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Educational scholarship has called attention to the disproportionate ways Black males are disciplined in schools, which has become the catalyst to their entry into the school-to-prison pipeline through which they are funneled from K-12 classrooms into the criminal justice system. Since the majority of teachers are White, it may be insightful to examine the role that they play in the process and how teachers also influence White children’s perceptions of Black boys. Drawing from Lortie’s ( 1975/2002 ) notion of the apprenticeship of observation in teaching, I contend that White children learn how to dehumanize Black male students, particularly as they observe how their White teachers disproportionately target them for minor and subjective school disciplinary infractions. Recommendations are provided for teacher education to prepare teachers to dismantle disproportionate and unfair ways that Black boys are disciplined.

There is a slow but growing body of literature on the pedagogies and schooling practices of Black male teachers. However, few of these studies elicit the voices of Black maternal caregivers regarding the ways in which pedagogies and schooling practices support Black boys in early childhood classrooms. In this article, the author uses a multidimensional framework—including Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, and a counterstorytelling methodology—to elicit the voices of two Black maternal caregivers who spoke about the pedagogies and schooling practices of a Black male kindergarten teacher. Findings revealed that these caregivers perceived that this Black male kindergarten teacher addressed the collective and individual needs of Black boys. They also perceived this Black male teacher as minimizing the intergenerational racialized distrust Black maternal caregivers have toward White teachers and other educational professionals.

Nationally, the recruitment and retention of Black male teachers have become a crisis for public schools at all educational and academic programmatic levels. This is especially true for gifted and AP programs, considering that most Black males who enter the teaching profession are rarely selected to serve in such teaching capacities. However, what has been missing from the extant research literature is the role Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) play in the preparation of Black male teachers for the gifted classroom. In this article, the authors explore scholarship that focuses on the lack of diversity among teachers and specifically among males in general education to draw implications to the field of gifted education. The authors provide specific attention to reasons HBCUs play an important role in preparing Black males for the gifted classroom, along with providing recommendations for preparing Black male teachers in gifted education.

In the wake of racial violence in urban schools and society, we question, “Can the field of urban education love blackness and Black lives unconditionally and as preconditions to humanity? What does it look like to (re)imagine urban classrooms as sites of love? As educators, how might we utilize a pedagogy of love as an embodied practice that influences holistic teaching? How might we utilize a pedagogy of love to include Black youths’ racialized and gendered life histories and experiences and their language and literacy practices? We outline and discuss five types of violence in schools (physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricula/pedagogical, and systemic school violence) which interfere with the creation and sustainability of revolutionary love in urban schools. We present examples of ‘fake love’ and provide the current backdrop. We operationalize revolutionary love and offer Afrocentric praxis and African Diaspora Literacy as antidotes to anti-Black types of violence that many students experience in urban schools.

The emphasis, and in most cases, overemphasis of abysmal academic outcomes without deeper critical analyses regarding ways predominantly White institutions (PWIs) obviate the success of Black males has often dominated the research literature. As such, Black male perspectives regarding the ways in which they support each other in successfully navigating these fundamentally racist, hostile, and exclusive spaces are often missing from or under-discussed in the extant literature. This idea is particularly true for Black males who are members of Black Greek-lettered organizations whose experiences are often tainted by negative media and popular press surrounding hazing, death, and other types of malfeasance. Drawing on Lynn’s notion of otherfathering, the purpose of this article is to propose what the authors term otherbrothering and otherbrothers not only to locate the ways in which Black male collegians provide networks of support to assist each other in navigating PWIs but also to highlight the positive purposes of these organizations. Recommendations are provided for the field of higher education.

Future teachers need to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to become culturally competent teachers of literacy. When preservice educators are still admitting to a lack of preparedness in working with diverse populations, much is yet to be done. In this study, qualitative measures, such as pre/post-self-ratings, a multicultural survey, class assignments and in-class activities, and field notes, were used to investigate the research question, “How can we better prepare preservice educators to provide effective literacy instruction to meet the needs of diverse populations in the classroom?” Thus, a semester-long intercultural journey helped transform preservice educators’ perceptions of delivering effective literacy instruction to diverse populations. They engaged in the process of identifying their attitudes and perceptions of other cultures, gaining multimodal understandings of literacy to foster culturally responsive pedagogical practices, planning lessons for inclusion of diverse learners in the classroom, and then rethinking and reconstructing teaching plans as they perfected their teaching skills. Our findings revealed that preservice educators’ perceptions were transformed in several ways.

This article explores how to disrupt anti-Blackness in early childhood education by teaching from a pro-Black stance. The authors explain African Diaspora literacy and illuminate classroom practices in kindergarten, first grade, and third grade. Readers are guided to transform their spaces and ensure that Black children are well.

Purpose Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys’ socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little attention has been given to ways to attract, inspire and recruit them to the professional teaching ranks where a paltry 2 per cent are Black men. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the concept of imaginative play experiences with respect to Black boys and unearths possibilities for future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play. Findings Based on findings from the literature, this conceptual paper makes connections between the early childhood play literature and the Black male teacher recruitment and retention literature to create possibilities to inspire Black boys to enter the teaching profession. Originality/value This paper presents a nuanced integration of imaginative play and culturally relevant pedagogy with specific attention to Black males.