Black teachers who either currently or formerly worked in the School District of Philadelphia share why so may are leaving.
School District, remembers the hurtful comments she heard from parents when she started her career over a decade ago as a young Black teacher in what was then a predominantly white area of southwest Philly.
who either currently or formerly worked in the School District of Philadelphia. Tracey and other names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of our interview participants. This study was done in partnership with Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit education research group focused on racial and social justice. Our findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Black Studies.
“Black public school educators in Philadelphia have grown weary, for good reason,” wrote education scholar and author Camika Royal in her 2022 book “Our interviews suggest a key reason for this weariness has to do with experiences of racism within the larger school district that affect Black teachers across the system, but manifest differently depending on their schools’ locations.
“I’m walking down the hall and I say ‘Hello,’” one mid-career teacher reflected. “If it’s just me and a white colleague and we’re passing each other in the hallway … then they don’t say anything to me. But the person behind me who was white, they’ll say something to them before even say, ‘Good morning.’”Despite the many systemic issues and experiences of racism that Black teachers reported to us, most of the participants in our study – 25 out of 30 – were current teachers in the district.
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