#BlackTeacherMagic
“Black teachers, like Black books and Black lives, still matter.”
by Chrystal Miller and Khallid Love
A colleague of mine (Khallid, pictured bottom, second from the right), who is also a Black educator, once shared that the quality of a child’s education is not limited to the academic and that we must count their social, emotional, and cultural experiences as qualitative metrics when we speak of educational accreditation. This proclamation naturally spiraled us into exchanging anecdotes about interactions we’d had with our students outside of the classroom — interactions that no textbook, test, or homework assignment can replace but that are still indeed moments of teaching and are, in a sense, extracurricular. There is something about these sorts of exchanges between Black teachers and Black students that matters. These authentic moments might more accurately be described as moments of “Black Teacher Magic.”
Black teachers matter, and it matters that Black teachers educate Black students. To be clear, this remark does not discount or disable white or other non-Black teachers who also educate Black children. This remark is not an antonym of the effectiveness of white and other non-Black teachers, it is simply a cognate: it speaks to the value of Black children being educated by Black teachers. Culturally responsive teaching should also be culturally responsible teaching — teachers cannot respond to students’ cultural identities without understanding how to responsibly handle the experiences that students bring with them to school.
Though white teachers can be classified as “non-Black,” distinguishing white teachers is important, as they are often the greatest offenders in the mishandling of the cultural experiences that Black students bring to the classroom. Often times, we’ve witnessed multiple instances in which white teachers take Black colloquialisms they hear or observe from their Black colleagues and change the intonations of their voice to match how they interpret the sound of Black vernacular in attempts to “connect” with Black children. This is at worst forgery, and at best, a perverse expression of tolerance for Black culture. Children are astute detectors of fraud. Children value and appreciate when their teachers, no matter the race, are their authentic selves.
One laughable and noteworthy anecdote from our conversation recounts the time we witnessed one of our students get introduced to and feel the sting of a switch by another colleague of mine, also a Black teacher, for the first time. The teacher chased the student and struck him with the switch. Though his body flinched, arms shot to his sides, and fingers splayed, he was smiling (as were the other witnessing students) as he was becoming acquainted with “the sting”. My colleague and I had caught the tail end of the interaction, but we heard familial sound bites that also sealed smiles onto our faces: “The smaller the switch, the harder the sting,” said the Black teacher, as she hovered around him with pursed lips, proud eyes, one hand holding the switch, the other hand on her hip. The student was a city kid and knew nothing about the disciplinary traditions of southern Black women. Now wincing, he was experiencing the repercussions of questioning the talent of such a “small stick” for the first time. On the surface, this transcribes as a violation of child safety, but when the context of the matter is considered, it is a nod to Black Teacher Magic.
This was a cultural exchange and a should be categorized as nothing short of an accreditation of cultural education. Immediately after that instant, other students began scouring the grass for switches. “Nope, too big. That’s a stick,” said the teacher. That’s when I (Chrystal, pictured bottom, second from the left) chimed in and began to explain the anatomy of a good switch: thin and small, but not too small, unassuming, durable. It was a teachable moment. The teacher and I capitalized on that moment to educate our students about how our southern grandmothers would whoop us and how, on the next day, we’d have to go to school with long sleeved shirts and pants to cover our welts. “That’s gone be a welt on your leg tomorrow,” we both said. With a strained smile, he replied: “Aw, man. How can something so little hurt like that?” Other students were chuckling as they made fun of him. That took me back in time to when my aunt used to make her children select their switches. It was an authentic and joyous moment. It was a product of Black Teacher Magic.
Black teachers come to the education space with a genius of their own — sets of languages, attitudes, dispositions, perspectives, thoughts, and experiences that they’ve developed and that exist uniquely to them — what we have more clearly defined as #BlackTeacherMagic. That indescribable, inscrutable, unidentified “thing” that can make a Black educator scintillate with their children. Black Teacher Magic is many things: a pedagogical tool, a lever for classroom management, an organic way for Black teachers to bring more of themselves to their practice and authentically connect with their students.
Black students need to be taught by Black teachers and efforts at recruiting and retaining Black teachers should not simply be aimed at meeting quotas, but also reflective of an understanding that Black teachers can and do enrich the education of Black students in academic and non-academic ways; and educational institutions that educate high populations of Black children have a responsibility to hire Black educators in order to provide Black children with a comprehensive education that is responsive to the myriad social, cultural, and emotional needs of the child.
Black educators harness a unique ability to teach Black students and nurture teacher-student relationships beyond the parameters of standardized white middle class modes of schooling, which often privilege compliance over authenticity.
Black students’ experiences and identities should be at the center of pedagogy and should serve as focal points from which instruction materializes. Ultimately, if we seek to commit ourselves to the idea and work of culturally responsive education, it is imperative that we value the fullness of the work that Black educators do and acknowledge the consequences #BlackTeacherMagic has for not only the academic but also the social, cultural, and emotional education of Black children.
