“For I am my mother’s daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth”
-Mary McLeod Bethune
Year One
Leader and Teacher Training
Year Two
Leader and Teacher Training
Year Three
Teacher Leader Training
Year Four
Additional Support as Needed
Fellowship REQUIREMENTS
SCHOOL CRITERIA
BTC SEEKS TO PARTNER WITH SCHOOLS WITH
• 65% or greater Black teachers
• 80% or greater Black students
• 5-7 Black educators committed to program participation
• 3rd-5th grade Elementary school teachers or 6th-10th grade secondary school Social Studies or ELA teachers
• School leader/designee committed to participating in 3-4 cross-regional Professional Learning Community sessions
LEADER CRITERIA
BTC seeks Leaders with the intrinsic belief that
• Black students should have Black teachers and benefit from having Black teachers
• Black teachers are positioned to have a unique and added impact on the comprehensive outcomes of Black children
• Teachers need and deserve professional development at all stages in their tenure
FELLOW CRITERIA
BTC SEEKS BLACK TEACHERS WHO
• Have a deep belief in the inherent genius of Black children
• Believe that Black children both require and deserve care, love, and respect
• Believe that their Black racial identity and their students Black racial identity impacts how they are experienced
• Demonstrate the willingness to both learn and unlearn frameworks, concepts, and strategies
• Are passionate and excited about teaching and believe teachers have a critical role in promoting social change
BTC’S SRILE PEDAGOGY
SRILE an acronym for Shared Racial Identity Learning Environments which BTC defines as schools where the majority of the teaching staff and the majority of the student population share the same racial identity. BTC’s work focuses on Black SRILE spaces. There is an ever increasing body of research that suggest Black students benefit from having Black teachers including a recent report from Johns Hopkins University Black Teachers Make a Difference.
Source: www.edweek.org
The pedagogical framework the Fellowship is based upon includes:
Five educational goals that Black liberation based teachers have when teaching Black students
• Love of Learning and Intellectual Excellence
• Strong Racial Identity
• Sociopolitical Consciousness
• Healing
• Collective Responsibility
Two core pathways that excellent Black teachers use to reach those goals
• Culturally Compatible and Community Connected Praxis
• High Expectations (academic, social, behavioral) of students, their families and their communities
One core foundational mindset/belief that drives all of excellent Black teachers work
• An ethic of critical care and love from which all other actions and choices grow
LOVE OF LEARNING AND INTELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE
STRONG RACIAL IDENTITY
Sociopolitical Consciousness
HEALING
COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY
Culturally Compatible and Community Connected Praxis
CRITICAL CARE AND LOVE
THE PEDAGOGICAL ELEMENTS PRIORITIZED IN YEAR ONE
CRITICAL CARE
AND LOVE
Black teachers view their students as family members deserving of care, individuals whose collective destinies are intertwined with their own. As such, with great care, Black teachers demand and support their students’ overall wellbeing and academic success as the would their own because the two are, in fact, one and the same.
SOCIOPOLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Black teachers are aware of the social inequities that impact Black people’s lives, as well as their root causes, and actively work in solidarity with the Black community to achieve liberation through their role as a classroom teacher
RACIAL IDENTITY
Central to strong racial identity are beliefs that being Black is a central and positive aspect of identity and experience. Deep self-knowledge, Diasporic literacy and self-love are also crucial aspects of strong racial identity. Thus, in alignment with Black children’s caregivers and communities, Black teachers take on the responsibility of building strong racial identities in Black children through instruction, classroom culture and within the context of student-teacher relationships. To do so effectively, Black teachers must both possess strong racial identity and continuously build upon it.
HIGH EXPECTATIONS
Black teachers must maintain high expectations of Black students’ academic, social, and personal performance, insist with warmth and firmness that Black students meet these expectations and provide personal, social, emotional, and instructional experiences and supports to Black students as they strive to meet the high expectations that have been laid out before them.