Baruti Kafele, author of The Equity & Social Justice Education 50, believes teachers need cultural competence to make a difference in the lives of Black students. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MILKEN FAMILY FOUNDATION

When I meet teachers on the road, I routinely ask, “What’s your name and what do you teach?” In response, most tell me their name and the subject or grade they teach. However, I occasionally meet someone who responds, “I teach children.”

For this teacher, children are the priority. Content is second. A teacher who prioritizes children over content is a very different teacher from the one who prioritizes content over children. Looking at children first translates into seeing the whole child — including the child’s life experiences, reality, challenges, obstacles, pressures, demands, needs, interests, goals, aspirations and how the student learns, thinks and makes sense of new information.

Rooted in all of these experiences are the student’s racial and cultural identities. That is to say, their racial and cultural identities play a significant role in how they see, experience and react to the world, all of which have unavoidable classroom implications.

Culture and Behavior

Race and culture play out in almost all facets of life. Case in point: When the “Black Panther” movie came out in February 2018, I was eager to see it. Although I’ve never been interested in comic book characters, this one was different. Black people were being depicted as never before portrayed on the motion-picture screen. I couldn’t wait to see a major film devoid of the negative stereotypes of Black people.

The storyline wasn’t as interesting to me as the audience at the theater. I wanted to study culture via the audience of “Black Panther.” As such, I saw the film twice — first in a theater with a predominantly Black audience and subsequently in a theater with a predominantly white audience. I wanted to see how these two different audiences would react to a film with central Black characters — and whether my predictions based on my lived experiences played out.

On the evening I went to see “Black Panther” in the theater of the predominantly Black audience, as predicted, the audience was very vocal in the theater. In fact, the atmosphere was quite festive. The Black audience was elated to see themselves being depicted positively, devoid of the usual stereotypes. The audience members weren’t reacting in a way that distracted others from viewing the film; they were responding toward the screen, reminiscent of the call and response in the Black Baptist church. The applause celebrated the storyline, the film’s characters, and the audience members themselves.

Predictable Differences

The next evening, I went to see “Black Panther” in a theater with a predominantly white audience, which predictably was quite a different experience. The audience was quiet, reserved and subdued — even during scenes where one might expect applause.

My point is not that one audience was better, more disciplined or more cultured than the other. Culturally speaking, the experience was vastly different, which does not imply that the Black audience’s experience defines culture for all Black people nor does the experience among the white audience define culture for all white people. The two audiences represent disparate cultural experiences.

The question is this: Would someone who is of neither of those cultures have the cultural competence to comprehend what they are seeing and experiencing in the theater without reaching the wrong conclusion? This question leads to an exploration of cultural competence in our schools.

School Applications

In the post-George Floyd era, educators realize that their efforts to close the racial gap in achievement are simply not working. While there are pockets of success, the masses of Black and Brown children continue to be in a crisis, with the pandemic only adding to the intensity of their learning needs.

In recent decades, equity, diversity, inclusion, cultural responsiveness, cultural relevance and cultural competence have become a common part of the education lexicon. Yet during my 33 years as a teacher, principal and consultant in education, I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around the language of “achievement gap.” I understand what it means in theory, but I have never been able to make sense of it.

As an educator in predominantly Black and low-performing schools, I understood students’ underperformance had nothing to do with their race or even poverty. I stopped using the term achievement gap and replaced it with “attitude gap,” which I defined as “the gap between those students who have the will to achieve excellence and those who do not.”

During his time as a high school principal in Newark, N.J., Baruti Kafele addressed the school’s male students during a weekly “Power Monday” session. PHOTO COURTESY OF BARUTI KAFELE

With the achievement gap, the priority is content and standardized assessments. With the attitude gap, the priority is transforming students’ attitude — their will to succeed. If you change the attitude, the achievement will follow. I proved this through my focus on the cultural competency of my staff.

The wrong questions invariably yield the wrong responses. When working with school staff, I shared that the question is not “Why does the achievement gap exist?” nor “How do we close the achievement gap?” On the surface, these are relevant questions, but the answers are endless.

By focusing instead on closing the attitude gap and improving cultural competence, the most relevant question I asked my staff was: “Do we have the cultural competence to make strong, solid and meaningful connections with our Black students?” Asked differently: “Do we know and understand our Black students culturally?”

We did not. That meant our focus as a community of learners had to be on developing our cultural competence via focus group discussions, group studies of books and journal articles, and relevant professional development. You cannot connect with a student you do not know. Knowing a fraction of the student who shows up to class every day is not enough. To elevate a student’s achievement, you must learn about them through a cultural lens.

Unfamiliar Cultures

All school systems should develop cultural competency among staff. This means, first, engaging administrators at all levels in difficult and uncomfortable conversations about race and culture. Educators working with children, communities and cultures with which they are un-familiar are operating at a disadvantage.

I grew up in a city that was 100 percent Black. In my young mind, my city reflected the world at large. Over time, I realized there was a world beyond the boundaries of East Orange, N.J.

In my sophomore year of high school, my mother and I relocated to another part of the state. I attended a high school enrolling more than 2,000 students, where I became the fifth Black student. What a culture shock. My mother and I were the only Black family in our neighborhood. If I didn’t know I was Black, I found out there.

Academically, I was a complete failure. I had zero confidence in myself in that environment. I had zero support in that environment. No teachers understood me, a young Black male from an urban community in New Jersey. I never passed a course with more than a D.

No one in that school knew how to connect with me, motivate me, inspire me. I repeated a year and graduated from high school in five years. I went on to college and graduated summa cum laude. What was the difference? As an undergraduate at a diverse university, I discovered many individuals who “looked like me” and faculty who didn’t look like me but who, through years of experience working with Black students, understood me.

Uncomfortable Conversations

It is not enough for teachers to have expertise in content. They must have equal expertise and competence in working with children. Black students who underperform and fail do not lack intelligence, motivation or work ethic. More commonly, the classroom teacher lacks cultural competence.

The difficult, uncomfortable conversations eventually must make their way to principals. The work at the building level will differ from place to place based on the staff composition of the school. In my world as a presenter, speaking to a Black audience is a far different experience from speaking to a white audience. The same holds true with leading a school.

A Black principal running a school with a predominantly Black staff has fewer nuances to navigate when holding a conversation about race. The white principal with a racially diverse staff faces a different challenge engaging staff on matters of race. There’s a multiplicity of reasons, including the perceived credibility of the principal to engage staff on a potentially explosive subject. How this conversation plays out, if it does, depends largely on the racial composition of school staff and administration.

The goal is always to build understanding and empathy, not create tension and dissension. Children win when they are the priority.

BARUTI KAFELE, a former principal in urban schools, is a consultant based in Jersey City, N.J., and author of The Equity & Social Justice Education 50: Critical Questions for Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for Black Students (ASCD). Twitter: @PrincipalKafele