MINNEAPOLIS — This year, Black Men Teach turns 6, and a large gathering at Crestview Elementary on Monday marked the start of the next 10.
Executive director Markus Flynn says the organization's goal is to recruit 450 Black men to become elementary teachers by the 2034-2035 school year, and doing the recruiting will be a new coalition of stakeholders — not just Black men.
"Black Men Teach, it's a small nonprofit that's all about supporting more Black male teachers leading classrooms here in Minnesota," Flynn said. "The coalition has a similar goal, but the difference is we're bringing in a lot of people."
So far, Flynn says around 30 members from around 25 organizations have committed to help recruit, including Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools, the University of Minnesota, Metro State University, University of St. Thomas and others.
"The lack of Black male educators is such a large, persistent challenge that it's going to take a large community united effort in order to solve," Flynn said. "There's just under 60,000 teachers across the state of Minnesota. About 220 of those are Black men, so you're talking about less than half of 1%, and at the elementary level, it's even more of a dearth. There's less than 50 Black male elementary school teachers teaching in the entire state of Minnesota, and so we need more."
Darwin Embery, a senior at Patrick Henry High School, spoke about the need during the event.
"Throughout my whole school year I haven't had Black male teachers," he said. "With Black male teachers, I feel like you could build more community in the classroom because you can relate to Black students."
"They're going to be more likely to graduate high school, more likely to enroll in college, more likely to be in talented and gifted program, less likely to be suspended, less likely to be expelled," Flynn added.
The recruited teachers would work in elementary schools where Black kids make up at least 40% of the student body. Flynn says almost 100 Minnesota schools meet that criteria.
"We want to get those schools to 20% of their teaching staff being Black men," Flynn said.
And you don't have to be a teacher to follow the math: 20% of approximately 2,000 teachers in the almost 100 schools would mean around 450 Black men.
Black Men Teach says Black teachers not only benefit Black students but all students. One study out of the University of Maryland showed being assigned a Black teacher increased students' math and reading test scores, and decreased chronic absenteeism, by roughly 60% for both Black and non-Black students.
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