Terrence Smith grew up in the Southside neighborhood of Tallahassee, Fla., got his undergraduate degree in Orlando at the University of Central Florida, and -- through a rigorous teacher training program -- Urban Teachers -- received his Master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University.
Only twice in nearly two decades of school did Smith have a black male teacher. And now, he’s the only black male elementary teacher at Irving’s Uplift Infinity charter school campus.
In his estimation, the reason there are so few black male educators is that “there’s not a way to see what success looks like,” Smith said.
While more than half of the student population in the United States is non-white, more than 80% of Americas’ teachers are white. Black educators make up an increasingly smaller percentage of the overall teaching workforce, 6.8%, with the number of black male teachers at 2%.
Urban Teachers is embarking on a new effort to attempt to address that inequity.
“We want to be a part of changing that narrative,” said Jacqueline Greer, chief program officer for Urban Teachers.
With help from a philanthropic group funded by former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer, Urban Teachers is launching the Black Educators Initiative, a $25 million program designed to draw 1,000 new black educators into the teaching workforce by 2023. Over a quarter of those teachers will be men.
Started in 2009 to provide well-prepared teachers in high-need schools in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., Urban Teachers expanded to Dallas in 2016. Since then, the organization has recruited and placed more than 300 teachers in 100 campuses in Dallas, working with Dallas ISD and Uplift and KIPP charter operators.
Those in the Urban Teachers’ program serve a 14-month residency co-teaching in four different classroom settings. They also leave with a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of education.
Greer said that increasing the number of black educators is good for all students. For black students -- which make up a fifth of DISD’s student body -- achievement outcomes are higher when they have black teachers, she said.
For boys from low-income households, those gains are magnified when receiving instruction from a black male teacher, she added. College-going rates and academic achievement goes up, while suspension rates go down.
“Having a teacher you trust … having someone you identify with that is bringing you the knowledge and the keys to your future, does matter,” Greer said. “It’s not a knock on other teachers. But for our boys, to have that sameness, we see the light come on in a different way.”
Smith, 28, was part of Urban Teachers’ first Dallas cohort in 2016, and is in the final year of the four-year program. A big component of what drew him to teach, he said, was providing his students with what he didn’t get growing up.
While his colleagues talk about taking German or studying trades or technology while in high school, Smith’s high school was starved of resources. The first time college was broached was just a few months before graduation, he said.
“I know I was cheated, and I didn’t want that to happen to any other kids,” Smith said. “I want my impact to go further than the classroom.”
In October, Smith traveled to Philadelphia to take part in the Black Male Educators annual convening, where over 1,000 educators came together to share educational practices.
The first time he went to the conference, Smith said, he was “completely paralyzed” by the number of teachers like himself; “it was like seeing a room full of unicorns.”
“To see all these men, who had faced the racism and oppression that I had, standing there, flat-footed, shoulders stacked, sharing with each other on how to help kids -- that was very powerful,” Smith said.
For Saidah Taylor, a 26-year old black woman from Virginia in the same Urban Teachers cohort, having a diverse workforce in diverse schools just makes sense.
Taylor, who teaches sixth grade at DISD’s new project-based learning middle school, IGNITE, said she can relate and talk with students about racism or deportation “because I come from a place of struggle also.”
“When they see me, they see their mom, their aunt, their older sister or cousin,” Taylor said. “They see me as someone who can understand their problems. White educators can empathize, but not ever relate on that level.”
While torn with the decision on whether to stay in the classroom in the coming years, Smith and Taylor both said they were dedicated to staying in education in the Dallas area.
Taylor is working on her doctorate at Baylor, and hopes to work for Urban Teachers DFW. Smith might eventually move into administration, but worries that it might pull him away from his work’s mission -- helping students and mentoring fellow teachers.
“It’s hard for me to leave,” Smith said, “because this is important.”
