During the Black Men in Education Convening this November, more than a thousand Black male educators will gather in Philadelphia to discuss how to shape the next 100 years of education and confront some of the toughest questions facing Black educators today.
We know that Black men account for only 1.3 percent of U.S. public school teachers. Black teachers reported the highest morale of any racial group in Education Week’s 2024 survey: +5, while that measurement for teachers overall stood at –13. Teachers of color were also more likely to plan full classroom careers in Educators for Excellence polling. Yet in 2021–22, 9 percent of Black teachers left teaching, versus 7 percent of white teachers.
We love this work, but too many of us still leave before we are ready.
As we look ahead to American Education Week, which honors public school educators and the importance of public education, here are five suggestions for current and aspiring Black men in education from someone who has spent more than three decades fighting for our voices to be heard.
1. Move as a team and study together.
Teachers improve faster where collaboration on instruction is stronger. Find at least one colleague. Meet every two weeks with student work in hand. Name a goal for your students and one for yourself; then hold each other to both. The promises we make to the communities we serve include the ones we make to ourselves.
Black educators have long worked this way. In 1854, young Black men in Philadelphia, Octavius Catto among them, built the Banneker Institute—a literary society for original lectures and essays. The Fellowship began in that spirit, with seventeen of us at a West Philadelphia restaurant. Some of us were thinking about leaving. Most of us stayed.
Those of us who lead classrooms and schools are Black intellectuals, and our work is praxis, what our revolutionaries called theory and practice. Read something together, try it with children, and check whether it changed what they learned.
2. Treat your health as a practice, in community.
Black men in the U.S. had a life expectancy of 71.3 years in 2024, nearly eight years below the national figure. Our Center is working with Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health on those disparities among Black men who teach.
For most of my career, I would have declined or ignored the opportunity to discuss my health in a group (or at all). I recently joined a Pahara Institute vitality group, and for the first time saw health as something I practice with others. Get the annual physical, know your blood pressure and blood sugar, protect your sleep, and move most days with a brother.
Audre Lorde, living with cancer, wrote that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Self-care that keeps us able to serve is just.
3. Let your grief and your wounds be met.
In 1992, I was shot. City victim services called, and I ignored them. I don’t need that, I told myself. Maybe I didn’t. I had my faith, family, and friends. I had a beloved and loving community.
My Mama died in 2020. Six years later, I am still learning a grief I never felt prior to her passing. My faith teaches me that the end is not the end, and I believe it. Food still has not tasted the same. I miss her. I can see now that losing her may be keeping me from serving at the level I expect, so I am looking for a grief counselor. For decades, I offered grieving students an empathy I would not offer myself. If you have been grieving alone, take “the call” this time.
Some of our wounds come from schools and districts. It is often assumed we come to school for healing. More likely, we arrived whole, and thirteen years of schooling battered us. Then comes a trifecta: that trauma, racism in the wider world, and racism on the job, from hiring to being passed over. We are asked to be the heavy or enforce policies that are ineffective at best and harmful at worst, and even choosing whether to resist weighs on us. Take stock and address it without wounding others. Sometimes, hurt people hurt people, and our students should not bear that.
4. Know your worth, in name and in dollars.
I started teaching at $26,000 a year and opted out of the district’s 401(k) because I figured I could not afford it. No one had that conversation with me. It cost me. We should keep pushing, with allies like the Teacher Salary Project, for higher pay for all teachers, especially in hard-to-staff schools. Learn about retirement, debt, and savings, and teach each other.
Learn what the profession calls the skills you already have. Building culture and community in a classroom is expertise. Black male teachers spend more time mentoring and counseling students than teachers of any other group, and colleagues send us their students. People call it an invisible tax. It ain’t invisible. We will always help, and coaching others should also be paid work while we remain teachers of record. We can do some of this while still leading classrooms. After all, not all of us need to rush into administration.
5. Build the skill, the mindset, and the will, with humility.
Our children need our love, and they also need us to teach superbly and move with humility. I have seen us act haughtily, certain, and wrong. Being a Black man does not make any of us an expert on every Black child, across generations, neighborhoods, and bodies. Humility and the wisdom to know what we do not know usually win out. Sharpen one skill this year, ask a colleague to watch, let students know what you’re working on, and ask them in a few weeks if they’re noticing any difference. Keep this up, and check whether students are learning more.
In 1896, Mary Church Terrell gave the National Association of Colored Women its motto: lifting as we climb. Our first invitation to young people is the classroom itself. When students spend their days in classrooms full of curiosity and love, intellectually challenged, culturally affirmed, and dedicated to their success, they can picture coming back to lead one. Model that first. Then ask them to join us.
Wherever you teach, start Monday. Find your colleague. Make the changes you have been avoiding. Our children are counting on the promises we keep.
Mama often reminded us of a Farsi saying: shoma harakat, khoda barakat. You move, and God blesses the movement. Pray while you row. Most days, you have to pick up the oars.
Sharif El-Mekki is the founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development and founded The Fellowship: Black Male Educators for Social Justice. A former Philadelphia teacher and principal, he has spent more than three decades in education.
