This edited volume offers sound suggestions for advancing diversity in the teaching profession. It provides teacher education programs with needed training materials to accommodate Black male students, and school district administrators and leaders with information to help recruit and retain Black male teachers.

This edited volume offers sound suggestions for advancing diversity in the teaching profession. It provides teacher education programs with needed training materials to accommodate Black male students, and school district administrators and leaders with information to help recruit and retain Black male teachers.

In his new book, the author of the bestseller Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools examines the chronic under-performance of African American males in U.S. schools. Citing a plethora of disturbing academic outcomes for Black males, this book focuses on the historical, structural, educational, psychological, emotional, and cultural factors that influence the teaching and learning process for this student population. Howard discusses the potential, and promise of Black males by highlighting their voices to generate new insights, create new knowledge, and identify useful practices that can significantly improve the schooling experiences and life chances of Black males. Howard calls for a paradigm shift in how we think about, teach, and study Black males. The book: examines current structures, ideologies, and practices that both help and hinder the educational and social prospects of Black males; translates frequently cited theorectical principles into research-based classroom practice; documents teacher-student interactions, student viewpoints, and discusses the troubling role that sports plays in th lives of many Black males; highlights voices and perspectives from Black male students about ways to improve their schooling experiences and outcomes; and identifies community-based programs that are helping Black males succeed.

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.

According to Robert L. Smith, "the achievement gap separating black boys from just about everyone else springs from a powerful, anti-education culture rising in the black community. Parents who undervalue education, and a mass media that peppers youth with the quick, shallow rewards of hip-hop lifestyle, are steering alarming numbers of boys down a dead-end path." Erik Eckholm explained that "terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs, and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black male youth." They also appear to be a large part of the reason why "nationwide, the percentage of black male teachers is 2.4 percent," according to the National Education Association in 2008. Rather than becoming teachers, Bernard Carver explained that "a growing and alarming number of African American males are either become victims of negative circumstances (e.g., dropping out of school at an early age, being sent to penal institutions, or succumbing to urban violence) or becoming participants in activities that are counterproductive to their development (e.g., involving drugs and gangs)."Black males are generally alienated as students by and from the American public education, and, as a result, are also alienated as potential educators. Janice Hale explained that "African American [male] children do not enter school disadvantaged, they leave disadvantaged. There's nothing wrong with the children but there is clearly something wrong with what happens to them in school." For one, the absence of Black male role models in the classroom is serious obstacle to the education of Black boys. "In order to be a Black man, you have to see a Black man," wrote Jawanza Kunjufu, who estimated that Black men make up less than 2 percent of all public school teachers. "Without Black men role models, our boys learn to see school as for girls and sissies."In addition, Tawannah Allen wrote that "African American male students have traditionally received the most negative treatment by public educators" and, consequently, chronically underachieve academically. Welsing confirmed that "it is little wonder that 98% of all of the Black male children I talk with, who have reached the junior high school level, hate school. Schools and their personnel, like all other aspects of the racist system, do their share to alienate Black males from maximal functioning."

It is high time for more diversity in education, diversity that includes thorough, articulate, Black males. Contrary to popular belief, the need for a strong emergence of Black male teachers is not only for the benefit of Black boys and Black girls. Children and parents of all races and both genders need to be introduced to the antithesis of the stereotypical Black man and build strong, healthy relationships that will be the means for greater racial and ethnic harmony.

This book reflects the diversity and possibility of critical research in education, with an emphasis on the examination of the intersections of social identities for men teachers of color, and the relationship between social identity and struggles for political and professional agency. The authors address race and race inequality in education and provide a strong theoretical foundation for filling the empirical gap on men teachers of color by engaging in questions such as: How do critical considerations of the intersection of race, gender, and profession inform the future of teacher education? What does it mean to be ‘men’ or ‘of color’ in the context of the teaching profession in the U.S. and abroad? What are the aims of ethnoracial diversity in the field of education? The research included in this edited volume explores topics including, but not limited to, men teachers of color and their perceived pathways to the profession; their perceptions of and partnerships with colleagues of other genders; their sexual and gendered identities and performances; and how they embrace, reject, or negotiate the expectations of performing as a role model in classrooms. Moreover, the chapters provide explicit implications for teachers, teacher educators, university, and PK-12 administrators, education activists, and/or education policymakers. In sum, this volume charts a new landscape in education research for all men teachers of color. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Race Ethnicity and Education.