school of predominantly Black students. In a message, posted on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website, he laments about how White people view his students:

“I see racism through a different view; I’m a White man who watches my students as they are treated with caution, disdain and misunderstanding. Views of who they are formed instantly by their appearance, and brilliant young children are often frowned upon as being thugs.”

How should educators respond? Melissa Reeves, president of the National Association of School Psychologists, explained to the Post that children often take their cues from adults.

“It’s okay to be angry,” she stated to the newspaper. “But what’s important is how you use that anger in a way that’s going to be peaceful and part of a positive solution.”

History teacher Laura Fuchs told The Post that she teaches her students about how an earlier generation of African-Americans channeled their anger constructively, through nonviolent demonstrations. She also teaches them about their constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures. However, she cautions them to exercise that right in a way that doesn’t provoke a police officer or creates fear.

“It’s not fair that they have to be so careful when interacting with authority figures, but they do,” she added.

Following the Orlando massacre, the National Education Association offered advice to parents. Children don’t always talk about their fears, so parents should observe changes in their behavior patterns, child psychologists told NEA. Once a conversation about violence in society has started, the experts recommended allowing the child’s questions to guide the discussion.

SOURCE: Washington Post, NEA Today, Atlanta Journal-Constitution | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

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A group of Indiana elementary school teachers plan to meet during the new school year to continue their uncomfortable but fruitful discussions about race and power.

Indiana Public Broadcast Station reports on a voluntary project started by third-grade teacher Ayana Coles called Courageous Conversations, in which she facilitates honest exchanges on the thorny issue of race with her mostly White colleagues.

According to IPBS, the goal of the informal meetings, which began in the 2014-15 school year, is to close the divide on how the teachers think about race and power and to address how those factors impact their school.

A majority of pupils at Eagle Creek Elementary School are students of color. Nearly half of them (46 percent) are African-Americans, and Hispanics represent 18 percent. But 33 out of 37 faculty members are White.

In one of the frank conversations, reported by IPBS, music teacher Jason Coons, who’s White, said both sides are often guilty of racial bias. Students, he observed, have preconceived opinions of him.

“As a white heterosexual man, that’s a lot of what they see. And if they’re hearing at home how I’m the enemy… At the end of the day I’m just frustrated with the fact that I don’t feel like I can do anything about it,” he said.

Coles admitted that she was taught from childhood not to trust White people—a view she held until college. Coons responded that he was taught to mistrust African-Americans.

Despite what often appears as an impasse in their discussions, Coons told the news outlet that the conversations have opened his eyes to interpreting cultural differences:

“Like what I think is misbehavior. And I’m not trying to sound like some hippie or something, but like, OK, is this really actually something that needs to be addressed or is this just because it’s so different from what I grew up with that I view this as offensive?”

Cole made the point to Coons that while all races may have biases, only Whites have had the power to act on their biases through institution and policies.

A number of studies reveal how unconscious bias impacts Black students. A recent report from Johns Hopkins University reinforced other studies that found a teacher’s race has a significant impact on the level of achievement expected from students—raising fresh concerns about the consequences of teachers’ unconscious bias on the stubbornly persistent achievement gap.

It found that Black and White teachers differed significantly on how they evaluated Black students.

SOURCE: Indiana Public Broadcast Station | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty, Facebook

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It’s been a whirlwind for Nadia Lopez, the dynamic founding principal of Mott Hall Bridges Academy, a middle school located in the mostly African-American Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.

A chance encounter between one of her students, Vidal Chastanet, and photographer Brandon Stanton thrust Lopez onto the national stage. Stanton travels around New York City, snapping pictures of ordinary people and asking them about their lives. He posts the image and comments to his site, Humans of New York.

Well, this encounter between 13-year-old Vidal and Stanton when viral. Here’s the teenager’s response when the photographer asked him to identify the person who’s been most influential in his life:

“My principal, Ms. Lopez…When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

Brownsville, a neglected neighborhood with a heavy concentration of public houses, is one of poorest communities in the city. It’s no wonder that Lopez’s determination to see her middle schoolers succeed won her accolades, a book deal, and a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House.

NewsOne spoke with Lopez to discuss her initiatives, which are setting young lives on a track that leads to college and personal success.

The principal’s “I Matter” initiative focuses on her male students. Lopez launched that program after mentors in the My Brother’s Keeper program routinely failed to show up to support the boys. Part of what inspired “I Matter” was a disturbing string of shootings, which included Trayvon Martin and several kids in Brownsville.

She asked herself: “How could these boys even think ‘I matter?’”

Lopez met with her staff and they decided to create “I Matter” as a way for the boys to “reaffirm to themselves that they indeed matter, even when society tells them they don’t.”

The principal, who grew up in a more middle-class section of Brooklyn, recalled consoling students after a grand jury decided not to indict a police officer in one of the cases that roiled the Black community.

“I told each of them to get up, individually, and say ‘I matter,’” she recalled. “I wanted them to know their place and their value in this world.”

Under the program, Black men working in the criminal justice system, entrepreneurs, and professionals meet with her male students. She has now taken the program into the local community so that more young Black males can benefit.

The principal also organized a mentorship program around the girls called “She is Me.” Women, from celebrities to local business owners, meet with the girls to share stories about their personal struggles and triumphs. The aim is to empower the girls by letting them know that women who appear polished and successful today once faced similar obstacles as they do.

When it comes to discipline, Lopez takes a nontraditional approach.

“When they get in trouble, I’m not quick to just suspend them,” she said. “I start with a conversation about what’s going on in their life. Someone coming in from the outside might say, ‘you do a lot of talking here,’ but it’s because no one listens to these students.”

Lopez emphasized the importance of giving her students a vision beyond what they see in their neighborhood. Although they live in the largest city in the nation, few of them have seen the skyscrapers in Manhattan. She takes her students every year for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to see the skyline and encourages them to enroll in high schools outside Brownsville. Annual trips to college campuses around the nation also give them a sense of what’s possible.

Stanton launched a campaign that raised about $1.4 million to take Lopez’s students on college trips, including Harvard University. And other donations came streaming in from around the nation. But don’t think Mott Hall, a public school, has a lot of cash and resources.

“Money, I don’t have a dime,” the principal exclaimed when asked. “I build relationships to get the resources we need.”

As a public school, the donations that came in were divided with other schools in the district: “So, things have gotten more—not less—challenging because of what people think we have.”

Nevertheless, Lopez continues to find ways to steer her students toward success. Toward that end, she understands how crucial it is to build relationships—what she calls “a village of supporters around my students.”

That’s what she writes about in her book, The Bridge To Brilliance, which is scheduled for release in late August. In it, Lopez gives an account of her struggle to establish a successful middle school in Brownsville. The takeaway, she said, is that it can’t be done in isolation. Fixing the problems requires a community of people who have a sense of higher purpose and service.

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Fennell, Twitter

Tyra Banks knows a thing or two about personal branding. The former supermodel’s experience will come in handy in her new role.

Fortune reports that Banks will teach a course on branding at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Banks, a successful entrepreneur, will co-instruct about two-dozen MBA students on the art and science of using social media and traditional media to launch a personal brand.

Starting her career on the runway as a Victoria’s Secret model, Banks transformed herself into a reality TV host/producer and a businesswoman, as the chief executive of TYRA Beauty. In 2012, Banks also completed an executive education program at Harvard Business School.

SOURCE: Fortune | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty, Twitter

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Dwayne Reed, 25, is a first-year teacher at Jane Stenson Elementary School in Skokie, Illinois, who was looking for a different way to welcome students back to school, ABC News reports.

He created a rap video that has earned him an “A” for innovation. Reed sits at his desk, feet up, snapping his fingers to a catchy piano chord, as he welcomes his new students. Later in the video, he’s dressed as a scientist. Standing in front of a chalkboard with chemical formulas scribbled on it, he tells his incoming class they’ll learn about science and math.

His message is he expects them to work hard, be positive and respective, and have fun along the way.

“I definitely heard from a lot of other parents and teachers and they said, ‘Hey, you’ve done a good job,’ so I’m real happy about it,” Reed told ABC News.

His principal, Sue O’Neil, told NBC News Chicago she’s looking forward to working with her newly minted teacher.

“I think he’s gonna bring a lot of creativity, and I just think the kids are gonna relate to him really well,” she added.

