Workshop held to improve teachers’ relationship with African-American students

By Meghan O’Toole-Pitts – The Daily Sentinel

“Our African-American students are really struggling,” said G.W. Neal, NISD assistant superintendent for human resources.

NISD African-American students are 10 points behind the average TAKS, TAKS-acc, TAKS-m, and TAKS-ALT scores among African-American students statewide.

“We feel like we have to be able to make the curriculum relevant to them as well as build a better support system both inside the school district and outside the school district,” said Ronny Knox, assistant superintendent for instruction.

To improve academic achievement, principals and other administrators participated in a workshop Wednesday led by author and educator Mack Hines to learn how to build relationships with African-American students.

“What I’m trying to get teachers to understand is the relevance of race from the perspective of how race influences how African-Americans socialize at school and use that awareness to make a stronger connection,” said Hines, who has worked with more than 50 districts in the nation. “Many times when race is mentioned it often brings up negative feelings … but I’m trying to get teachers to understand that there’s a racial component that African-American students bring to the school, and if they would recognize those we can build relationships, we can address behavior and we can give powerful instruction that maximizes how African-American students learn.”

Behavior, communication and learning styles are influenced by race, Hines said.

“A lot of the teachers are white female teachers who have a total different racial and cultural upbringing from African-American students,” he said.

“It’s not that those teachers are racist, but what I say to teachers is that they have tendency to be race less, which means they don’t recognize how race impacts African-American students and their interpretations of their mannerisms and behaviors are often misguided and that leads to a combustible reaction sometimes.”

Of the nearly 6,500 students in the district, 30 percent are African-American, 43 percent are Hispanic, 25 percent are Caucasian and two percent are Asian, making NISD a minority-majority district, Neal said.

Three-fourths of the district’s students are economically disadvantaged. Of the economically disadvantaged students, 25 percent are African-American, 40 percent are Hispanic and 10 percent are Caucasian.

“We want our teachers to be able to work with students from all walks of life. Most of our teachers come from middle class families,” said Neal, who invited Hines to speak to administrators Wednesday. “When they walk in that classroom they’ll have students from low socioeconomic status homes.”

Neal said he experienced first-hand as a child an education system that neglected to understand its students.

“One time, I was taking a test when I was a young boy and I remember the question asked something about a saucer and a cup. It was to match them up,” he said. “Well, in my home back then we had no saucers. I didn’t know what that was. I just saw mom and dad with a cup drinking. They never set it on a saucer.”

Less than 15 percent of teachers in the district are African-American, and 8 percent are Hispanic.

“That’s not enough,” Neal said. “We really would like to have more.”

Neal said he has made trips to colleges, such as Texas A&M-Kingsville and Grambling State University, a historically black college in Louisiana, to recruit African-American and Hispanic teachers.

“Every time we have an opportunity to engage ourselves in hiring outstanding teachers, that’s number one. But when we have an opportunity to hire qualified minority teachers, that’s a focus for us,” Neal said.

Recognizing the relevance of race when educating also teaches teachers and administrators of varied races to better communicate with one another, Hines said.

“I talked to them about the three eras we’ve lived in – a racist color-coded era of segregation, then after the laws were passed a racist color-blind era of desegregation and now, with my work and Mr. Knox, we’re looking at a color-embracing era of integration,” he said. “Society’s norm is still based on white culture. We’re working with black educators, Hispanic educators and other educators, to help us understand how our differences from a racial perspective are the ones that truly impact how we interact with each other.”

Administrators will pass on the strategies they learned in the workshop to teachers throughout the district, Knox said.

“Math is our first priority and science is our second concern,” he said. “Our goal for achieving excellence is that our African-American scores would fall in the exemplary range.”

Meagan O’Toole-Pitts can be reached at mpitts@dailysentinel.com.