In the fall of 2014, students of color became the majority of all U.S. public school students (Associated Press, 2014). At the same time, however, recent data show less than 15 percent of the nation's teachers are Black or Latino (Duncan, 2011). Considering that students of color, especially young men, exhibit great in-school and out-of-school challenges (Bristol, 2015), it is even more troubling that 2 percent of all U.S. teachers are Latino men (Maxwell, 2012), less than 2 percent are Black men (Duncan, 2011), and only 0.5 percent are Asian men (Toldson, 2013). Perhaps if schools can get better at attracting and retaining male teachers of color, they might also be places where historically marginalized and traditionally at-risk groups could begin to thrive, too.
Retention Deficit
Previous research suggests that the lack of Latino and Black male teachers is a result of students' from these groups underachieving at the secondary level, which makes them less likely to attain degrees in higher education (Lewis, 2013). And, it may be that Asian male teachers choose not to enter the education profession because of its perceived low status in the United States (Gordon, 2000). Not only are there few men of color teaching in the United States, but these men are also less likely to stay in one school. In their analysis of longitudinal data in the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), Ingersoll and May (2011) found that male teachers of color were more likely to move to other schools than White teachers. Put simply, urban school districts and schools might have as much difficulty retaining male teachers of color as they do recruiting them.
The fact that students of color now constitute a majority of the U.S. student population, in addition to the continued calls to diversify the teaching force and the realization that male teachers of color have high rates of turnover, led me to design The Boston Teacher Residency Male Teachers of Color Network, a monthly professional development initiative to help these teachers. The group's purpose was to address the unique social-emotional needs of male teachers of color and equip them with the skills to improve learning for culturally diverse students.
Personal and Practical PD for Men of Color
Monthly meetings were structured in a purposeful way. The first half of the meeting focused on creating conditions that would attend to the social-emotional challenges these teachers faced in their schools. In the second half of the meeting, a group member presented a dilemma in his practice and the group discussed this dilemma and offered feedback. We discussed these issues as a group and then identified and recorded potential steps to resolve them. Table 1 summarizes the topics and dilemmas we focused on in the first five months of the program.
Table 1. Topics and Dilemmas Covered During Monthly Meetings
Month | Social-Emotional Component | Dilemma of Practice |
|---|---|---|
| January | "Opportunities in Boston Public Schools Pathways into leadership" | "How do you create student buy-in? How do you get all students to do high cognitive demand thinking?" |
| February | The role of male teachers of color in educating boys of color | What are some practical strategies to engage boys of color? |
| March | Navigating the various roles I am asked to play in my school. | How do we make our curriculum culturally relevant to our students? |
| April | Increasing the number of male teachers of color in our district | What does it mean that Black male teachers receive a disproportionate number of unsatisfactory ratings on the district's new evaluation system? |
| May | "We organized an after-school workshop that included 25 male high school students of color. The workshop aimed to provide these students with information that would encourage them to become educators. Workshop sessions focused on four areas: Teaching and your community How to become a teacher Cash and benefits Educating beyond the classroom" |
Role Encapsulation
The network created a space for male teachers of color to give a collective voice to issues they experienced in isolation. This opportunity helped them to build not only a sense of community but also a repertoire of strategies for navigating their unique contexts. For example, the group was concerned about their roles in educating boys of color. Exploring this topic, though, brought to the fore the various roles administrators and colleagues asked them to play, as one of the few (if not only) male teachers of color on staff.
Sessions about role encapsulation were cathartic. Through conversation, these men were able to normalize their experiences. Although they might have been the only male teacher of color in their building asked to play these roles, other men in the district experienced similar challenges. They talked about having to serve as the "dean of discipline," based on the assumption that men of color were better equipped to police the school's "bad boys." They resented having to serve as the "face of the school" for public events. In their minds, school administrators wanted to validate the school's "commitment to diversity" by showcasing their teachers of color in public.
After identifying and sharing feelings about the stereotypical roles that schools expect male teachers of color to play, the group decided to do something about it. They developed a set of professional scripts that would help them balance their professional goals with the pressures from colleagues and administrators to assume an encapsulated role as the man of color on campus. For example, if a colleague interrupted their class to ask if a disruptive male student of color could sit in, the teacher could respond: "Maybe we can take this to the school's administrator." Or, if the school's principal asked them to serve on yet another committee, he could respond, "I would love to, but I can't at this moment."
These scripts helped the men find ways to fulfill their desires to support their male students of color while avoiding the negative effects these encapsulated roles had on the other goals they were trying to achieve in their classrooms. These scripts were some of the many positive, constructive approaches that emerged from the opportunity to gather this often isolated demographic of teachers.
Table 2 reflects the roles the teachers' were expected to play in their schools, how these expectations made them feel, and the scripts they developed to navigate these expectations.
Table 2. Experience of, Initial Responses to, and Scripts for Role Encapsulation
Differentiating PD for Male Teachers of Color-table
What roles does the school expect me to play? | How does this make me feel? | How could I respond? |
|---|---|---|
| Dean of discipline School troubleshooter; responsible for putting out fires Face of the school, without my consent Ambassador to students of color for White colleagues Go-to person for all things related to people of color Translator (both literally and figuratively) for school's culturally and linguistically diverse student population Spokesperson for English language learners Support for challenging male students | I feel obligated to fulfill these roles. I have a hard time saying no when asked to play these roles. I don't feel like I have a "right" to say no. I feel my coworkers manipulate eagerness to support students of color and know that I ‘will never say no. I struggle with not wanting to be seen as a "lazy person" but needing to say "no" sometimes. I've been empowered in a way that I did not want. | "These are my priorities. I would have loved to have done ___, but I can't at this moment." "Maybe we should take this to the principal." "Currently, I am working to get my students to achieve proficiency on the state's standardized exam. Might you be able to reach out to me later in the school year?" "Who are some of the other individuals that might be able to help us solve this problem?" |
From Network to Districtwide Focus
Through the Boston Teacher Residency Male Teachers of Color Network, male teachers of color learned strategies to improve learning conditions for students who have historically stood on the margins and tools to navigate their own working environments. The network's success led Boston Public Schools to expand the effort and launch the districtwide "Male Educators of Color Executive Coaching Seminar Series," a PD opportunity that aims to recruit and retain male teachers of color. In the end, this initiative may serve as a model for other school districts attempting to design professional development opportunities to support male teachers of color and help these teachers improve learning for culturally diverse students.