The Extinction of Black Teachers: My Memoirs

By Vanessa Wilson

Written based upon my personal experiences as an African American Woman in education for almost thirty years. A lot of my stories will be told from a humorous perspective, because if nothing else, I have learned that in this profession you must learn to laugh at yourself and it will drown out the laughter of everyone else around you. So, remember as you are reading, I am not politically correct; I’m just keeping it real.

I often wonder if the word ac

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640963658

Book preview

1

Blame

Black educators have been blamed for everything—from student failure to world hunger. We are blamed by every entity that exists in education: society, schools, parents, students, superiors, and the list is endless. Black educators experience the weight of this blame because we work predominantly in low-income and impoverished districts where education is not equally funded, nor does it seem to be a priority among lawmakers. Studies show that black educators have voiced the ways in which they have been discriminated against. They often find that others believe that they are not good enough to educate all children, just black children; and some people believe that they are not smart enough to educate black children.

We have been treated as if we are not knowledgeable enough to be subject-matter experts or have valuable ideas about pedagogy and curriculum. Most people believe that our only strength is discipline, and they still don’t allow us to do what we know works when it comes to discipline. We are expected to take the lowest performing students and transform them into geniuses. We are forced to teach in overcrowded classrooms and in inadequate and substandard facilities with insufficient equipment and supplies. We are often expected to use our creativity to motivate students to learn when so many of them are just trying to survive.

I often wonder if the word accountability only became popular in education just to point another finger at black educators. If we are not careful, it makes us feel threatened, as if there is something else that we can do besides teach. How many things has the educational system made us accountable for that are now critical issues created by their own failure to equally support and fund education in all areas? Two of the most frustrating things that teachers in primary education are held accountable for are student test scores and student behavior problems. When our students enter secondary education or in the workforce, this accountability is immediately placed back on them and most of them are unprepared. There is only so much that we can do. We teach students that require us to have so much more expertise. On any given day, we are expected to be psychiatrists, counsellors, physicians, parents, confidants, ministers, etc. A degree in education does not prepare us for what we are accountable for in a classroom.

The hidden stress of accountability has ruined a lot of great educators. There are a group of black educators in Atlanta, Georgia, who allowed the stress to overwhelm them and they lied and cheated about student test scores. I understand that they were wrong but making teachers accountable for how a student may score on one test can be overwhelming. Not only that, some districts have tied test scores to teachers’ performance and teachers’ pay. Teachers have been threatened with termination, based on how students score on these tests. The teachers in Atlanta were convicted and many were given stricter sentences than some murderers and rapists. This incident alone should have shone a light on how stressful testing accountability has become for teachers, but instead, many used it as another way to degrade and blame teachers for educational