Black Men Teaching in Urban Schools

This volume follows eleven Black male teachers from an urban, predominantly Black school district to reveal a complex set of identity politics and power dynamics that complicate these teachers’ relationships with students and fellow educators. It provides new and important insights into what it means to be a Black male teacher and suggests strategies for school districts, teacher preparation programs, researchers and other stakeholders to rethink why and how we recruit and train Black male teachers for urban K-12 classrooms

Black Men Teaching in Urban Schools

This volume follows eleven Black male teachers from an urban, predominantly Black school district to reveal a complex set of identity politics and power dynamics that complicate these teachers’ relationships with students and fellow educators. It provides new and important insights into what it means to be a Black male teacher and suggests strategies for school districts, teacher preparation programs, researchers and other stakeholders to rethink why and how we recruit and train Black male teachers for urban K-12 classrooms

Black men teaching: The identities and pedagogies of black male teachers

While a chorus of teacher education programs, urban school districts, and educational scholars has called for more black male teachers to serve as role models and father figures for black students, the amount of empirical research on what it means for black male teachers to meet these expectations remains relatively small. The extant body of work, while certainly addressing important concerns, has left heteropatriarchal and racially essentialist assumptions of the roles of black male teachers largely unchallenged. Grounded in life history narrative inquiry and informed by black masculinity studies and critical educational theory, this study reveals how dominant cultural and institutional constructions of black manhood were used by a variety of stakeholders to promote, prescribe, and police the participation of eleven black male teachers in secondary, predominantly minority urban schools, thus forcing these teachers into complex negotiations of their identities and pedagogies. Critical insights from this study fall into three sets of findings: (i) the master narrative on the significance of black male teachers anticipated and offered insights into some of the ways in which participants\u27 identities and pedagogics were constructed as black men in the teaching profession; (ii) the master narrative on black male teachers presumed a black identity politics that policed and complicated study participants\u27 engagements in the teaching profession; and (iii) the master narrative on black male teachers reproduced patriarchal gender ideologies that fueled challenging negotiations of power with students and women colleagues. In all, these findings illuminate competing discourses on black masculinity that, in addition to circumscribing the lives of study participants, may affect other black men in the urban teaching profession. By assuming a critical stance on race and gender, this study complicates cursory valorizations of black male teachers as role models by exploring black masculinity as a contested terrain of privilege and marginality for black male educators. In so doing, this study also surfaces invaluable perspectives for teacher education programs, school districts, and policymakers who want to devise tangible strategies for attracting, supporting, and retaining more black men in urban classrooms

Black men teaching: The identities and pedagogies of black male teachers

While a chorus of teacher education programs, urban school districts, and educational scholars has called for more black male teachers to serve as role models and father figures for black students, the amount of empirical research on what it means for black male teachers to meet these expectations remains relatively small. The extant body of work, while certainly addressing important concerns, has left heteropatriarchal and racially essentialist assumptions of the roles of black male teachers largely unchallenged. Grounded in life history narrative inquiry and informed by black masculinity studies and critical educational theory, this study reveals how dominant cultural and institutional constructions of black manhood were used by a variety of stakeholders to promote, prescribe, and police the participation of eleven black male teachers in secondary, predominantly minority urban schools, thus forcing these teachers into complex negotiations of their identities and pedagogies. Critical insights from this study fall into three sets of findings: (i) the master narrative on the significance of black male teachers anticipated and offered insights into some of the ways in which participants\u27 identities and pedagogics were constructed as black men in the teaching profession; (ii) the master narrative on black male teachers presumed a black identity politics that policed and complicated study participants\u27 engagements in the teaching profession; and (iii) the master narrative on black male teachers reproduced patriarchal gender ideologies that fueled challenging negotiations of power with students and women colleagues. In all, these findings illuminate competing discourses on black masculinity that, in addition to circumscribing the lives of study participants, may affect other black men in the urban teaching profession. By assuming a critical stance on race and gender, this study complicates cursory valorizations of black male teachers as role models by exploring black masculinity as a contested terrain of privilege and marginality for black male educators. In so doing, this study also surfaces invaluable perspectives for teacher education programs, school districts, and policymakers who want to devise tangible strategies for attracting, supporting, and retaining more black men in urban classrooms

Agency and abjection in the closet: The voices (and silences) of Black queer male teachers.

While black queer educators could conceivably play a critical role in disrupting black queer marginality in educational settings, relatively little is known about their experiences. Drawing upon findings from a broader qualitative study on black male teachers in an urban school district in the United States, this article explores how five black queer male educators negotiated pressures to keep their queerness ‘in the closet.’ Although remaining in the closet left these men vulnerable to homophobic surveillance, it also enabled them to demonstrate racially mediated forms of agency within school settings. By complicating constructions of the closet as an abject social positionality for queer educators, this article considers the possible affordances of the closet for black queer teachers while also underscoring the need for institutionally sanctioned interventions against homophobia in urban educational settings

Agency and abjection in the closet: The voices (and silences) of Black queer male teachers.

While black queer educators could conceivably play a critical role in disrupting black queer marginality in educational settings, relatively little is known about their experiences. Drawing upon findings from a broader qualitative study on black male teachers in an urban school district in the United States, this article explores how five black queer male educators negotiated pressures to keep their queerness ‘in the closet.’ Although remaining in the closet left these men vulnerable to homophobic surveillance, it also enabled them to demonstrate racially mediated forms of agency within school settings. By complicating constructions of the closet as an abject social positionality for queer educators, this article considers the possible affordances of the closet for black queer teachers while also underscoring the need for institutionally sanctioned interventions against homophobia in urban educational settings

“You ain’t my daddy!”: Black male teachers and the politics of surrogate fatherhood.

Recent scholarship on male teachers across several national contexts has investigated the dilemmas of hegemonic masculinity for male educators while only recently beginning to examine race as a mediator of masculinity politics in teaching. Conversely, an emergent body of work on Black male teachers has centred analyses of race and culture, but has yet to explicitly question Black male teachers' relationships to hegemonic masculinity. Drawing upon critical analytic perspectives from Black masculinity studies, this article explores how 11 Black male teachers in an urban, predominantly Black school district in the USA negotiated popular discourses that position Black male teachers as father figures for Black students. By delving below the surface of these discourses, this article identifies a complicated set of Black masculinity politics that may shape the experiences of Black male teachers, and that warrants further consideration by educational researchers, teacher education programmes and urban school districts committed to preparing and supporting Black men in the teaching profession