Learning Through Listening: African American Male Teachers and Their Experiences in K–12 Public Schools

• In Event: 42.056 - Teacher Identities: How Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation Inform Pedagogy and the Sense of Belongingness

Abstract

African American males are represented at an extremely low rate in the teaching profession across the United States. There is a need to inform all about the necessity to recruit, retain, and prepare African American males for the teaching profession. The life experiences of current African American males in the teaching field can help all gain a sense of what led them into teaching and helped them remain in the field. Students sometimes experience limited exposure to teachers of color in the school, because the profession is majority white and female dominated. This research focuses on the lived experiences of African American male teachers, as it relates to their teaching trajectory, in Chicago public schools.

Author

• Yolanda Davis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign