After a student in his classroom had yet another outburst, Tyler Wright couldn’t bear to see him get written up again. Wright, then a student teacher at a Charleston elementary school, led the child out to the hallway for a chat.
Within minutes, the student started crying.
“He was telling me that he really doesn’t get to see his dad and stuff like that,” Wright said. “That his dad was supposed to come see him but never did. At the end of the day, that was the root cause for the outbursts, because the child was angry.”
Wright told him that he grew up in a similar situation, but he still paid attention the best he could, despite what was going on at home. The conversation was all it took, Wright said, for the student to open up and improve his behavior.
Wright became a full-time teacher at Stono Park Elementary in January, thanks to a program in Charleston aimed at making the teaching profession more accessible to Black men, who are vastly underrepresented in classrooms in South Carolina and around the United States.
Just 7% of America’s public school teachers were Black during the 2017-18 school year although Black students make up 15% of the student population, according to the most recent available data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Their absence in classrooms is deeply felt, especially in states like South Carolina, where almost a fifth of students are Black and Black males account for less than 3% of teachers.
Having teachers who reflect the identity of their students can foster connections between teachers and students — and help avoid the kind of misinterpretation of behavior that can contribute to disparities in discipline for Black students, experts say. Research shows that Black teachers can lead to improved academic performance and higher graduation rates for Black students.
At a time of teacher shortages in South Carolina and around the country, the presence of Black teachers also can make it more likely for Black students to pursue careers in education themselves.
A South Carolina program, Men of CHS Teach, places new teachers in elementary classrooms to help males get teaching licenses. The program hopes to hire 20 male teachers of color within five years.
“The issue starts fairly young,” said Eric Duncan, a member of the policy team at the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “They get…
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