Teachers Preston Jackson, right, and Dave Carson confer during a P.E. class at California Middle School in Sacramento.
Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource
Petrina Miller remembers, as a young teacher in Los Angeles Unified, helping another teacher during district testing and noticing that the teacher was giving Black students and other students of color the answers. Miller asked her why she was doing that.
“Let them have a productive struggle,” Miller said. “Let them try, and whatever score they get is what they get. And that’s fine.”
The teacher said, “Poor little babies, they don’t know any better,” in a way that made Miller uncomfortable. On another day, the same teacher used a racist term to refer to Miller, who is Black.
Black teachers: how to recruit THEM and make them stay
This is the first part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California….