Reed told NBC News he plans to continue using music in his classroom. He’s part of a growing wave of classroom innovators who are using hip-hop as a learning tool.

NewsOne interviewed Austin Martin, a college student who created an interactive vocabulary program for high school students that utilizes rap lyrics. Educator and author Christopher Emdin talked with NewsOne Now recently about how he addresses culture bias and engages students through hip-hop.

Reed is receiving more than praise for his video. He’s also receiving school supplies and winter clothing for his students, many of whom live in low-income families.

SOURCE: ABC News, NBC News Chicago | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty, Twitter | VIDEO SOURCE: YouTube

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A Chicago-based education nonprofit is getting a lot of attention for its identity-based curriculum. In addition to academics, it teaches students of color from a low-income community to embrace their identity and to pilot their lives toward success.

Marie Dandie and Jacob Allen co-founded PilotEd, which launched in 2013 as an after-school program. Allen, who serves as CEO, expects to complete the transformation into a charter school in September 2017, after three years of successful growth. The campus, located in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, will also continue to serve as a community hub.

Allen told NewsOne he and Dandie created an identity curriculum to help their inner-city students manage a range of issues and challenges in their lives, which kids from middle-class and affluent neighborhoods seldom encounter.

“As African-Americans, many of us have the common experiences of family members incarcerated and living in poverty,” he said. “But none of those things were discussed in the classroom when Marie and I were in school. And when we started teaching in Chicago public schools, there were no discussions about traumatic events like shooting — no grief counseling.”

Their identity curriculum intersects with standard curriculum, to create lessons that the students can relate to, such as mapping out the number of gangs in their neighborhood, or comparing the chemical elements in blond hair to curly black hair. Students also read books with characters who look like them.

That approach to education, Allen said, enables students to engage academics in a deeper, more profound way.

Allen reported that PilotEd has seen excellent results: 3.75 years of math growth on state standardized tests over one year, 88 percent reduction in suspensions, 28 percent increase in attendance, and 93 percent projected high school graduation rate.

Two other key parts of PilotEd’s curriculum involve student engagement in civic action and Success Talks.

“Civic action doesn’t occur until you do something,” Allen underscored. Accordingly, the students meet lawmakers and observe how the legislative process works. They also meet community advocates and learn about various social issues.

Success Talks allows PilotEd students to meet successful professionals who look like them. Sometimes that involves inviting people into the classroom or taking the students on field trips to downtown Chicago.

On the other hand, PioltEd also exposes its students to the consequences of failing to make good choices. Allen said the program has taken them on a field trip to the Cook County Jail.

“The results were mixed: some students, sadly, said ‘I already know this — I’ve been here before to see relatives.’ Other kids freaked out,” he said.

One goal of the program is to help the students develop independent, self-determined lives that are focused on achieving success.

“We instill the idea in our students of taking control of their lives and future. One student said ‘I feel piloted,’ and the name stuck,” he recalled.

PilotEd devotes itself to serving its community and envisions itself as an anchor or hub in Chicago’s South Side. To that end, PilotEd continues to develop partnerships that enable it to provide a range of services to students and their families, such as health care, job workshops, and legal services.

In June, Allen was among 33 social innovators to win a 2016 Echoing Green fellowship, selected from a pool of more than 2,000 applicants from 120 countries. These social entrepreneurs are addressing many of the world’s most daunting challenges, such as global warming, racism, and water scarcity.

As part of the fellowship, PilotEd received $80,000 in seed money and access to a global network of funders.

Winning the fellowship was a watershed moment for PilotEd. Allen recalled the “uphill battle” he and Dandie have faced over the past three years. He said neither of them had a business background or fundraising experience when they launched the program.

“Having an Echoing Green Fellowship gives us a stamp of approval — that we’re the real deal,” he said. “Three years ago we were fumbling at coffee shops around 2 a.m., trying to figure things out.”

Allen, 28, grew up in Los Angeles. He credits the influence of University of Washington Professor Janelle Silva, a protégé of legendary community activist Angela Davis, for much of his inspiration. He recalled leaving classes “on fire,” after listening to her lecture about taking action in the community.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty, Twitter

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Making sense of the world is challenging for adults—and even more so for youths. Events and social conditions affect kids, but they often lack the voice and means to express their views.

Tiffany James, a Columbia, South Carolina-based performer and blogger, launched Acting Up with Tiffany in 2015 to help teens and pre-teens find their voice through drama.

She told NewsOne that her goal is to provide students with “a space to express themselves and shine a light on social issues impacting their lives.”

The subject matter in James’ arts activism class centers on involvement in issues that affect the Columbia community from the perspective of the youths. Some of the issues the students have chosen to tackle so far include bullying and hunger.

James said childhood hunger is a problem in South Carolina that impacts scores of Columbia residents in a very personal way. And bullying is a situation that students, unfortunately, encounter all too often, that her kids needed to confront.

“It’s about addressing the issue and spreading awareness through their art and their talent, which is drama,” she said.

The acting coach admires the work of Anna Deavere Smith, the actress and playwright who recently took on the school-to-prison pipeline issue. One of her takeaways from reading Smith’s book, Letters to a Young Artist, is that acting is about building bridges between the actor, character, and audience.

“I want the audience to connect to the characters that the youth create,” said James, who’s clearly passionate about her craft. “I want the audience to understand situations from their point of view. By putting on the child’s shoe, it encourages empathy from the audience.”

Her inaugural class consisted of Black girls, who tend to be drawn to acting more than Black boys. The girls are typically more receptive to expressing their feelings. Boys, on the other hand, open up “once they see the big picture, and they become eager to express themselves.”

James recently landed a key partnership with the Richland County Recreation Commission. She will soon hold weekly drama classes at the Caughman Road Park in Hopkins, South Carolina, for kids age 8-15.

“Acting Up with Tiffany is a very unique way of introducing many children in Richland County to acting,” the commission told NewsOne. “We embrace her theme of: Lights! Camera! Action! Act up and out with Acting Up with Tiffany!”

The commission said it looks forward to seeing the students’ performances on stage.

Creating an original play is a group project, a process that James oversees and guides, but avoids directing. She said it’s not hard to get ideas flowing when her students have a space where they’re not being judged or evaluated by adults.

They come up with an issue, discuss their own experience or the experience of someone who faced that issue, and create a story from those experiences. James works with them on developing the characters and plot. They write the script and perform the play.

A Columbia native, James “caught the performing bug” at age 4 when she began singing in her church choir. She’s been active in the city’s art scene, where there has been a lack of opportunity for African-American women—a problem that she said exists in Hollywood and small theater groups nationwide. She decided to fill the gap by creating opportunities for youths in her community.

She laments that many school districts have cut arts education from their curriculum. “They need structure but also an avenue of expression,” she added.

James recalled a conversation with actress Erika Alexander, from the sitcom Living Single, who talked to her about creating one’s own narrative if we want society to see us differently.

“That’s exactly what I am doing, providing an avenue where youth can create and tell their own stories from their perspective,” she said.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kayla Mallett

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A former Chicago children’s librarian has reached the peak of her profession. On Wednesday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts swore in Carla Hayden as the 14th Librarian of Congress. She’s the first woman and first African-American to hold the prestigious chief executive position in the Library of Congress’ 216-year history.

President Barack Obama nominated Hayden in February, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination in July.

A statement from the Library said Hayden took her oath on the same Bible that President Abraham Lincoln and Obama used when they took the oath of office.

Hayden, who is from Queens, New York, has a long history of serving low-income communities.

In an interview with NBC News, Hayden spoke about her decision as chief of Baltimore’s public library system to keep branches open citywide during the unrest following Freddie Gray’s funeral. Many other institutions that serve the community chose to keep their doors closed.

“We knew the people would count on the library being open,” Hayden told NBC News. “There were people waiting to get in, to use the computers, to apply for jobs. There were children that couldn’t go to school. There were people that needed to find resources that just needed a place to be and there was this oasis right in the middle of all of that unrest.”

In the early 1990s, Hayden was proactive in making sure libraries in Baltimore were connected to the Internet. When she noticed a digital divide emerging, Hayden also provided e-readers, iPads, and Kindles at her libraries so that children in “tougher areas” of the city would be familiar with the latest technology, the news outlet reported.

In recent years, many have complained about a lack of basic technology at the Library of Congress. Hayden is seen widely as the librarian who will bring the world’s largest library into the 21st century.

