White teachers, please stop judging your black students
By: Shamontiel L. Vaughn
Tags: African American, Racism, Education, Race, Discrimination

Get to know each student instead of lumping them into one group.

One of my favorite instructors in elementary school was a computer teacher named Mr. Clerk*. He was an older, white man who always reminded me of the game board character in “Operation.” Extremely sensitive, passionate and hell bent on teaching us how to type (asdf jkl;), he was adamant about us learning how to navigate computers when the Internet was still a foreign concept. (This was the very early ‘90s.) He was also one of very few instructors who I talked with for pleasure even when the bell rang.

When students would grow bored or impatient with lessons, he talked to us all one-on-one as human beings and wanted to know where our interests lie. We didn’t get passive aggressive questions about our upbringing or how disconnected we were in comparison to his own social circle. He just wanted to know what made us tick. Because he took an interest in my personal likes and urged me to push on with a mystery short story series I’d played around with (I still own copies of my “Mr. Slick” newsletter series), that lit a fire under me to pursue a career in writing and later self-publishing. When I wrote a short book in my Girl Scout days and dedicated it to him, I was startled when his eyes filled up with tears and he stared down at that simple read like it was a Nobel Peace Prize.

Photo credit: NESA by Makers/Unsplash

Remember they are children, first and foremost.

Mr. Clerk was a bit of a hot head and on several occasions would raise his voice when we were being restless children. We knew we had successfully pissed him off if his face turned beet red. The whole room would grow quiet, and he’d walk out the room. I caught on that he was outside counting to ten (sometimes 50 or 100). Then he would come into the room, apologize for his frustration and try explaining what he wanted us to do in a different way. As a yeller myself (who got it from my mother), I took that tip from him. Too often, teachers (especially white teachers) can completely overlook the fact that black children are indeed children. If you would not call the police, call the principal and/or kick a white student out of your classrooms for being little assholes (sorry, but sometimes we were), don’t do it to your black students. I cannot recall Mr. Clerk ever doing so. In turn, every single person in our class liked him. We often apologized if we were particularly annoying. If memory serves me correctly, somehow we even remembered his birthday and made him cards.

Read the room and guide the entire classroom.

In a prior public speaking meeting, I listened quietly while the same teacher (not Mr. Clark, the one who inspired this post) listed off a bunch of male members who he would want to be his mentors or to help assist him in his classrooms when he was having trouble. After he was done, a different member (also white and male) gave a diverse list of men and women of various races who have helped him throughout the years in his professional and personal growth. I smiled, appreciating the latter member for trying to seek expertise from a wide variety of people.

Afterward, I made a note on the teacher’s feedback form that all of his mentors were only men. His response was that he wanted male mentors because “I’m a guy.” He felt that men would be the best choice to assist him in classroom leadership, including one African-American club member. I assumed that he must teach at a boys-only school. That made sense to me.

Months later, I found out that he taught both girls and boys. Whether consciously or subconsciously, for a male instructor to decide that the only advice he wanted was from other males even if he’s teaching female students, that speaks volumes about how those female students are overlooked. Black women and girls have piles of examples of being underestimated and disrespected in work environments, social circles, religious and political organizations, etc. The last place we need to be undervalued is in our early years. If you cannot find any useful advice from women just because you’re “a guy,” there’s a pretty high chance that the girls in the classroom can feel that vibe from you, too.