Jay Williams didn’t always want to be a teacher. When he was growing up in Scarborough, Williams didn’t have a positive experience in the education system: at best he felt unseen; at worst, he felt traumatized. But he was keen on changing the perception of education for other students who might be experiencing the same thing. Now he is one of the few Black teachers at his Toronto school.
“It took some digging for me personally to go through certain feelings, to really choose personally why I wanted to become an educator,” says Williams. “I still experience pushback. I still experience racism and microaggressions.”
School-board data shows that Ontario, and specifically the GTHA, faces a dearth of Black teachers in its classrooms. According to a staff census at the Halton District School Board, Black teachers make up 1.9 per cent of all elementary-school teachers and 1.6 per cent of all high-school teachers in a region in which nearly 3 per cent of the population is Black. Similarly, at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, Black educators make up just 1.5 per cent of school staff, despite Black people making up roughly 3 per cent of the population. In the Peel District School Board, Ontario’s third largest, Black teachers make up 7.1 per cent of teachers in a region in which roughly 9 per cent of the population is Black. A survey of staff at the Toronto District School Board, Ontario’s largest school board, found that Black staff made up 6 per cent of its workforce, despite Black people making up roughly 9 per cent of its population. Only 28 per cent of school staff participated in the survey.
Jamil Kalim is a teacher with the TDSB. (Courtesy of Jamil Kalim)
This has consequences for racialized students. According to researchers from John Hopkins University and American University, Black students in the United States who are exposed to one Black teacher by third grade are 13 per cent more likely to enrol in university. Students who have had two Black teachers are 32 per cent more likely to enrol in university.
Experts say this is a result of how Black individuals are often treated in schools. “Many racialized people have had negative experiences in the education system, such as low expectations from teachers, having curriculum that silences and marginalizes non-Eurocentric perspectives, and not seeing themselves represented in the teaching profession,” says Zuhra Abawi, a professor of education at Niagara University who studies equity and diversity in relation to teacher hiring policies and practices.
Jamil Kalim, a Black teacher with the TDSB whose PhD research with OISE focused on the experiences of racialized teachers, says Black teachers perform more emotional labour than their white counterparts. In a survey of 66 teachers, 56 per cent of Black teachers in the study said that they felt unappreciated, compared to 21.4 per cent of white teachers. Additionally, 48 per cent of Black teachers felt disconnected from their teacher colleagues, compared to just 21.4 per cent of white teachers. In many situations, Black teachers felt that their race was a factor in experiencing negative emotions or conflict, with 36 per cent of Black teachers noting that this was the case in interactions with colleagues compared to just 15.4 per cent of white teachers feeling the same way
Williams can attest to that. Following the death of George Floyd in the United States, which forced many institutions to reckon with racial inequality, Williams says that a colleague pushed back on the idea that educators should be focusing on anti-Black racism, because the school didn’t have very many Black students. “These veiled kinds of questions and ignorance just show where people’s minds are,” Williams says.
Williams says that white teachers often fail to understand the importance of showcasing Black excellence in the classroom as a way for Black students to see themselves. “When it comes to the recruitment of teachers, it’s important to have teachers like me — teachers who are in the field of education — ensure that those lessons are being taught. Why take a lesson on how to teach math but not one on how to understand the most vulnerable groups of people that are in our classrooms?”
Julian Kitchen is a professor at Brock University. (Courtesy of Julian Kitchen)
Kalim says there needs to be a recognition by school boards that teaching while Black is fundamentally different, in part due to the presence of anti-Black racism. “When Black teachers come across situations of systemic racism, they’re basically on their own because there’s very few Black teachers in the field,” Kalim says. “There’s not a lot of spaces where you can go and debrief around issues of race.”
The participants in Kalim’s study suggested creating informal Black-teacher unions to stave off isolation and to provide a sense of belonging.
Julian Kitchen, a professor of education at Brock University who specializes in social-justice issues relating to teacher education, says universities should develop targeted initiatives to make room for Black candidates at teachers’ colleges. “We need strategic admissions processes including strategic recruitment, because you can only admit who applies,” says Kitchen. “If there’s a latent group of qualified Black people who don’t apply or aren’t being recruited, then you can’t address them, because they can’t get in.”
Kitchen points to programs at York University — which has successfully recruited teacher candidates from diverse backgrounds — and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, which develops diverse teacher-candidate cohorts as part of its partnership with the Centre for Urban Schooling.
Kitchen suggests having more specialized programs such as these, as well as additional programs that are specifically formulated to the needs of Black teachers and that actively recruit Black teacher candidates.
He also suggests putting less emphasis on grades in the admissions process and instead taking a holistic approach to teacher candidates — according to Kitchen, grades aren’t necessarily the best predictor of who will be a good teacher. In his view, admission recruiters should specifically target those who are solid students but may fall just one or two percentage points below required grade-point averages.
Zuhra Abawi is a professor of education at Niagara University. (Courtesy Zuhra Abawi)
Robert Savage, dean of the faculty of education at York University, told TVO.org via email that York targets diverse students and values students who can connect their lived experiences to their teaching. “In part, our holistic approach prioritizes access initiatives that account for systemic barriers students may have faced in educational settings and in their lives through the access initiative. We are committed to actively recruiting and supporting applicants from communities in the Greater Toronto Area in which there has been historical underrepresentation of teacher candidates."
But even if more Black teachers can be trained, problems in the hiring process persist. Zuhra Abawi, a professor of education at Niagara University,says that this problem stems from the fact that teacher hiring is centralized around the decision of one principal. “Because most teachers are white, most people who are becoming principals are white, and teacher hiring is very decentralized,” says Abawi. “Principals have a lot of autonomy when it comes to teacher hiring, and studies show that people are more likely to hire those that look like them and those that they like.”
Abawi, who studies teacher education and hiring practices, says principals could invite advocacy groups and community members from BIPOC backgrounds to sit on teacher-hiring panels, as this would encourage input from diverse communities and allow community members to know what’s going on in their school.
“Mainstream policymakers and educators need to realize that what we’re currently doing is not working and is not likely to yield significant results,” says Kitchen. “We need to take much more dramatic measures to diversify our teaching force so that it’s more representative of students in our school, and we can be more adept at addressing their needs.”
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Correction: An earlier version of this article identified Jamil Kalim as a PhD candidate. In fact, he has already completed his PhD. TVO.org regrets the error.
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