Journal of a Black Teacher

Meanwhile, anyone bold enough to ask why the results never change is treated like a disruptive guest at a dinner party, tolerated, but only if they promise not to mention the burnt turkey. Welcome to the team no one actually wants to be on. By Don Allen - Journal Of A Black Teacher I know what loss feels like. I’ve carried it, survived it, and learned from it. Nothing teaches you the anatomy of disappointment like seeing systems fail the very children they claim to uplift. Since the beginning of 2025, while working on my dissertation and digging through mountains of Minnesota education data , I’ve come face-to-face with a truth that is impossible to ignore: we are losing, and far too many people seem strangely comfortable with it. When you look at the numbers coming out of the Twin Cities , reading proficiency , math proficiency , chronic absenteeism , and behavior incidents , you don’t see hope. You see patterns. You see neglect disguised as progress. You see the same “solutions” rec...

Oh, STEM and STEAM …the magic buzzwords that every underserved school district has been chanting like a spell for the last twenty years. Walk into any school brochure, PowerPoint, or grant application, and you’d think kids in underfunded communities are basically building Mars rovers between lunch and sixth period. Administrators proudly point to a donated 3D printer gathering dust in the corner, or a “ STEM Day ” that happens once a year, right between standardized testing and whatever crisis comes next. Yet after two full decades of promises, slogans, and colorful STEAM posters taped to cracked walls, what do we really have? Students who can’t take home a functioning laptop. Classrooms with broken microscopes. Robotics teams that never got off the ground because the coach quit after the second week. Teachers who get “training” that amounts to a YouTube video and a prayer. If this is STEM, then no wonder Black America isn’t preparing for orbit; we’re still trying to get working Wi...