“When I contemplate the potential of harnessing the power of technology with the unparalleled resources at the Library of Congress, I am overwhelmed with the possibilities,” she said in the statement.

Hayden earned her masters and doctorate from the University of Chicago and served as the city’s deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library in 1991. It was around that time when she first met the Obamas.

She told USA Today that her love for reading started in childhood. Her favorite book was Bright April because the author and illustrator, Marguerite de Angeli, promoted cultural understanding through multi-racial characters.

“Years later, as a children’s librarian, I realized children need to see themselves reflected in books,” she stated. “Books can be mirrors, and they can be windows.”

SOURCE: Library of Congress, NBC News, USA Today | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty, Twitter

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Professor Edmund Gordon, one of the nation’s leading education scholars, has given his name and guidance to a Brooklyn, New York high school that’s scheduled to open next fall.

The Edmund W. Gordon High School for the Applied Sciences, is part of the Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools, which serves primarily students of color who live in low – and working-class communities. It recently won $10 million in a prestigious grant competition. The money will go toward implementing the school’s innovative vision, which scholar has influenced.

Gordon, 95, told NewsOne that he expects the school’s curriculum to become a major contribution to the education field.

He explained that the traditional focus of education has been on students mastering information that’s given to them. But the new school, which bears his name, will approach education based on how students learn.

“This model makes schools more sensitive to the diversity of the school’s population,” he said. “With this change, you’ll see some kids who have previously failed get engaged in school and succeed.”

A psychologist and education professor, Gordon is currently the Director Emeritus of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

He was also instrumental in creating the Federal Head Start program. Gordon was among a team of scholars that President John F. Kennedy gathered to explore the creation of the program. He had done scholarly work on the holistic development of children in Harlem and offered key insights.

Looking to the future, Gordon said the school hopefully would begin closing the achievement gap in its first five years. He is a pioneer in the battle to close the academic gap between Black students and their White peers.

He underscored that the way to think about the achievement gap is not by race but socioeconomic status. He said even among White students, those who grow up in affluent families do far better in school than White students from poor families.

“What really makes the difference is not what happens in school but what happens outside of school,” he stated.

Gordon added: “If you have Black kids who come out of neighborhoods that have rich out-of-school resources—libraries, camps, museums, opportunities to travel, adults who read—if the culture from which they come is an academic culture, you don’t see the gap.”

Accordingly, Gordon High School designed a set of comprehensive, supplementary out-of-school learning component, he stated.

Racial bias in school discipline is another problem that continues to negatively impact learning for Black students—even at charter schools, as U.S. Education Secretary John King has discussed. It’s often the first step for Black students into the prison pipeline.

Gordon said his philosophy is that “education has little space for punishment.”

He explained that research shows little support for negative reinforcement as a way of improving learning.

“Kids don’t learn because they’re afraid of punishment,” he said. “Kids learn because of the positive relationships they have with those for whom they learn: teachers they trust, teachers they have a strong relationship with.”

Schools, he added, should forbid punishment or use it minimally. Gordon approves of alternative approaches, including those that guide students through the process of correcting their misbehavior.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty, CEJJES Institute, Inc.

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Most agree that teacher diversity is desirable. Numerous studies have shown that Black teachers are effective at teaching African-American students.

But teachers of color represent just 18 percent of the workforce—about 7 percent of them are African-American. That’s a problem because this lack of teacher diversity exists at a time when minorities represent a majority of students in the nation’s public education system. A large part of the problem is retaining teachers of color.

NewsOne spoke with The Education Trust, a nonprofit education research and advocacy group, about its new study, released on Nov. 3.

Titled Through Our Eyes: Perspectives and Reflections From Black Teachers, the study gives voice to African-American educators on the front-lines about the challenges that contribute to the retention crisis.

Ashley Griffin, the lead researcher who co-authored the study with Hilary Tackie, said the research team sat down with a representative group of 150 Black teachers from seven states. Those teachers were selected based on data from the 2012 Schools and Staffing Survey, compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Griffin, who serves as the director of K-12 research at Education Trust, said many studies have quantified the retention problem and examined the impact of teachers of color in classrooms. This study, however, gives voice to Black teachers, and contributes qualitative findings.

“We’ve read many clips about the low number of African-American teachers and low recruitment figure,” she told NewsOne. “But no one is really talking about retention. So we set out to listen to African-American teachers, and have conversations about what’s happening across the nation.”

The research found amazing similarities and continuity. It paints a picture that explains why the teachers entered the profession, the value they bring to schools, and the obstacles they face.

Many of the teachers said they felt “called” to teaching. They came to the profession with high expectations of their Black students and a desire to enable them to succeed. This calling, Griffin explained, often stemmed from a role model—a teacher or a relative.

One participant, an elementary school teacher from Oakland, said she wanted to impact her Black students in the same way that her fifth-grade teacher influenced her.

She said, “I make sure I get to know each and every one of my kids, and let them know that they can do it.”

The teachers said they feel a special connection with their Black students. “We bring familiarity to our students,” one participant said. “You know, they do like to look up and say, ‘Oh, OK, there is my auntie,’ or ‘There is my grandma,’ or ‘There is my cousin.’”

This connection, stemming mainly from common experiences, enables the teachers to empathize with the challenges their Black students encounter away from school.

However, there are negative consequences for this affinity with the students. These consequences diminish their chances of getting promoted and recognized for their skills.

School administrators often assign African-American educators to teach only Black students. As a result, White colleagues tend to view them as disciplinarians, but not skilled educators.

Many of the teachers said they spend nearly all their time playing the role of enforcer instead of developing their teaching skills and doing lesson planning.

Source: The Education Trust / The Education Trust

Stereotyped as less educated, the Black teachers said they seldom get the opportunity to teach high-performing students and advanced courses, which would give them recognition as subject matter experts.

A focus group participant described getting pigeonholed as a disciplinarian of Black students this way:

“‘You do it so well, let’s just keep you here.’ If I’m doing the ABCs every day, I never really get to do anything of a higher caliber. I think a lot of times, as African-American teachers, we get stuck in a certain group, because you do it well.”

Griffin said the Black teachers told her team that they have unique stressors. Much of it stems from a sense of obligation to underserved Black students, which goes beyond academics.

They often find themselves “acting as a parent, a hairdresser, a chauffeur, an advocate, a counselor, or a cheerleader,” the study said. Serving the whole student often means spending their own money to ensure the students have basic necessities.

The takeaway from what the teachers said is that “recruiting Black teachers is not enough,” said Griffin. School district leaders and principals must “recognize and be mindful of the racial climate and how it affects teachers of color.”

Griffin said the next step is for school districts and their African-American teachers to have “a delicate conversation” about those issues and explore what support systems are needed to keep them in the profession.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

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The contributions and achievements of African-Americans in the field of education are diverse and wide-reaching. However, few of those responsible get the credit they truly deserve. Here, we acknowledge 10 of the pioneers and game-changers who worked to provide learning opportunities, improve curricula, and break down barriers for students of color across the country.

Molefi Asante: Created the country’s first African-American studies Ph.D. program at Temple University in 1987. Asante is a pioneer in contemporary Afrocentric philosophy who has authored more than 75 books.

Source: Temple University Archives

Marva Collins: Chicago public school teacher who in 1975 started a school in her home. Through Collins’ innovative approach, her Westside Preparatory School flourished and won accolades for turning children considered unteachable into successful students. By the 1990s, she was training 1,000 teachers annually.

Source: Bettmann / Getty

Fanny Jackson Coppin: Born a slave, Coppin became a pioneering educator toward the end of the Civil War. A graduate of Oberlin College, she opened a night school for freed slaves and later served as the principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia.

Source: Oberlin College Archives

Edmund Gordon: Served as an architect of the federal Head Start program and was its founding director of research and evaluation. A psychologist by training, Gordon is a leading scholar on divergent learning styles and one of the first educators to focus on closing the academic achievement gap. He founded the Institute for Urban Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1973, where he served as dean.

Source: CEJJES Institute, Inc.

William Leo Hansberry: Considered the “father of classical African studies,” Hansberry taught the first courses in African civilization at Howard University in the 1920s. In the 1950s, he did field research in Africa and created the foundation for African Studies.

Source: Courtesy of Joi Gresham & Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust

Charles H. Houston: A Dean of Howard University Law School in the 1930s, Houston argued cases at the U.S. Supreme Court that created a legal foundation for the historic Brown v. Board decision, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. He’s also credited with shaping the institution that trained about 25 percent of the nation’s Black lawyers during that era.

Source: Howard University Archives

Kelly Miller: A leading advocate of comprehensive education for African-American children, Miller earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics and taught at Howard University in the 1890s. He eventually became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and modernized the university’s classic curriculum. He also attended Johns Hopkins University’s graduate school in 1887.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Archives

Frederick Douglass Patterson: Established the United Negro College Fund, which has enabled scores of students to attend HBCUs. He was also president emeritus of the Tuskegee University.

Source: Bettmann / Getty/ Frederick Patterson (L), George Washington Carver (R)

Mary Jane Patterson: The child of fugitive slaves, Patterson was the first African-American woman to receive a college degree when she graduated from Oberlin College in 1862. She later taught at the Institute for Colored Youths and became the principal of the Preparatory High School for Negroes.

Source: Oberlin College Archives

Inez Beverly Prosser: The first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in psychology, her dissertation documented the psychological harm from racism to Black children learning in integrated schools. She later taught at Black colleges and assisted students to obtain funding to enroll in college and graduate school.

SOURCE: Temple University, Chicago Tribune, Oberlin College, Yale University, Howard University, Johns Hopkins University, New York Times, American Psychological Association

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Watch: More Teachers Of Color Needed In The Classroom

All too often, students of color encounter obstacles on their journey to success. Many live in violent communities, attend under-resourced schools and are taught by teachers who have low expectations of them.

In the face of adversity, third-grade teacher Jasmyn Wright encourages her students to “push through.” She posted a video of a call and response exercise she does with them, which has gone viral, receiving more than 3.5 million views.

The teacher asks: “What if it’s too hard?”

Her students respond: “I’m gonna push through.”

Wright poses this question: “What if you’re too dumb?”

They respond forcefully: “That ain’t true!”

Wright, who teaches at Frederick Douglass Elementary in Philadelphia, also gives her students concrete examples—Nelson Mandela, Jackie Robinson, Michelle Obama, Rosa Parks—of Black heroes who persevered.

Wright explained to the Huffington Post what “push through” means:

“‘Push through’ means that you can conquer and get through any adversity that life introduces you to. Some things in life are inevitable and you can’t control them. However, you have control over your response and reaction to those situations. Anybody, any religion, any race, any age, any disability, any obstacle, can PUSH THROUGH. We are limitless.”

SOURCE: Huffington Post

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The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, a nonprofit educational organization, announced that it selected Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice among its 11 honorees for 2017.

Rice, a global expert in reproductive endocrinology, is the first female president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine. The organization underscored her inspirational academic journey as an example for students in similar situations.

Raised by a single mother, Rice overcame medical issues that caused her to fall behind in school at an early age. She met those challenges head-on and graduated from Harvard Medical School.

“From a young age, I witnessed my mother’s strength and resilience in the face of great challenges,” Rice said. “She taught me to strive for the impossible and to never give up on my dreams.”

Rice wants to inspire young people and instill the value of perseverance: “I understand what it is like to experience hardships, and I look forward to working with these remarkable [Horatio Alger] Scholars, bearing witness to their achievement of big and bold dreams.”

The Horatio Alger Association honors the achievements of outstanding individuals and encourages young people to pursue their dreams through higher education. It bestows its prestigious award annually to individuals who succeeded despite adversity, and who are committed to education and community involvement.

SOURCE: Horatio Alger Association

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Antwan Wilson, the superintendent of schools in Oakland, California, is the District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser’s nominee for schools chancellor, reports The Washington Post.

The newspaper described Wilson as an outsider, which signals that Bowser wants a new approach to improving academic outcomes for the district’s students of color living in poor communities.

At the same time, though, he is also reform-minded, like former Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who announced her resignation in June, and Henderson’s predecessor Michelle Rhee. Bowser described Wilson as a “proven manager” and “education leader,” according to The Post.

The school district has focused much of its energy on male students of color. Toward that end, Wilson said he envisions an emphasis on social-emotional learning, summer programs and in-school tutoring.

Prior to heading Oakland’s school district, Wilson, 44, was a teacher and later an administrator in Denver, who focused on urban education. His leadership training includes the Broad Academy, an initiative for urban school superintendents.

He’s also a noted member of the school leadership organization Chiefs for Change, which promotes charter schools.

Education Secretary John B. King praised Wilson’s nomination in a statement:

“Antwan has a reputation for using a comprehensive equity agenda to help increase student achievement and elevate social emotional learning, a focus I am hopeful he will bring to DCPS as the district works to close achievement gaps.”

The City Council will hold three hearings on Wilson’s nomination. If confirmed, he’s expected to begin on Feb. 1.

SOURCE: Washington Post

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Become a substitute teacher:

Working as a substitute will give you an opportunity to gauge your comfort in a classroom and to identify which grade level may be the best for you.

Research alternate licensure programs:

There are many options available for career changers who want to work toward a future teaching job while working full-time.

Speak to current teachers and find a mentor:

Build relationships with teachers who can provide coaching, feedback and valuable insight on the day-to-day realities of classroom life.

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Watch: Teachers As A Bridge Between Community & Schools

Building a trusting relationship with students is one of the keys to success for educators. A fifth-grade teacher is doing that in a way that’s getting lots of attention.

“The most critical component is the relationship, the rapport you build with your students because sometimes it can go underrated or overlooked,” Barry White Jr. told WCNC-TV, an NBC affiliate.

He added: “Before I’m able to deliver a substantial amount of content to them, they have to invest in the teacher.” 

White teaches literacy at Ashley Park PreK-8 School, a Title I school located in Charlotte, North Carolina. The school’s administrators encourage their teachers to find creative ways to engage students.

After shaking hands with White, the students are warmed up and ready for the vocabulary shootout and shoe-tapping songs in his curriculum.

Much of the bonding comes from the time he takes to work out the individualized handshakes with each student. He said the student creates the moves, and they refine it together. The daily bonding exercise creates excitement, joy and trust, he explained.

SOURCE: WCNC-TV

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All 250 James Baldwin High School students recently received an advance screening of the documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. A grant allowed students at the alternative school in Manhattan to see the James Baldwin biopic, which is competing against four other films in the documentary category at the upcoming Image Awards.

Brady Smith, the principal at Baldwin High School, told NewsOne that the screening came at the end of an intensive study at the school on connecting the social activism of Baldwin’s era with the modern movement.

Baldwin High is a transfer school in the New York City public school system. It’s comprised “mostly of Black and brown” students from low-income families, said Smith, who is in his fourth year as principal. Many of the students are “over-aged and under-credited,” seeking an alternative path toward high school graduation.

Toward that end, the school’s curriculum emphasizes social justice. It allows them to explore and understand the social issues that affect their lives, while inspiring them to become agents of change, he explained. Through its unique curriculum, many of the students have become engaged academically for the first time.

Smith said reading Baldwin’s work is transformative and informs his students’ social activism. The Harlem writer’s message resonates with them because it’s still relevant today.

The teachers use Baldwin’s novels and essays in a variety of ways. In one course, students create visual art based on Baldwin’s shorter works. In another course, the students dissect and analyze his messages. Many of the students have made amazing academic turnarounds.

Baldwin also impacts the teachers, who read and interpret his work at staff retreats and as part of the hiring process.

The film takes as its point of departure a famous book Baldwin never completed, provisionally titled “Remember This House.” It was to be a memoir of the civil rights movement and his personal memories of three assassinated leaders: Malcolm X, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers. His reflections are the basis of film director Raoul Peck’s examination of racial prejudice in contemporary America.

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Melissa Harris-Perry vividly recalled the day she told her former college professor, Maya Angelou, that she planned to drop her class.

The decision came after she missed four weeks of class while recovering from bronchitis after running around the Wake Forest University campus in just a T-shirt, without a jacket, during sorority pledge week.

Perhaps the biggest factor behind the decision of the 17-year-old future scholar and political commentator, she told NewsOne, was that her “grades were garbage.”

But instead of signing off on the request, the legendary writer who is best known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, hired Harris-Perry to work as a student assistant.

The job allowed Harris-Perry to earn money for college fees. But what mattered more is that Angelou became her “beloved mentor and guide.” Reflecting on the relationship, Harris-Perry added that Angelou’s “generosity was unparalleled.”

