Advocates say Connecticut needs more Black male teachers

By Earvin Adjei
UConn Jour­nal­ism
June 6, 2025

In the busy halls of East Hart­ford High School, stu­dents often sought out Mr. Coop­er and Mr. Clait­ty not just for help with school­work, but also for life advice, men­tor­ship and a friend­ly con­ver­sa­tion.

To many stu­dents, these men were more than teach­ers — they were father fig­ures, uncles, and old­er broth­ers in a sys­tem where faces like theirs were not often seen. 

The pres­ence of Black male teach­ers like Roo­sevelt Coop­er and Wal­lace Clait­ty in Connecticut’s schools is alarm­ing­ly low, and Clait­ty said this under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion pos­es sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for stu­dents of col­or who ben­e­fit from hav­ing men­tors who reflect their own back­ground. 

“Many of my kids have said I was the first Black male teacher they had,” Clait­ty said. “For some kids, I was like a role mod­el for them — some­thing that they could strive to become.”

Connecticut’s pub­lic schools serve a diverse stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, but the teach­ing work­force does not reflect this same diver­si­ty. Accord­ing to the state Depart­ment of Education’s Edu­ca­tor Diver­si­ty Dash­board, dur­ing the 2023–2024 school year, out of approx­i­mate­ly 54,006 teach­ers statewide, only 4.9% were Black or African Amer­i­can. The num­ber of Black male teach­ers is even small­er, high­light­ing a sig­nif­i­cant gap in rep­re­sen­ta­tion. 

In East Hart­ford in the 2024–2025 school year, stu­dents of col­or made up 90.6% of the stu­dent body while teach­ers of col­or com­prised only 17.7%, accord­ing to the Diver­si­ty Dash­board.

While exact num­ber of Black male edu­ca­tors in East Hart­ford is not spec­i­fied in the avail­able data, anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests they are an even small­er minor­i­ty with­in the district’s teach­ing work­force.

The dash­board shows that some Con­necti­cut school sys­tems are doing a bit bet­ter than East Hart­ford in recruit­ing teach­ers of col­ors. Water­bury this year has 18.6% teach­ers of col­or com­pared to 90.4% stu­dents of col­or while Bloom­field has 26% teach­ers of col­or in a dis­trict where stu­dents of col­or make up 91.3% of the stu­dent body.

New Haven has 31.4% teach­ers of col­or and 90.4% stu­dents of col­or com­pared to 32.5% and 93.1%, respec­tive­ly, in Hart­ford.

With teach­ing careers span­ning more than a decade each, Coop­er and Clait­ty, who have since left the East Hart­ford school sys­tem, described the chal­lenges and tri­umphs of being Black male edu­ca­tors in Con­necti­cut.

“Well, to be hon­est, the field of edu­ca­tion, even up to this day, is not a well-pay­ing pro­fes­sion,” said Coop­er, who is now retired. “So if you are going to raise a fam­i­ly and have a home, an educator’s salary just doesn’t cut it. From a Black man’s per­spec­tive, I would assume they’re think­ing I could make more mon­ey doing some­thing else.”

Clait­ty empha­sized the impor­tance of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the class­room due to the role he played in his stu­dents’ lives. 

“A lot of kids, I was either their father or uncle or old­er broth­er or some­thing like that,” he said. “They sought me out to advise them.”

Accord­ing to a 2022 study in the Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ic Jour­nal, Black stu­dents are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to attend col­lege if they have Black edu­ca­tors dur­ing their for­ma­tive years. The study found that Black stu­dents who had a Black teacher in ear­ly ele­men­tary grades were 9 per­cent­age points more like­ly to grad­u­ate from high school and 6 per­cent­age points more like­ly to enroll in col­lege.

The Neag School of Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut is part of a nation­wide ini­tia­tive aimed at increas­ing the num­ber of Black and Lati­no men in the teach­ing pro­fes­sion. The project seeks to boost enroll­ment of young men of col­or in teacher prepa­ra­tion pro­grams by 25% in the com­ing years.

In addi­tion to uni­ver­si­ties, orga­ni­za­tions like the Con­necti­cut Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion are lead­ing efforts to encour­age young peo­ple of col­or to pur­sue teach­ing. The CEA’s “Teach­ing Is Call­ing You” cam­paign high­lights the impact edu­ca­tors can have as role mod­els and men­tors.

John Napoleon, a for­mer East Hart­ford High School stu­dent, said hav­ing teach­ers who looked like him was encour­ag­ing.

“I had two Black male teach­ers — Mr. Clait­ty and Mr. Hig­gins,” Napoleon said. “I def­i­nite­ly saw them as role mod­els. They made me feel like I belonged and that I could actu­al­ly relate to them. Mr. Clait­ty and I used to talk about bas­ket­ball and oth­er stuff I was into, which was pret­ty cool.

“Hav­ing some­one with sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences made a big dif­fer­ence.”

Earvin Adjei is a jour­nal­ism major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut.