Creating a Safe Haven: Addressing the Negative Impact of Adultification on Black Children in Schools
School is back in session! The beautiful pictures of well-moisturized faces of brown children, baked by the hot summer sun, donning their shiny, colorful, and fashion-ready outfits have slowly faded from our social media feeds. Periodically, if you follow such things, you may come across a novice (read, not yet burned out) teacher sharing new educational tactics to demonstrate control over excited children. Some may say that the honeymoon is over. Experienced educators call this the “storming stage,” where you are in mental and sometimes emotional wrestling matches with your students to get them to submit to your authoritarian rule.
Context: Being a teacher was my favorite thing to do and to be. I proudly taught solely in Black-density public and public charter schools in the city of Milwaukee for over fifteen years…probably a little more, but I just stopped counting. I had the great pleasure of having my name written in the same chapter with a bunch of really amazing young people and now adults in our great city. I’m flexing on you when I say that I am still in touch with a great many of them. I am approached often in these city streets and to the great annoyance of my daughter, by adults who fold and morph into the age they were when they were in my class, faces filled with joy because they ran into, let them tell it, their “favorite teacher.” While I don’t remember all the names, and I vaguely remember their faces, I know the era that I was their teacher by the name they call me. What can I say? My last name is in a constant state of evolution. And no matter when and where I was approached, I am never concerned or afraid because I know and they know that I cared very deeply for them. My storming stages in public education rarely had anything to do with the students. It was always the adults. I quit teaching in public schools in June 2020.
About a year ago, I was given the wonderful task of taking my four-year-old cousin to school almost daily. In those car rides, we laid the foundation for what I pray is a lasting bond. We talked…no, she talked, and I listened. She has five siblings and trust me when I say, I was up to date on all their business. When I could get a word in, I made sure to talk about what was happening in school, her relationships with her classmates and her teacher, and what was the latest book she read. I missed being a teacher so much, but somehow, this felt like I at least still had a little toe in the classroom.
I share this tender time with my little cousin, Haven, because one day, as I was rounding the corner to her school, preparing to hop out, open the door, and escort her into the building like the princess she is, I got a download. “In order to improve the lives of Black children, you must control them.” This voice was so distinct and loud in my head and so foreign to my teaching experience (I completely surrendered my ultimate need for control when I found myself a teacher to 25 3rd-5th grade gifted and talented students at Young Leaders Academy…it was impossible) that I had to shake my head to try to settle my thoughts. After much rumination, I understood as I approached this other Black density school where my little cousin attended, what I heard was the mindset of this system. And make no mistake, it is harmful and violent and absolutely must change! The error is thinking that the lives of Black children need to be improved, first of all.
Most of y'all don’t even know these kids except for your opinion about not liking how their parents decided to spell their names. What do you even know about them to find the error? Cuz you damn sure are not doing home visits. (If you are feeling defensive, ask about me. I showed up and knocked and asked for something to drink during my home visits!) These control tactics are not in response to a behavior, reactionary, because teachers are practicing these finishing moves in the summer orientation. Because you can’t really know if a child is learning if they are not completely silent, right? And you can’t be certain that all eyes are on you and four year olds aren’t talking in the hallways nor keeping their hands to themselves if they are not carrying a pretend marshmallow in their mouths, right? Also, mark for me the times you have sat with your friends at lunch and ate in silence! My dream facilitation would be to act as a Black density school teacher to a bunch of teachers so that they can see how ridiculous and oppressive these control tactics are. So when you see me being followed by a line of adults in tucked in shirts, hands tightly to their sides, chin up and a fucking imaginary marshmallow in their mouths, know that I’m living the dream! Also, promise me that you will yell out to the one that’s your friend until they smile or wave back so that I can be sure to move their color down when we get back into the classroom. And yes, my dream is to get adults to realize that children are human beings, younger, fresh human beings, at times in need of a little guidance, like to roll around in the grass, and make up fantastical stories, but still, very much human children.
And that, my friends, is the problem. The fact that Black children are viewed and treated as adults in a society that automatically views Black adults as dangerous is why with prison-like precision, many schools, public, Black density or not, find comfort in their ability to control these baby Black bodies. I’m fired up in writing this after being provoked by a recent Wisconsin Public Radio article titled, Milwaukee college prep programs benefit Hispanic students but Black students continue to struggle” (Hess, 2023). While the article presents data that demonstrates the impact of college readiness programs for Black and Brown students, it is the title that grinds my gears. Let me reach in my ELA bag real quick. The title of the article is written as a compound sentence, which is a sentence that connects two independent clauses with a conjunction. Notice in the first independent clause, “programs” is the subject, “benefit” the verb or action of the clause, and “Hispanic students” the direct object, receiving the action of the verb. However, in the second clause, separated by the conjunction “but” which initiates a conflict or alternative to the first clause, we read “Black students” as the subject and “continue” as the verb followed by a full infinitive “to struggle” which acts as a direct object receiving the action of the verb “continue”. This reads to me, and maybe some of you as well, that it is the Black students who are the problem and not the programs’ failure to effectively impact the learning of all students. Furthermore, watch how the title makes you stop considering the programs and start thinking about what is wrong with Black children. Placing blame and focus on Black children when something goes wrong, holding them to a different standard than you would any other child is evidence of adultification.
That article’s title is only a microcosm of the macrocosm. This adultification is why even though parents may be excited for their children to return to school, why some schools are literally rolling out the red carpet to greet students and kick off the new year, some children, a good number of children, begrudgingly get up and go to school every day, bracing themselves for the literal violence that awaits them because a bunch of adults want to control how they walk, how they dress, when they should be thirsty, what time they go to the bathroom, and if and when they get to talk to their friends, as a means to ensure that they will become positive productive citizens. (You ever ask yourselves how non-Black and non-Brown kids become so “productive” without all of these restrictions?) Adultification of Black children is rooted in slavery and white fear and it still impacts our children today. Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Most recently, Ralph Yarl. But that was in the streets, right? That doesn’t show up in schools. No way. Yes way. Alfonseca (2023) shares the following:
“Some researchers are speculating how much of a role adultification plays in the perception of Black youth in the aftermath of Yarl's shooting. They say Black children are not afforded the ability to be a child, make mistakes or be granted the benefit of the doubt.”
Black children are also much more likely to be suspended from school and receive harsher punishments for the same infractions than white children, according to research published by the American Psychological Association under the assumptions backed by adultification.
While I am awaiting the enactment of the Black exodus of families from the American school system as the only viable option to exact change, I will offer the following for educators (novice and expert) and for parents (your children are not lying all the time about these folks):
Read: (to start)
“The Miseducation of the Negro” by Carter G Woodson
“Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching” by Jarvis R. Givens
“Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” by Monique W. Morris
The articles above (links embedded)
Practice:
Beloved Community aspects in the classroom and at home
Question everything
Looking into your students’/children’s eyes and asking what do they need from you
Listen to what they say in response to (c).
Submit to learning from the children (Wow! They offer so much!)
Teachers, seek to build relationships with your parents. Parents, get real buddy buddy with your babies’ teachers (elementary and middle school…Zora barely lets me come to PT conference at this point. She’s a junior.)
Love these children, as children, as who they are and what they bring to the world, for real.
There is so much more that can be said and so much more that needs to be done. So, I will leave you with this. Teaching is hard work. It’s heart work. Do the work with your whole heart. Every child, like every single one of them, deserves it.
