Dennis Sangister, a veteran black male middle school teacher, re- counted with great frustration sitting in on department meet- ings and having his comments about how to address the social- emotional and academic chal- lenges facing students of color
discounted by white colleagues on the faculty. For Sangister — and many of the other 26 black male participants in a recent study of black male teachers’ school-based experiences — these recurring experi- ences led him to believe his colleagues saw him as intellectually inferior (Bristol, 2014).
Another teacher in this study, George Little, de- scribed having to serve in more disciplinary roles when compared to his colleagues. Administrators assigned him and the other black male teachers to administrative duties such as monitoring or “polic- ing” the school door during dismissal. Like the other black male teachers in the study, Little believed that administrators and his colleagues saw him as a be- havior manager first and as a teacher second.
Combine Little’s observation with research indi- cating that black men have one of the highest rates of turnover in the teaching profession (Ingersoll & May, 2011; Sealey-Ruiz & Lewis, 2011), and we are left with the question of how schools and districts can better support black male teachers.
Read the entire article(PDF) on the Phi Delta Kappan website.
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