That is why Harris-Perry is looking forward to the first documentary about the life of her mentor, whose dynamic life will be explored in Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise. It is scheduled to premiere February 21 on PBS as one of the network’s Black History Month offerings in its American Masters series.

The documentary is competing at the Feb. 11 NAACP Image Awards for outstanding documentary against four others: 13th, I Am Not Your Negro, Miss Sharon Jones!, and Olympic Pride, American Prejudice.

The film examines Angelou’s activism, stage work as a singer and dancer, as well as her work as an academic. Besides Wake Forest, Angelou taught at several universities beginning in the 1970s. By 1982, Wake Forest offered her a permanent teaching position.

One of the central voices in the Maya Angelou documentary comes from her “spiritual brother,” poet and scholar Eugene Redmond.

An accomplished writer, Redmond was named Poet Laureate of East Saint Louis in 1976. He spoke with NewsOne about his first encounters with Angelou in the 1960s at rallies, conferences, and poetry readings.

Over time, they built an unshakeable bond based, among other things, on their common St. Louis roots and love of poetry. He opened the door to Angelou’s foray into teaching, helping her land a position at California State University at Sacramento, where he was a professor.

“She grew into an excellent professor,” Redmond said. “She brought her passion to the classroom, as well as her vast knowledge about literature and life experience.”

Angelou taught courses on philosophy and literature. In her lessons, she wove insights of her firsthand knowledge of the civil rights movement, her personal friendships with leaders of the movement, and her own Black experience.

“We were pioneers back then, bringing Africana into academia,” Redmond said, pausing to reflect. “There were few Black professors on college campuses in 1970.”

As her star rose, Angelou received more requests to teach and offers of visiting professorships. She came to Wake Forest in 1973 for a speaking engagement, which turned out to be the first step in a decades-long academic career at the university.

One principle Angelou instilled in Harris-Perry is that without courage, you cannot practice other virtues consistently in life.

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As a high school student, Harris-Perry read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which she said was “transformative.” So, the opportunity to take Angelou’s class clinched her decision to enroll at Wake Forest. The university’s “idyllic” campus was icing on the cake.

Angelou’s teaching style, she said, was a balance between lecture and the Socratic method. She demanded that her students arrive to class prepared and required everyone to participate.

“She was very funny and a really nice person,” Harris-Perry recalled. “But she was also hard and demanding. Her expectations of us were very high.”

Now, Redmond and Harris-Perry sit around the dinner table to enjoy a nice meal and exchange ideas important to Angelou. She was a great cook and wonderful company, they said.

It was in that setting that Angelou often imparted her wisdom. One principle she instilled in Harris-Perry is that without courage, you cannot practice other virtues consistently in life.

Years later, Harris-Perry revisited that lesson during an interview with her instructor:

In 2014, Harris-Perry left MSNBC, where she hosted a political talk show, and returned to Wake Forest to teach. She looked forward to reuniting on campus with her longtime mentor. Sadly, Angelou passed away less than 30 days before her return. She was 86.

“There’s not a moment that I haven’t missed her,” she said.

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Growing up in the historic Memphis, Tennessee neighborhood of Orange Mound is challenging. Established in 1890, as one of the first neighborhoods built specifically for African-Americans in the Jim Crow South, Orange Mound declined by 1980. Like some other communities of color, children there are surrounded by drugs and gang violence.

Tynesha White, 24, navigated her way around the the violence. She attended the University of Mississippi, where she majored in education. After graduating, White decided to return to Memphis, where she now teaches in a community similar to Orange Mound.

“I know how difficult it can be to make it out in those situations,” White told NewOne. “Being a little Brown child in a low-socioeconomic area is hard.”

White, who teaches kindergarten at Promise Academy Spring Hill, preaches education as the key to success.

She said, “I just want to give my students the best shot at getting out. It doesn’t matter where you come from, you can still do anything.”

Source: Brandy Terry / kindergarten teacher Tynesha White

White has been teaching for two years—a critical juncture when scores of novice educators decide whether to continue in the profession.

Teacher retention is a major challenge for the nation’s school districts, especially for racially segregated schools in low-income communities of color.

According to the National Association, within their first five years of teaching, over 40 percent of educators leave the profession. In urban, under-resourced schools, the turnover rate is dizzying: about 20 percent of teachers exit every year, New York University reports.

At the same time, teachers of color are underrepresented in the workforce. The U.S. Department of Education, in a report titled The State of Racial Diversity in the Educator Workforce, found that teachers of color represent about 18 percent of the workforce—at a time when minorities combined comprise a majority of public school students.

Teacher diversity, former Education Secretary John King has stated to NewsOne, “isn’t just a nicety; it’s a real contributor to better outcomes in school.” Teachers of color, because of commonalities with their underprivileged urban students, serve as role models, have high expectations and understand the behavior of their Black and Brown students.

In Tennessee, teacher diversity is a problem that state education officials are trying to remedy, according to the Tennessean. About 85 percent of students majoring in education statewide in 2015 were White, the newspaper reported.

Adding to the challenge, the state’s lowest performing students are educated by the lowest performing teachers, Chalkbeat reported, based on state data that show test scores for those students improved when they had effective teachers.

White said she benefitted from having teachers who looked like her and “took an interest in me,” so she wants give back.

“I live for the lightbulb moment,” she said, referring to that moment when her young students understand new concepts. To improve her skills and create more ah-ha moments, White is continuing her education at the Relay Graduate School of Education’s Memphis campus.

In assessing her own skills, White admits that there are areas that need improvement. She learned education theories as an undergraduate but entered the profession with no practical classroom management skills.

That’s common, says Michelle Armstrong, the founding dean of Relay Tennessee who oversees the teacher preparation program. She told NewsOne that Relay’s program fosters the “mindset of an effective teacher” in its students. The keys to effectiveness include knowing how to manage a classroom, as well as developing relationships with parents, students and the community.

Armstrong, a former teacher and principal, has a mantra: “Practice is premium.” That means the school’s urban education program focuses on doing—not just theories—through “deliberate practice,” mentoring and feedback from experienced teachers.

Relay, which has a residency program, partners with public K-12 schools, charter schools and colleges. Its students are predominantly African-American teachers, who are new to the profession and typically teach at low-performing schools.

The instructors coach the teaching students through actual classroom observation and analysis of recorded video of them teaching in their classroom.

“Teaching is a great profession, but it requires hard work,” said Armstrong, who said many enter the field without understanding what’s involved.

White said the program gives her access to experienced teaching mentors who help her solve the challenges she faces in the classroom.

She has no regrets about choosing to teach in a community that needs excellent educators. As a teacher, White feels that she’s contributing to the solution.

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Effective teaching sometimes requires nontraditional methods to connect with students. Rap is one of those methods.

Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said students today connect with rap and the hip-hop style. That’s why some schools in her district are teaming up with the education technology company Flocabulary.

She especially praises the company’s history rap battles, called Hip-Hop History, a writing contest in which students create rap songs about historical figures.

The Brooklyn, New York-based edtech company, which launched in 2003 selling rap CDs with vocabulary words in the lyrics from the trunk of a car, now offers more than 800 educational rap videos spanning all academic subjects, along with quizzes and other curricular material.

“Flocabulary is never going to replace textbooks,” co-founder and CEO Alex Rappaport told NewsOne. “It’s more of a sweetener. I see Flocabulary as that critical piece of the education jigsaw puzzle for student engagement, content delivery, platform creation.”

Rappaport and co-founder and Blake Harrison were starving artists when they met in California, waiting tables together. In 2003, Harrison was a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with dreams of writing a great novel. Rappaport, who graduated a year earlier from Tufts University, wanted to write music for films.

Harrison had the idea of putting SAT words to rap songs. Neither of them had any business experience or startup capital, but that didn’t stop them from launching Flocabulary.

“Our original mission was to make learning more fun,” said Rappaport. “We saw a crisis of student engagement.”

Teaching is one of the most challenging professions, he stated. Teachers can’t always engage every student on an individual level, he stated. The duo’s motivation as artists was to help teachers create engaging curriculum that uses cultural elements.

Rappaport recalled performing at middle schools and high schools in the company’s early years. Students were typically doubtful when they heard that the rap team was coming to perform songs with SAT words embedded in the lyrics.

“But a few minutes into it, they’d be like, ‘yeah!’” he recalled. “The words were sticking in their head and they were engaged.”

