One of the most important foundations for having a good school year is setting the tone of the culture and the community. By that, I mean creating a classroom culture where students understand processes, procedures, and policies. But some teachers are too focused on “the rules” or students following the rules. Certainly, learning happens when there is order. But the opposite is true as well, if not more so: order is established when students learn. When teachers enter the classroom on the first day of school, they introduce themselves and have the students share their names, what they did duri ..read more

At the end of a recent school day, my principal called for a fire drill. I assumed it was just a routine exercise. However, for one of my students, it was anything but routine. As I followed our fire drill protocol, she stood right beside me, diligently going through each step and procedure as if she were a teacher herself. I could have asked her to return to the rest of the class, but I chose to let her take charge. She held our classroom binder containing the procedures and attendance list and volunteered to hold the classroom sign to signal our location to administrators. As I took the head ..read more

Teaching is a calling. Teaching history is a sacred trust; that is a lifelong commitment that requires continuous learning, responsibility, accountability to community, self-discipline, and fearlessness. The current climate requires teachers of history to meet the requirements of the sacred trust – especially teachers of Black history. Black history is under attack from white policymakers and white parents alike, fearful of the reorganization of political, economic, and social priorities, in a country where whiteness is the standard, as a result of learning truth and wrestling with it. Thus, l ..read more

Advanced Placement African American Studies Goal #2: Preparing Students for College Level Rigor   Out of my three goals for teaching Advanced Placement African American Studies, the hardest to write about is the pursuit of academic rigor.  The difficulty stems from the awareness of many institutional factors that impact my ability to fully support my students in meeting the level of rigor I want to demand from my AP classroom. I am fully aware that institutional racism in education has denied Black and brown children of classrooms they deserve. Rigor is too often defined from a ..read more

Black resistance is central to the Black experience in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. According to Herbert Aptheker, Black resistance took up eight different forms, including purchasing one’s freedom, flight to maroon communities, enlisting in the armed forces of colonial powers and the United States, and revolt or rebellion. The history of Black resistance can be found throughout American History. Because that history triggers white guilt, there is an active campaign to prevent this history from being taught in the classroom. However, the dawn of Hispanic Heritage Mont ..read more

We need Black teachers. We also need Black administrators. The unfortunate truth is that the needs are competing not because of Black educators, but because of the white institutional spaces that control hiring. Black teachers represent only 6% of all teachers nationwide; Black male teachers, less than 2% of all teachers nationwide. However, the percentage of Black administrators nationwide is 10%. In my home state of New Jersey, Black teachers make up 6% of all teachers, yet 15% of all administrators (and 12% of all supervisors). Considering that administrators must have prior teaching experi ..read more

AP AAS Goal #1: my students will “Learn Their Truth.”  Learning their truth is just as important as teaching their truth.   I am regularly inspired by my inaugural cohort of the amazing sixteen Advanced Placement African American Studies (AAS) students I teach.  None of the students have to take the course, and yet they opted in for a more challenging course.  They are aware of the political moment in which they are taking the course, and curious to know what the big freaking deal is over their history.  One hundred percent of my students are students of color. I ..read more

The dawn of a new school year is filled with excitement, expectation and hope for educators, students and families. However, where is the excitement for Black history in America’s schools? It seems that the expectation of Black history instruction is an absence unless whitewashed and blackfaced. It equates to an atmosphere of hopelessness across the country and Black children will suffer for it. Much of the attention surrounding the war against Black history centers on the rejection of the College Board’s advanced placement African-American studies (APAAS). The administration of Ron DeSantis i ..read more

One thing that teachers always desire better from is their school and/or district’s professional development. There’s a lot of recommendations that teachers have concerning how to improve teacher praxis. Administrators do as well. But much of the professional development that happens throughout the year feels more like procedural instructions and compliance measures for teachers. By that, I mean presentations on logistical info, payroll, submitting lesson plans, prep period usage, and etc. The end of the school year offers administrators an opportunity to assess every aspect of the previous ye ..read more

Empathy, Poetry, and Relationships: Why Black Teachers Matter Black teachers REALLY matter!!! Black teachers make schools better.  Black teachers make the school’s administration better. Black teachers make other teachers better. And most of all Black teachers offer unique and necessary contributions to Black and brown students by also teaching them about empathy and racism. “It is called education because it is learned. You do not have to have had an experience in order to sympathize or empathize with the subject. That is why books are written: so that we do not have to do the ..read more