Professor to Address Education of African American Males

A respected professor and expert on the educational needs of African American male students will join School of Education students and faculty on Thursday, Oct. 13, to discuss how future teachers can better understand and respond to the challenges facing African American male students.

Dr. Anthony L. Brown, an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the area of social studies education at the University of Texas, Austin, will meet with faculty and students in the School of Education’s Barbara Sizemore Urban Education Initiative. Dr. Arnetha Ball, consulting professor from Stanford University, will host the event for the Initiative.

In a recent meeting with students in this year’s Urban Education cohort, Ball explained that the mere term “urban education” evokes myths and stereotypes.

“People get a picture in their head of underachieving students of color,” Ball said. “It’s up to us to be agents of change for this generation because the education gap for African American males is embarrassing. We need a force of teachers who say, ‘We will not let these failures continue.’”

Students in the Leading Teacher Program in Urban Education participate in field experiences in high-needs schools and community-based tutoring programs, receive specialized training and instruction designed to close the achievement gap for students in urban settings, and develop skills needed for effective leadership and management of classrooms in a global, technological and culturally diverse society.

“Teachers primarily come from backgrounds that are different from those of their students, and they feel woefully underprepared to teach students from cultural and linguistic backgrounds that differ from their own,” Ball said.

The establishment of the Urban Education Initiative underscores the School of Education’s commitment to prepare teachers for the challenges and opportunities found in the urban classroom, and for the critically important task of helping all children, regardless of socioeconomic background, achieve and succeed.

Melissa Price, coordinator of the Sizemore Urban Education Initiative, said it’s an honor to have both Ball and Brown on campus for this “important conversation.”

Brown is an affiliate faculty member at the John Warfield Center of African and African American Studies and the Department of African Diasporic Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. He received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Minority Fellowship for his research on the way African American male teachers conceptualize and respond to the socio-historical realities of African American male students. Brown’s work has been published in the Journal of Educational Foundations, Ethnography & Education, and the Journal of Negro Education, among others.