Rappaport explained that music is a powerful memory and recall tool. We learn through songs and nursery rhymes as toddlers, but that methods of learning stops when we enter the classroom.

Harrison and Rappaport had a watershed moment in 2005 while visiting a special education class in Brooklyn. The students, who had learning disabilities, had been working with Flocabulary songs for a week when the two visited for a workshop.

“The first thing we noticed was that the students all knew the words,” Rappaport recalled. “And then, a tenth-grader came up to me and said, ‘Mister Alex, I used to study words in a perfunctory manner, now I love words.’”

Source: Flocabulary / Flocabulary rapper performing for teachers at an education conference.

The student not only recalled the word “perfunctory,” he also understood its meaning, Rappaport said, reliving the excitement.

In 2009, the company tested the effectiveness of its Word-Up vocabulary program, which contains words that are most likely to appear on state reading tests. The test included more than 1,200 students in six states.

The results of the independent study, conducted by the Educational Research Institute of America, showed that the middle school students who used the program for seven months had higher test scores than the group that did not use Flocabulary.

Today, the company has dozens of employees and hires professional rappers to write and perform the lyrics. The team is always looking for ways to reach more students and expand its offerings. Much of the focus now is on student-centered learning, in part through its lyric lab, and engaging students in current events.

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The African-American community has a long and impressive history of producing skilled educators. Even during the dark years of slavery, Black people overcame numerous obstacles to earn college degrees and dedicated their lives to educating Black children.

NewsOne recently celebrated that legacy by highlighting the accomplishments of 10 Black educators.

At this critical moment, there’s a shortage of Black teachers who are prepared to teach effectively in urban schools.

A 2016 U.S. Department of Education report, titled The State of Racial Diversity in the Educator Workforce, said 18 percent of educators are people of color at a time when students of color are a majority in public schools. Black males represent just 2 percent of the teacher workforce.

Part of the challenge is that Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented in teacher preparation programs. According to the Education Department’s report, they make up just 25 percent of students in college education programs.

Andre Perry, founding dean of urban education at Davenport University, writes in The Hechinger Report that the majority of universities “aren’t built to recruit from Black communities.”

He adds: “Recruiting teachers of color is hard because the units in universities that are charged specifically for marketing and recruitment aren’t positioned and staffed to recruit African-Americans and Latinos. Many colleges still have a sole multicultural recruiter.”

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, from their inception, play a significant role in recruiting and training Black educators. The Education Department said HBCUs are training a “significant percentage” of the nation’s Black educators. They train just 2 percent of the nation’s teachers overall but 16 percent of African-American teaching candidates.

Dr. Dawn Williams, interim dean of Howard University’s School of Education, told NewsOne that Howard focused primarily on “training preachers and teachers” when it originated.

Howard, celebrating its 150th anniversary, is “unapologetically training educators to teach in urban schools,” Williams stated. The urban environment, she added, is where they are most needed.

Source: Richard Chapin Downs Jr / Getty

Black teachers serve as role models in classrooms and connect culturally with Black students.

“It’s important for students of color to have role models who look like them and share common experiences,” former Education Secretary John King stated when his department released its teacher diversity report.

“It’s just as important for all students to see teachers of color in leadership roles in their classrooms and communities,” King continued

Williams said she had only one Black teacher in the first through 12th grades, who was a music teacher but none in the major subject areas.

“To not see the intellectual authority in the classroom had an impact on me,” stated Williams, who earned her bachelor’s degree at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. “I definitely wanted to go to an HBCU for college.”

Perry stated that students are more likely to pursue a teaching career if they had positive experiences in school.

“Unfortunately, schools are a negative flashpoint in many Black children’s lives” he writes. “In addition, a lack of school quality makes it more difficult for aspiring teachers to meet the ever-increasing academic requirements to enroll in programs. Students’ educational experiences will influence future career decisions.”

Williams said the data shows that most Black teachers work in high-needs communities because “they choose to go there.”

She described the students enrolled in Howard’s education program as “change agents,” who often return to teach in the community where they were reared. That sense of mission, of making a difference, is what motivates education students at HBCUs.

Historically, there has been a special relationship between parents and educators in the Black community. Williams, who began her career as a second-grade public school teacher, recalled that parents trusted her to discipline their children, but she always declined.

Howard’s program emphasizes the importance to its students that they become part of the community where they teach.

Training and mentoring continue after graduation. The school created a program called “Community of Practice” to help its graduates manage the challenges they encounter in the first few years of teaching, when many novice educators burnout and quit the profession.

Community of Practice is a virtual mentorship community in which the professors stay connected with students. It gives graduates the assurance that their instructors are still in their corner to provide advice.

Community of Practice also gives feedback to Howard professors who tweak the curriculum and training methods, based on the experiences of the recent graduates.

Source: asiseeit / Getty

Located in the nation’s capital, Howard’s education students benefit from the program’s partnerships with K-12 schools located in the metropolitan area of the District of Columbia’s African-American community.

Howard’s graduates, Williams said, are a source of teachers, principals, counselors and psychologists for school districts across the nation that recognize the value of a diverse teacher workforce.

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We’ve known from previous research that Black students benefit academically and psychologically, from having Black teachers. Well, a new study takes it one step further.

Johns Hopkins University reports researchers found that low-income Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate high school and to consider attending college.

“Black students matched to Black teachers have been shown to have higher test scores, but we wanted to know if these student-teacher racial matches had longer-lasting benefits. We found the answer is a resounding yes,” said co-author Nicholas Papageorge, a Johns Hopkins economist.

He said low-income Black boys, one of the most academically challenged groups, benefitted long term from having just one Black teacher.

Papageorge said this finding “not only moves the dial, it moves the dial in a powerful way.”

Source: sturti / Getty

The likelihood of Black students dropping out of high school decreased by 29 percent when they had at least one Black teacher in the third through fifth grades, the study found.

Having one Black teacher also had an amazing impact on Black boys from low-income families. Their chances of dropping out fell 39 percent.

Source: Courtesy of Johns Hopkins University

The graduation gap is large and stubbornly persistent. In the 2012-2013 school year, an estimated 59 percent of Black males nationwide graduated high school on time, compared to 80 percent of White males, according to research from the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

In the study reported by Johns Hopkins, the researchers examined the records of about 100,000 Black students who entered third grade in North Carolina Public Schools between 2001 and 2005. Roughly half of them graduated but had no plans to continue to college. About 13 percent of the cohorts dropped out.

Outcomes were different among the students who had at least one Black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade. They were more likely to graduate and consider going to college 18 percent more than the other group. Impoverished Black males in this group were 29 percent more interested in higher education.

The researchers replicated their findings by evaluating the records of Black students in Tennessee who entered kindergarten in the late 1980s and participated in the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment.

Source: asiseeit / Getty

Part of the explanation for the higher achievement is what’s called the “role model effect,” a term that points to the positive impact of having a role model. It’s no surprise that it helps immensely for Black students to see and interact with an intellectual authority figure.

This study builds on earlier research from Johns Hopkins on the impact of unconscious racial bias and how Black and White teachers view their Black students.

Researchers found that Black and White teachers often disagreed on their evaluation of the same student. Black teachers typically have higher expectations of their Black students, which encourages students to fulfill those expectations.

SOURCE:  Johns Hopkins University

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Africana studies Professor Marc Lamont Hill leaves Morehouse College to join the Temple University faculty.

He will serve as Klein College’s first Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions, as well as teach in the university’s urban education department. Temple trustee and alumnus Steve Charles bestowed a $2 million endowment to the chair, according to a statement from Temple.

“I couldn’t be more excited about my return to Temple University,” said Hill, a Philadelphia native who is a frequent commentator on CNN and MSNBC.

He added: “This chair will give me the opportunity to link academic inquiry and rigorous journalism to actual problem solving, something insufficiently done in the academy and mainstream media.”

Hill is a Temple alumnus whom Ebony magazine named one of America’s 100 most influential Black leaders in 2011.

SOURCE: Temple University

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Oberlin College names Carmen Ambar as its new president—the first African-American to hold the position in the Ohio college’s 184-year history, News 5 Cleveland reported.

The presidential search committee was impressed with Ambar’s “deep commitment to helping students see their potential in new and creative ways,” and selected her from a pool of 150 candidates, according to a statement from the college.

