1. Understand that their life experience will never ever be the same as yours

This can be said for all of the students you teach. Age, culture, and gender are all impossible intersections for teachers to traverse simultaneously. But for black boys, this understanding becomes explicitly pronounced. Our black boys look markedly different from society’s predescribed male. The stories they have already heard about themselves capture obscure destinies such as the athlete, the entertainer, and the criminal. And oh yeah, that one-off president that, for youth born after around 2005, is now an afterthought. Don’t pretend to be able to put your feet in the shoes of a teenager growing up in 2019 who has had to watch Trayvon, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner…on and on, all get shot and killed by police, and then have to wake up and go to school the next day. Internalization of what the world means to them is a real thing that happens. And for black boys, they may not know how to precisely articulate the subtle notion that their lives seem to be worthless, but they damn sure see and feel it. So err on the side of understanding, at the least, of that.

  2. Accept their cultural nuances

When you ask De’Marious a question and he responds by saying, what? or huh? don’t get upset and harshly correct him. He “ain’t” responding to you that way to signal a sign of disrespect (unless he is – and in that case he’s super intelligent and you need to foster that). He’s asking you “what?” because that is how he talks, because that is perhaps how he has learned to communicate. Pump your brakes Mr. ExuseMeHowDareYouDoYouNotHaveAnyManners? Maybe “Pardon me?” simply isn’t part of his lexicon. And really, who cares? You are there to teach math and things like that. He’ll learn socially acceptable conventions and how to use a knife and fork properly outside of school, hopefully. Customs and social mores are not things for you to assess and chastise. I learned that I should put my knife and fork together to signal to a waiter that I’m finished my plate at like 25 years old. Some of y’all reading this just learned that right now. So chill on the expressive scolding of particular behaviors that may differentiate from yours. 

3. Validate the importance of Hip-Hop

You do realize that black males created hip-hop, right? And whether or not you like it – your kids do. Hip-hop may be the most tangible act of self-determination in our “post modern” era. And black boys created that shit. They did it all after school, and maybe sometimes during school but nevertheless, the act of creating a universal artistic artery within our modern culture deserves some kudos. So put some respeck on that name. Validate that fact in your classroom. Instead of analyzing two novels in the year; analyze one and then pick an album (actually, let your kids pick), and run the same learning back with that as your “text”. Don’t worry about the extra work and new photocopies, you can ask the same questions and expect the same analyzation of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly as you can from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Teaching black boys is real simple, people. I wrote 3 things that you can do but I could have written ten. Regardless of the amount, all would have inevitably come back to one main theme. And that is the realization that while you are teaching, there is a black male child sitting in your classroom, trying to listen to your lesson but also being subconsciously compounded by the fact that we all don’t value him as an intelligent, capable and unique individual. So start with that. If you are able to do so, you may not even need to read this list. 

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I put on a movie to start first period. It was a documentary about the history of Canada and the episode was detailing the war of 1812. As I attended to a few menial tasks, I routinely scanned the room ensuring that my students were engaged or at least had enough social awareness to pretend they were. I figured the movie was our best option for today; my students needed a brief break between the project they just handed in and the next task I was about to assign. My scanning didn’t last more than a few seconds before I noticed a group of boys more interested in their fidget spinners than the video detailing events leading up to Canada’s becoming. I walked over to the group and told them to put the toys away and focus on the doc, reminding them that the information would be used for our next project. Five minutes later, I needed to address them again. This time, it wasn’t the spinners but the low commotion of dialogue; one of my boys actually had his back turned away from the screen while chatting with a peer. I bellowed out a few of their names and gave a stare; publicly acknowledging boys (for both positive and negative feedback) always works better. It worked and they paid attention…for a bit.

The same thing happened a few hours later during math class. After delivering a short lesson, I gave my students some practice work. The girls worked quietly in small groups, asking for help when needed while making small, and quiet, talk. My boys on the other hand, ventured off into distracting behaviors that took them so far away from the task at hand that they barely got beyond scribbling the date on the top of their worksheets. It was a blah morning for me as a teacher: no relatable math lesson, no inspiring words to encourage my students, but I still had much of my girls on whatever task was at hand and struggled to keep my boys attention for longer than mere minutes. In light of my admittedly subpar teaching, I was really struck by the fact that boys really do learn differently.

After positioning myself in a space that would force these boys to actually do some math work, I began to think about the whole notion of “boys learning differently”. When you boil it down into traditional assumptions based on gender and identity, if boys learn differently that also means girls learn differently. The issue manifests because school is catered to the learning styles that females typically feel more comfortable with. That can be a loaded statement if taken at face value. But think about it: saying “boys learn differently” is not a charge against boys per se but rather an indictment on how we educate children. In essence, if we are routinely struggling as educators to engage and teach half of our student population (read: boys), then it is not on the fault of boys but on the fault of implicit teaching measures and pedagogies that impede male student learning. Saying “boys learn differently than girls” is a valid argument. But at some point the, “okay, so then what?” has to kick in.

I know if I come to school and teach in a mundane, status-quo like manner, I am leaving many of my students uninspired. I also know that, for the most part, no matter how I approach the material I am supposed to cover, the majority of my girls are going to sit, work, and try to learn it to the best of their capabilities. I don’t have the answers for how we all should move forward with our craft. I do know that when we say boys learn differently, we have to come forth with strategies and applications that reach the way our boys learn.

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