With the emergence of a diverse public school student population, existing literature affirms the existence of a Black teacher shortage and the low representation of teachers of color in U.S. public schools. Although there are over 3 million public school teachers, African American teachers only comprise approximately 8 percent of the public school teaching workforce. In fact, the education field is dominated by White, middle-class teachers, particularly, White female teachers.
While the retention of all teachers of color is a pertinent issue, an examination of Black female teachers who can assist in diversifying the teaching field is timely and warranted. Despite Black females' historic role in public education and that teaching is a female-dominated profession, Black female teachers represent only 7.7 percent of the American teaching force, while students of color represent almost 49 percent of the total student enrolment.
This important, timely, and provocative book places recruitment and retention of Black female teachers at the center. The contributions address not only the recruitment of Black female teachers but also discuss mechanisms necessary to retain them. Thus, this collection not only focuses on recruiting and retaining Black female teachers for the sake of having their representation in schools; rather, authors consider some of the implicit (and overt) nuances that these teachers experience in schools across the United States.
Abiola Farinde-Wu is an Assistant Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Urban Education. She also received her Master of Education degree in Administration from Lamar University and her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Texas A&M University. In 2017, she completed her Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. At the center, Farinde-Wu managed and studied the Ready to Learn program, a two year tutoring and mentoring initiative and empirical study that prepares and connects University of Pittsburgh students with K-12 students, in order to provide the K-12 students with experiences that support them with academic progress in mathematics and English language arts, as well as social skills development. Prior to her post-doctoral work, Farinde-Wu was a Graduate Research Associate in the Urban Education Collaborative at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where she assisted with the collection and dissemination of empirically based research for the purposes of improving outcomes for students in urban contexts. Farinde-Wu's teaching focuses on preparing pre-service and in-service teachers for diverse student populations. She has co-authored numerous studies published in journals, including Teachers College Record, Urban Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education. Her research interests are the educational experiences and outcomes of Black women and girls, teacher retention, and urban teacher education. Ayana Allen-Handy is an Assistant Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Policy, Organization, and Leadership at Drexel University's School of Education, USA. She received a B.A. in Management & Society and Spanish from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a M.Ed. in Education from the University of St. Thomas (Houston), and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Urban Education from Texas A&M University. Her professional career includes serving as a first grade teacher and literacy specialist in the Houston Independent School District, a Director of College Counseling and Alumni Programs at YES Prep Public Schools, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at The Urban Education Collaborative at UNC Charlotte where she conducted a three-year ethnographic case study on comprehensive urban school transformation. Her research interests include the interdisciplinary examination of issues of equity and social justice in urban schools and historically marginalized communities. More specifically, she focuses on urban teacher education and youth identity development and engagement through critical participatory action research (CPAR). Ultimately her work seeks to leverage the community cultural wealth embedded in communities of color to answer complex questions about access and achievement. She is co-editor of Autoethnography as a Lighthouse: Illuminating Race, Research, and the Politics of Schooling (Information Age, 2015) as well as recently published articles in Teachers College Record, Equity and Excellence in Education, and The Education Law & Policy Review. She resides in Philadelphia with her husband Frederick and son Aiden. Dr. Chance W. Lewis currently teaches graduate courses in the field of Urban Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. His experiences span the range of K-12 and higher education. From 2006-2011, Dr. Lewis served as the Houston Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Urban Education at Texas A&M University. In 2001-2006, he served as an assistant professor of teacher education at Colorado State University. During the 1994-1998, Dr. Lewis served as a Business Education teacher in East Baton Rouge Parish Schools (Baton Rouge, LA), where he earned Teacher of the Year honors in 1997. Dr. Lewis has over 100 publications including 70+ refereed journal articles in some of the leading academic journals in the field of urban education.