Ambar, an attorney, is currently the president of Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Her tenure at Oberlin begins in September.

In her statement, Ambar underscored Oberlin’s longstanding commitment to social justice. Oberlin said its commitment to diversity dates to 1835 when it became the first American college to admit African-American students.

Ambar is the college’s 15th president, replacing Marvin Krislov, who served as president for a decade. He has accepted an offer to become president of Pace University in New York City.

SOURCE:  News 5 Cleveland, Oberlin College

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Black academia and the civil rights community are grieving the loss of Dr. Samuel Dubois Cook, an African-American pioneer in higher education.

The New York Times reports that Cook, who served as Dillard University president from 1974 until his retirement in 1998, died on May 28 at age 88.

Cook was also the first tenure-track Black professor—since Reconstruction—at a Southern White college. Duke University hired him in 1966 as an associate professor of Political Science, at a time when the school was newly integrated.

A native of Griffin, Georgia, Cook is a Morehouse College alumnus. He attributed his leadership style to the influence of Dr. Benjamin Mays, who was president of Morehouse when Cook was a student.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a classmate and friend, also impacted Cook’s life. Both men were 15 years old when they enrolled at Morehouse, as part of an early admission program to bolster enrollment during World War II.

Cook graduated from Morehouse in 1948, earned his doctorate from Ohio State University, and taught at several universities, including Atlanta University, before Duke hired him. His influence on Duke continues through the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equality.

His achievements include serving as the first Black president of the Southern Political Science Association. President Jimmy Carter also named Cook to the National Council on the Humanities.

He’s survived by his wife, the former Sylvia Fields; their children, Samuel Cook Jr. and Karen J. Cook; and two grandchildren.

SOURCE: New York Times

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Black teachers say they face numerous challenges in public schools that cause many to leave the profession. Indeed, the teachers of color shortage “has as much or more to do with retention than recruitment,” according to a recent report from NEA Today.

Although recruitment efforts have improved over the past years, minority teachers often find themselves victim to the same policies that impact their students.

Travis Bristol, a Boston University assistant professor, shared his research on Boston’s Black educators during a panel discussion at the 2017 Education Writers Association National Seminar, NEA Today reported.

Donte Little was one of the former educators interviewed by Bristol. Little taught in Boston Public Schools and noticed that students were regularly treated like criminals. He left after an incident in which the principal “frisked” young students in a search for cellphones. “This isn’t a prison,” Little told Bristol.

If Little’s resignation is any indication, antiquated policies can create caustic environments for teachers of color. While studies show that students perform better when the teaching staff is as diverse as the student body, many of the schools that most need teachers of color are often low on resources.

Such a combination means that newly recruited teachers of color lose the optimism that attracted them to the profession. For this reason, educators are calling for more significant efforts to retain teachers of color.

Becky Pringle, vice president of the National Education Association (NEA), believes that teacher retention is central to achieving racial justice in education.

Pringle said that the retention rates of teachers of color was indicative of a larger problem: lack of leadership by teachers of color. Pringle says that the NEA is committed to training current and future teachers of color to lead in their schools so that they are empowered to change policies to improve their working environments and, ultimately, student outcomes.

SOURCE: NEA Today

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If one were in search of a picture-perfect modern example of how white supremacy works, they needn’t look any further than the Republican war on Critical Race Theory. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a million more times: White people have no idea what CRT is.

And because they don’t know, officials have been able to freely spread misinformation on the academic study that examines how race affects the legal system and other structures in America, which they have reduced to an umbrella term for anything that gets white people’s star-spangled underoos all in a bunch.

Based on that misinformation, lawmakers across red state America have been able to pass laws that are specifically designed to placate white people—whether they’re willing to admit that or not—at the expense of students and other people of color who would like, for once, for the history they’re taught in schools to not be intentionally whitewashed to preserve America’s “shining city on a hill” image. 

In Texas—a state that, earlier this year, passed a law that ditches requirements for educators to teach, among other things, the works of Martin Luther King Jr., the women’s suffrage movement and that the Ku Klux Klan was “morally wrong”—Republican state Rep. Matt Krause has compiled a list of 850 books he has identified as materials that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex,” NPR reported. 

Not only did Krause take the time to put together a list of nearly a thousand books that he fears are too white male fragility-inducing to be allowed in schools, but, on Monday, he sent out a letter to the Texas Education Agency and superintendents of all school districts requesting that educators across the state report back to him if any of the books on his list are in their school’s libraries. He also asked for “a detailed accounting of where they are and how much money was spent on them,” according to NPR.

Krause didn’t mention in his request what actions would be taken once schools reported having any of the hundreds of books in their possession, but he did mention pushes to ban books about transgender identity, critical race theory and other things that leave white conservatives shaking in their hand-me-down Klan robes from the classroom.

So what books are on Krause’s “If you’re a Nazi and you know it, ban a book” list?

Well, the 16-page-long list of books I guarantee Krause never bothered reading past the title includes The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle; “Pink is a Girl Color”… and other silly things people say, a children’s book by Stacy and Erik Drageset; Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann; How Prevalent Is Racism in Society? by Peggy J. Parks; We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures by Amnesty International and a few books that committed the egregious offense of having the words “Black Lives Matter” in the title.

It’s almost as if Krause just Googled “books that threaten patriarchy, the gender binary and white nationalism, not that I’m sexist, racist or transphobic or anything” and just let his search engine go wild. Literally, one of the books on his list is simply titled The LGBT Community.

Does Krause expect us to believe he’s not simply a bigot who wants bigotry to rule what students are taught? Are we to believe that when he clearly would rather students not be taught how prevalent racism is in society, that we were all born free or that pink is, in fact, not just a color for girls?

Ovidia Molina, the president of the Texas State Teachers Association, said in a statement that “Nothing in state law, not even HB3979 or SB3, gives a legislator the authority to conduct this type of witch hunt.” Molina also called the asinine request “an obvious attack on diversity and an attempt to score political points at the expense of our children’s education.”

Another way to describe Krause’s request—which he gave school officials until November 12 to comply with—is white supremacy gone wild and a perfect example of why Critical Race Theory and other critical studies like it are legitimate and necessary. 

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New York City Announces Plans For Educational Reform In How Black History Is Taught In America

The post Texas Rep. Targets Schools’ Books On Black History, Gender And Other Things That Make The Whites Uncomfortable appeared first on NewsOne.

Source: Robert Gauthier / Getty

Let’s talk about the predictability of whiteness.

MORE: 5 Books About The Black American Experience That Conservatives Want Banned

White people largely oppose the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools. White people also largely have no idea what CRT is. Because white conservative politicians and pundits have successfully turned this college-level academic study that examines how race affects our institutions of law and other systems into a racist propaganda campaign that morphs the concept of CRT into a catch-all term for all teachings that make white people uncomfortable and pull back the curtain on the America “shining city on the hill” facade, laws have been made in several states to ban CRT from the classroom.

So basically, in banning CRT for reasons that revolve squarely around white people’s feelings, white people have proven why CRT is a legitimate and necessary study—and that’s not even the predictable part.

A group of conservative parents in Tennessee have filed the state’s first complaint under its anti-CRT law, which it passed in May. Predictably, the books targeted by the complaint are not books on CRT, they are books based around regular-degular Black history—the civil rights movement era stories of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges. According to Insider, the Williamson County branch of conservative parents group “Moms for Liberty” filed an 11-page complaint claiming that the book Martin Luther King Jr and the March on Washington was included in a number of books the group declared to be “Anti-American” and “Anti-White,” as well as guilty of promoting a “slanted obsession with historical mistakes.”

A few things:

First, let’s just take a look at the sheer degree of caucasity on full display here. Whenever white people want to lecture Black people on how we should behave or promote some warped understanding of racial unity or non-divisiveness, they start invoking MLK’s name. They start quoting his “I have a dream” speech out of context and they start whitesplaining to us what the man would and wouldn’t be proud of if he could see the state of the Black community today. But when it comes to King’s actual story—which, like virtually all Black history stories, can’t be told without highlighting white supremacy in America—white conservatives either need it to be whitewashed and sanitized for caucasian consumption, or they need the story to not be told at all. (Here’s the part where I point out the fact that Texas also used anti-CRT propaganda to drop requirements to include MLK’s teachings, among other things, from its school curricula.)

