New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
SCSU prof: Black boys need Black, male teachers who share positive messages
NEW HAVEN — As a former elementary school teacher in a predominantly Black Detroit school system, Nicole McGowan Madu became frustrated with the way discipline was handled for young boys of color.
Madu was part of a system, she said, in which the misbehavior of young Black boys disproportionately resulted in suspensions, expulsions and referrals to special education and social services.
“I thought we were continuing to do more harm by continuing to push them out of the classroom,” said Madu, who taught mainly kindergarten and first grade. “As a teacher I didn’t have any say on how to manage Black boys.”
What they really need, Madu said, is affection in the form of hugs, high-fives and positive, encouraging messages.
Those negative early experiences of being repeatedly “marked as a bad kid,” she hypothesized, sets the stage for ongoing problems in school because of lowered self-expectations and reinforced stereotypes.
She said the boys need to
“It’s about the relationship between Black boys and Black male teachers in early childhood education.” Nicole McGowan Madu, assistant professor at Southern Connecticut State University
be allowed to make mistakes because that’s how kids learn.
So Madu, now an assistant professor at Southern Connecticut State University, decided to look at the issue up close, and did the research and made it the subject of her doctoral dissertation.
Madu has a specialty in teaching literacy and as a professor trains teachers.
She also is working with leaders at SCSU find ways to attract more Black men to the teaching program.
Dean Stephen J. Hegedus of SCSU’s College of Education said he has not read Madu’s dissertation, but was excited about her recent hire in the Department of Curriculum and Learning.
“Dr. Madu’s work directly aligns with our college priorities and strategic initiatives in recruiting and retaining minority educators,” Hegedus said. “This includes teachers, school professionals and district leaders. Such work takes time, involves strong school partnerships and dedicated professors to develop pathways into teaching starting in
school.”
It has been said that Black student outcomes are made more positive by Black teachers as role models.
“I can tell you that there are studies that show the more Black male teachers a Black student has, the more likely that the student will be successful in school and the chance for graduation increases quite a bit,” said Lorenzo M. Boyd, vice-president for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at University of New Haven, who has not read Madu’s dissertation. “There is no downside at all to increasing the diversity of K-12 teachers … particularly the increase of Black males.”
Madu focused on those earliest experiences between ages 5-8.
“I wanted to focus on what could be done to make sure Black boys were viewed as brilliant capable learners, as opposed to being pushed out,” Madu said. “It’s about the relationship between Black boys and Black male teachers in early childhood education.”
While attending graduate school in New York City, Madu chose to study two Black male teachers in a city charter school and a boy in the school.
Both teachers worked to strengthen and reinforce students.
The two black male teachers whose interactions with students Madu observed came from different backgrounds — one was Senegalese and the other from Long Island.
She studied them for 16 weeks, conducted individual interviews with each as well as with a youngster, Malik, 8.
The teachers weren’t afraid of hugs, high-fives, telling them “I believe in you” or “I’m proud of you.”
In her research, “The Black male teachers were showing love and affection.” She said the acts of showing warmth and affection are the critical difference between success and failure.
In the beginning, Malik talked about having an attitude problem; by the end, after receiving that affection, he expressed feeling capable, she said.
He said, “Sometimes I get angry and upset. Mr. G knows I need to calm down. He gives me highfives, joke, a hug.”
“To think that child has already labeled himself as having an attitude,” Madu said.
She said perception of self is important at that age, and negative perception can lower self-esteem and expectations.
“You can express love to Black boys in a way that supports their learning,” she said. “There are ways Black men can interact that I can’t.”
Although the phrase “Black boy” can be viewed as racist in some contexts, such as when referring to an adult male, Madu said she uses “boys” to make it clear she is referring to young children in a way that conjures a vision the word “student” does not.
As a teacher in Detroit,
Madu said she didn’t have any say in the disciplinary rules, as there were prescribed ways they were supposed to handle behaviors.
“I figured I needed to do more research,” she said. “I wanted to reframe the narrative of Black boys in early childhood education.”
She touches in the dissertation on the broader issue of systemic racism in America. On that topic, the landmark ruling Brown v. Board of Education comes to mind for Madu.
“We think of it as a huge transformative policy, that it would level the playing field,” Madu said. “We often don’t think of the resources that were stripped.”
She said 38,000 teachers and administrators in
Black schools lost their jobs because Black schools were closed and they weren’t hired elsewhere. Those educators, she said, were thought of as the pillars of society and, suddenly, their status was gone.
Because the ruling was desegregation instead of integration, Black children were forced to leave their neighborhoods to attend school, she said.
Desegregation didn’t change the mindset of teachers, parents or children, she said.
She said Black children — girls and boys — are suspended in school at a higher rate than their white counterparts.
“That implicit bias is not something you want to admit. You might not know it,” she said.
She had seen research on Black teachers, role modeling and empowerment that showed positives, but nothing focused on early childhood education and “expressed affection from Black male teachers to Black boys.”
“We need to give boys a way to make mistakes without being penalized,” she said.
She saw the suspension factor at work with her own brother who was “notoriously suspended,” and disciplined until he had a male teacher in the sixth grade who said, “I’m not going to call home every day.”
Madu said her brother went on to college and became a success.
“To think he lived with that through fifth grade. He was not a bad kid,” she said. “We need more Black men in early childhood spaces,” so children know they’re loved and cared for, she said.