Time is right for college to teach teachers
LeMoyne-Owen College once taught the teachers who taught the people who society was taught to devalue.
“At one point, we probably prepared 80 percent of the Memphis city school teachers,” Andrea Lewis Miller, president of the historically black college, recently told The Commercial Appeal’s editorial board.
That happened because, in 1871, when the college opened as LeMoyne Normal and Commercial School, someone had to teach the newly freed slaves how to teach each other.
That situation persisted into the next century, as African-Americans were barred from white institutions and were limited, if not outright barred, from entering most professions.
Then, in the 1960s, victories by the civil rights movement led to desegregated colleges and a desegregated workforce. Those victories paved the way to a nation where black students had more opportunities to become scientists instead of just teaching science.
But, now, demographics, as well as social and economic isolation, are thrusting LeMoyne-Owen back into that original role.
By 2022, African-American and Latino students are expected to make up nearly 55 percent of all public school students. And, in Memphis, where a disproportionate number of black and minority youths are grappling with poverty and family instability, more African-American teachers might be in a better position to help those students value their worth in society.
Which is why the college is picking a good time to reach back to its roots as an educator of black teachers.
“We want to strengthen the liberal arts programs that we have, but we want to add more programs,” Miller said. “One is preparing teachers for urban education. Two is information technology, with an emphasis on cybersecurity.
“Third is we feel we should lead in the area of social justice, connecting with the civil rights museum.”
I especially like the focus on educating teachers.
I like it because black teachers, and especially black male teachers, are in short supply. Black males, in fact, make up only 2 percent of classroom teachers.
Their scarcity means that many black youths not only miss out on the chance to see black men in roles of intellectuality, or in roles that don’t involve playing with a ball or a microphone, but they miss out on being around men who might be in a better place to relate to their struggles and
how to find real-world ways to overcome them.
Incidentally, a new study has found that students of all races had more positive perceptions of minority teachers over white teachers — a finding that bolsters the argument for more recruitment of minority teachers.
Which means that, like back in the day, some place has got to train them.
LeMoyne-Owen would be ideal for rebuilding that niche. And it’s possible that the struggles many of LeMoyneOwen’s students bring with them — the struggle with having to juggle multiple jobs, children and sometimes even homelessness — might turn out to be a strength for them in teaching in urban schools.
“When you think about students who are low-income, or students who may not be college-ready, it’s a struggle to stay the course,” Miller said. “So we deal with those life things, we become those surrogate parents and sisters and brothers, and whatever we need to be to get those students through.”
Yet these ideas also come at a time fraught with contradictions.
Miller, for example, spoke optimistically of her recent White House visit with President Donald Trump. But even though Trump signed an executive order that moved the Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from the Department of Education into the executive office of the White House, no funding was attached to it.
On top of that, other moves that his administration is making, such as proposing to cut the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget by $6 billion, could add further distress to the impoverished neighborhoods where many of LeMoyne-Owen’s students come from.
In fact Memphis Housing Authority officials say that if that proposal becomes reality, the city could lose $6 million in block grants — much of which is used to support public housing maintenance and many of the nonprofits that poor Memphians rely on.
So once again, LeMoyne-Owen has been thrust into the role of teaching the students who are, for the most part, being marginalized by the rest of society. But building a new niche in urban education presents probably as many opportunities as it does challenges.
Hopefully, under Miller’s leadership, the school will master both.