With season three of Abbott Elementary back into full gear, I have been thinking a lot about the character growth of our fave, Janine Teagues. As an audience, we met Janine as the wide-eyed, eager new teacher with lots of ideas and little experience. She wanted to change lives in the same school system she grew up in. It was a noble undertaking, but not without lots of hard, necessary lessons along the way. Nonetheless, Janine’s character reflects the experiences of Black women teachers across the country.
Niecy Tates, who is in her third year of teaching 11th and 12th grade Math in Baltimore City schools, has also found herself in the same school system she is a product of. Tates comes from a long line of educators, but teaching was not on her immediate agenda. In college, she majored in computer science. It wasn’t until serving as a summer camp teacher as part of a program with the National Society of Black Engineers that she realized, like many in her family, she’d been bit by the teaching bug, too.
“I was able to go to DC and work in a school and mentor at an all-girls camp in engineering and science curriculums. And I had a great time. I loved it. And that is what really made me realize, well, maybe I do like teaching.”
As a Black Math teacher, Tates has to contend with the complicated disconnect between Black students and Mathematics. Some of that disconnect might be by design, particularly as it pertains to achievement gaps in reading and math that disproportionately impact Black students. Tates, however, is working to change the narrative.
“I instill in my students that, ‘hey, this is not something that you can’t do, it’s just something that you’ve been told that you can’t do.’ And if we start to see math as not this thing that we need to learn, but as a tool, maybe we can break down those barriers and we could see more of our students, especially young Black youth from Baltimore specifically, interested in these STEM programs or STEM…
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