Next, there’s the fact that white people in Williamson County are referring to very basic teachings of history as “slanted obsession with historical mistakes.” According to Insider, the group of mayo-tears weaponizers specifically took issues with images of segregated water fountains and Black children being attacked by firefighters with water hoses. There’s nothing “slanted” about those images. Segregated facilities existed and Black people getting sprayed with hoses for protesting for our right to equality actually happened. Those weren’t “historical mistakes,” they were just parts of American history. British rule over American colonies could also be construed as “historical mistakes,” but we all know that won’t stop the whites from teaching the American Revolution.

The group of parents advocating for white comfort at the expense of Black education also targeted two books about Bridges and the book Separate is Never Equal, which revolves around segregation before the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.  According to the complaint filed by this group of white supremacists pretending to be concerned parents, the teaching of these books “implies to second-grade children that people of color continue to be oppressed by an oppressive angry, vicious, scary, mean, loud, violent, rude, and hateful white population.”

Outside of just garden-variety white tears, it’s unclear how the teaching of actual history implies that “people of color continue to be oppressed” by white people. Ironically, what actually proves that we continue to be oppressed is this very complaint filed by this group of “angry, vicious, scary, mean, loud, violent, rude, and hateful” white people who are trying to throw their caucasian weight around in order to censor Black history.

Fortunately, the Tennessee Department of Education said it won’t investigate these allegations. Unfortunately, the department didn’t decline the investigation because the complaint was racist and ridiculous, they declined because the lessons happened during the 2020-21 school year, and it only has the authority to investigate lessons from the current school year, according to the Tennessean.

So basically, “Moms for Liberty” can still target basic Black history books for nonsensical complaints as long as they’re taught in the current school year and the Department of Education will treat said complaints like they’re worthy of even being entertained.

How predictable.

SEE ALSO:

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The post Tennessee Group Files Anti-Critical Race Theory Complaint Targeting Books On Martin Luther King Jr. And Ruby Bridges appeared first on NewsOne.

Source: Robert Gauthier / Getty

One thing I can’t stand about manipulative and delusional conservatives is the way they pretend they’re not doing exactly what they accuse the opposing side of doing.

The Republican anti-Critical Race Theory campaign is indoctrination. It’s historical revisionism. It’s ideological nonsense that prioritizes one race over others.

It’s divisive.

Of course, when white conservatives talk about “divisiveness,” they’re really only referring to things that make white people uncomfortable and contradict the notion of American exceptionalism. They don’t seem to care about the Black people and people of color their war against CRT alienates. That’s not the part of the divide that concerns them.

Remember early last year, on MLK Day, when the Trump administration released the 1776 Commission report—which read like a white supremacist guide to fictionalizing history in the name of Caucasian fragility—as a direct response to Nikole Hannah-Jones Pulitzer Prize-winning work The 1619 Project? Well, a group of conservative activists and politicians is taking that ode to Anglo-Saxon butthurt and turning it into a campaign to further whitewash historical teachings that have already been centered around whiteness for generations.

According to Business Insider, more than 300 state and local politicians have signed the 1776 Action pledge, which calls for a restoration of “honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country.”

You really can’t rally for a history curriculum that exists with the expressed agenda of cultivating “in our children a profound love for our country” and call it “honest.” That would be like me saying, “I’m going to tell the honest and absolute truth about myself so long as that ‘truth’ makes everyone love me.”

1776 Action claims it is fighting “anti-American indoctrination,” but what it’s really doing is patronizing white people and coddling the abject insecurity of these so-called patriots.

Adam Waldeck, the group’s president, told Insider that 1776 Action will back conservative candidates in 2022 elections and that doing so is “about moving the needle public-opinion-wise and trying to get the right policies done.”

“Moving the needle public-opinion-wise” sounds like an indirect way of describing “indoctrination,” but conservatives simply don’t possess the sense of self-awareness to make that connection.

People who have signed the pledge have vowed to “prohibit any curriculum that pits students against one another on the basis of race or sex,” and “prevent schools from politicizing education by prohibiting any curriculum that requires students to protest and lobby during or after school.”

Imagine prohibiting any curriculum that doesn’t align with your views—as a way to “prevent schools from politicizing education.” And if teaching in detail things like Jim Crow, Reconstruction or that most of the Founding Fathers were slavers and bigots “pits students against one another on the basis of race,” then so does teaching a curriculum that excludes those truths. Black parents and students have, for eons, felt pitted against the dominance of whiteness through the “shining city on a hill” approach to teaching about what America is.

But white people have been comfortable and that’s all that has ever mattered.

“It promotes dishonest education that discourages accountability and atonement for racist acts in US history,” parents Luana Nelson-Brown, Shalome Musignac-Jordán, and Lya Williams, representatives of the group Johnston Parents for Equity and Anti-Racism, wrote to Insider in a statement. “It promotes that children have unequal value. It pits students against one another on the basis of race and sex.”

The group also said the pledge has the “exact opposite effect” of its words and has “politicized our educational system.”

To further illustrate how disingenuous the pledge is, look no further than the following excerpt:

“Our Founding Fathers – including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – as well as leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. were among the greatest Americans to ever live, and they deserve to be honored as heroes.”

Let’s not pretend Douglas and MLK weren’t tossed in there as a “see, I have Black friends so I can’t possibly be racist” statement. Douglas’ famous Fourth of July speech alone would be considered by Republicans to be CRT today, and conservatives purporting to love them some MLK were silent when Texas passed anti-Critical Race Theory legislation that dropped requirements for educators to teach the works of MLK, who, by the way, said plenty of disparaging things about white people and America during his life.

“Our children and grandchildren should be taught to take pride in their country, to respect our founding principles of liberty and equality, and to have a sense of American history that is both truthful and inspiring,” the pledge also states. And yet teaching history that is “truthful” would mean pointing out that America’s so-called “founding principles of liberty and equality” were established nearly a century before slavery ended and nearly two centuries before the Civil Rights Act was passed.

These people don’t want honesty, they want to preserve the big American lie at all cost.

SEE ALSO:

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The post 1776 Action Pledge Signed By Hundreds Of Conservative Politicians Seeks To Counter CRT With Its Own Indoctrination appeared first on NewsOne.

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

Questions regarding justice for HBCU Bomb threat victims are still lingering as we head toward the end of the calendar year. 

Earlier this month, it was announced that the FBI has found the individual who they believe to be responsible for the majority of the HBCU Bomb threats in January and February of this past year.

The FBI said that one minor will be charged with making racist threats earlier this year against nearly five dozen HBCUs across the country. However, since this individual is a minor, they won’t be charged federally because of limitations for juveniles. According to CNN, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the individual will be charged under “various other state offenses.” 

Many will question the severity of the penalties assessed. And while the age of the individual adds a level of complexity to these charges, many in the HBCU community will be looking for these law enforcement entities to make a loud statement about the severity of their charges. 

“The type of threats that we’ve seen here, that have victimized you and your institutions, undermine the most basic expectations of safety and security that every American,” said Deputy Director Paul Abbate on an HBCU student journalists conference call in mid-November, according to CNN.

“Threatening a religious or academic institution is among the most serious and despicable of criminal offenses, especially when your communities have been victimized, historically targeted by hate speech and violence,” Abbate continued. “The fear and disruption these threats cause within your communities is completely unacceptable and our work in investigating these threats is of the very highest priority.”

After the Biden administration launched an FBI investigation into these threats in February, the administration also offered grants to help combat the detrimental impacts that these threats have had on students and the school’s community. Counseling sessions, extra security, and health resources would be made available for these historic institutions through this funding. 

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told NewsOne in September in an exclusive interview that the Department of Education had been in communication with the FBI and with HBCU presidents and chancellors to provide updates on the ongoing investigation. Cardona also pointed to federal funding as one of the solutions for HBCUs to help improve their security measures

In a September statement from the FBI, the organization said it will not tolerate anyone trying to instill fear in any community. 

“Hate-fueled and racist threats of violence cause the victims real distress. These threats disrupt the learning environment and the education of college students, as well as our fellow citizens.”

“The FBI will not tolerate anyone trying to instill fear in any community, especially one that has experienced violence and threats of violence historically. The FBI will continue to vigorously pursue anyone responsible for these ongoing threats with help from our law enforcement partners at the federal, state, and local levels.” 

SEE ALSO:

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The post HBCU Bomb Threats: Juvenile Facing State Penalties FBI Says appeared first on NewsOne.