Black Teachers on Teaching

by Michele Foster

Book Overview

A candid and eye-opening look at what desegregation has actually meant for students--with lessons for today--from the teachers who were on the front lines of integration Black Teachers on Teaching is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156584453X
• ISBN13: 9781565844537
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Don't turn away because of the title.

I am a college student majoring in middle grades and education and I chose to read this book and present it to my class from a list of several other books. I have to admit the reason I first wanted to read the book was because of the title. I thought it was something that surely only black furture teachers would benefit from. After reading and studying the pages of this book I think anyone interested in the basic needs of students' welfare should read this book. Not just the welfare of African American students because the book addresses so many issues that many teachers strive for, for their students everyday. It just so happens that this book looks at those concerns from the prospective of blacks about blacks. That is why I said don't turn away because of the title. In this book there are some sharp ideas on the topic of teacher role models, ethics, learning environments,etc. I highly recommend this book.

The Success of Black Teachers

This book was very informative for me. I never knew about all the obstacles that black teachers, as well as black children, had to deal with in the past. I enjoyed reading their experiences and was extremely pleased to know that these teachers made a change in the lives of other black teachers and the schools that they taught in. There were a couple of teachers that really impressed me, as well as their philosophy's of education. Everett Dawson's philosophy was never give up on a child and Ruby Middleton Forsythe's philosophy of getting the children to realize that they need to be somebody and go somewhere with their lives is a very important goal. As teachers we must never feel that a child is not worth fighting for and we must always try to keep our students focused on learning because that is indeed the key to success.

Black teachers on teaching

If there are any questions in your mind on whether or not you should become a teacher, then this is the book for you. I was very encouraged when I read of how my race really aided the cause of Education by making so many significant contributions to the cause. I would encourage everyone to read this book so that one could obtain more facts about the history of Education, visualize the knowledge or Mother Wit that was displayed by so many learned Black professionals, and to feel the struggles that they went through in order that we may enter into a classroom one day.

This book confirmed my belief that segregation worked.

Each interview confirmed my belief that even though the schools were inadequate, books were prehistoric, and the pay "sucked", at least black students were taught and cared for. It's important for everyone to be able to identify with others, and in this identification, be able to help one another cope with adversaties. Each teacher appeared to feel the loss of interpersonal, relations between themselves and their students. The ability of an adult to empathize with a child, based on his personal experience, and to give insight on the "roadblocks" that the child could be faced with, was and still is important. Experience is the greatest teacher, and being able to identify with another person and express in great detail, methods to use in overcoming obsticles, was a great loss due to intergration. The problems suffered by the teachers in the 60's and 70's, persist today in the 90's. Inequality, in education, based on economics, and race are still a deciding factor of whether or not children will be productive,and a contribution to society. I feel saddened by the obvious lack of "progress" that integration was supposed to bring about. Teachers, specificly black teachers still feel restricted about the extent they can go to in achieving their goal to educate black children, in the hopes of allowing them more access to a better future. One more point of contention is that today fewer blacks are into education because of the "tests" that are designed to keep them out of that field, as well as the interferrence of others outside of the education arena telling them how to "run" their class. "Big brother knows best!" This is really sad. I propose that we haven't progressed, so much as stagnated, and we aren't really a democracy, so much as a dictatorship. Four hundred years and still enslaved. (Even if it is majorily mentally.)

This book is a historical black teachers' motivater.

I think that black teachers' on teaching has really shown me a lot of the real life experiences that black teachers have gone through to get where they are today. It also taught me a lot about the history of black teachers' that I didn't know. This book has motivated me to want to know and read more not only about black teachers' and their success but also about other black professionals and their great accomplishments. This book was about twenty black teachers and their real life experiences dealing with segregation and prejudice. Five of the twenty teachers that were interviewed in this book were males. This represented the amount of male teachers that taught back in the time of the book. My favorite narrator in this book was Ethel. She went into a school that the system had no hope for and turned it around. She stopped the system from sending old material to this school, she retaught some of the teachers, she got grant money to start new projects which included special classes for the children which needed it and she trained eighteen students preparing them to get accepted to a private prep school. Of the eighteen, sixteen were accepted and I thought by proving she could do this she became a great role model.