‘Your students need you’: Importance of Black male teachers drives Kansas City activist

Editor’s Note: This interview is part of the second season of Voices of Kansas City, a project created in collaboration with KKFI Community Radio to highlight the experiences of Kansas Citians making an impact on the community. Hear the interviews at 6 p.m. Wednesdays on KKFI 90.1 FM, or at KKFI.org. Do you know someone who should be featured in a future season of Voices of Kansas City? Tell us about them using this form.

When Cornell Ellis was in grade and secondary school he noticed pretty early on that there were very few Black male teachers throughout his educational history. Ellis grew up in Kansas City as the child of two educators, so of course education was always paramount in his childhood household. It’s not surprising that Ellis would go on to become a teacher. He wanted to be the male role model that he had wanted to see in classrooms when he was in school.

Ellis went on to found BLOC (Brothers Liberating Our Communities) in hopes of encouraging more Black men to become teachers, and as a support group to keep Black men in the education field. The lack of Black male teachers is a big missing piece to the puzzle of improving the inner city educational system. Ellis seeks to fill in the gap by identifying and supporting mentors he believes can better relate to young Black male student because of some shared experiences. Ellis and his non-profit have already made a difference in the lives of Black students in Kansas City and that’s why The Star asked Ellis, a grassroots activist, to share his story in this season of Voices of Kansas City.

The Star invited Eilis to join us in the studios of KKFI radio where he recently spoke to J.M. Banks, The Star’s culture and identity reporter. That interview, with minor editing for space and clarity, is published here in a question and answer format to share Foster’s authentic voice.

Meet Cornell Ellis

The Star: I always like to start things off by kind of telling people how you got to where you are. Why don’t you just break down your childhood and how you entered into your field of expertise?

Ellis: Absolutely. Kansas City is my home. I think that’s where I’ll have to start and eventually, someday, hopefully I’ll finish somewhere else. But maybe they’ll bring my bones and my ashes back here. My mother is from here. She came by way of Arkansas, by my grandmother. My father is from Saint Louis, and there by way of Mississippi, a historian by trade.

And so I always like to talk to Black people, especially about how they got here and, you know, what were their pathways to getting especially to the north as we talk about the great migration and Black people exiting the south. So Arkansas and Mississippi are kind of where my roots are. My grandfather, again, on my father’s side, he hopped on the train as a sharecropper, as a ten year old, and ended up in Saint Louis and worked at the Ford factory for 40 years.

And died signing his name as an X.

My grandmother on my mother’s side from Arkansas came to Kansas City and cleaned houses for 40 years and my mother tells the story in jest. But it’s actually a great example of how as Black folks turn trauma into gold but it’s a great example of the things that we have to watch and we have to endure generationally to get to where we are.

My mother was the only person in her family to graduate from college, not the only person to go, but the only person to graduate. She showed up to the University of Missouri in 1972 after graduating from Paseo High School and Kansas City public schools and they told her Black women don’t belong in college. Go home. Of course, she persisted and graduated with a degree in health sciences, and so she taught for over 30 years in the Kansas City public schools.

And I often talk about that as being a lot of my formative experiences in education. I watched her be in grocery stores, and in banks, and in churches, and see a lot of her former students and hear that, “Oh my God, Miss Ellis, is that you? You changed my life. If it wasn’t for your class, I wouldn’t have been doing what I’m doing.”

And those types of experiences as a young person really stick with you.

My father also went to University of Missouri, played football after graduating from Sumner High School in Saint Louis, we’re from Fairgrounds Park in Saint Louis. Saint Louis folks know about that area. And my mother is from Prospect ( in Kansas City). So from both sides of the hood both sides of the state. And he graduated with a political science degree. The only one in his family to graduate with a college degree.

So I come from a background of scarcely made it, second generation college students. You know, I work with a lot of students and talk to a lot of people that are the first to do it in their family. I was lucky to not have to not have to endure that. My sister is also very educated, got a terminal degree in art, I have one sister, she’s six years older than me, also an educator. So between my father being a nonprofit leader, which is what he did after doing political science, my mother being an educator, my sister being an educator, it just seemed to fall right in line with me being in education as well. I graduated from Rockhurst High School and went on to play football at Mizzou and then graduated from Avila University playing football there as well.

I started teaching. It just kind of fell in line. I saw all my family members doing it and knew it was something that was important. I had come to love education when I was in college due to history and decided that I wanted to embark on that same journey with students. So I taught for about eight years at the Kauffman School and then founded a couple of initiatives to start working on diverse educators.

So I realized that less than 2% of educators in America are Black men, and so I founded BLOC to increase the number of Black male educators in schools. So it’s been a long journey. It’s been five years of being an executive director and founder, and I was teaching for almost ten. But I truly love the work that I’m doing and wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Growing up you had two educators as parents, right? What was your experience around your peers who didn’t have that kind of reinforcement towards the pursuit of education?

Yes. Or the value of education. Right.? I mean, it was always a like a predetermined destination. It was college. Right. You know, you’re going you’re going to get the best education that you can because that’s what helps you unlock the future. Your knowledge is something that they can never take away from you.

I looked around, at my peers especially. We had colleagues and we had community members that may have had that value, but the parental piece from directly inside the home may not have always been present, especially from two parents as well. Right.? I have really great friends that I consider to be brothers that come from single parent households that valued education, but still just weren’t the same type of environment that I was coming from.

My father often took it upon himself to be like the community dad. We often had kids over our house, picking up kids from football practice, driving kids around, and feeding them because he knew and we knew that it was important to surround ourselves with men that were doing positive things and create strong communities around us. And that education piece is going to come as a byproduct.

So talking about where your future is, where you’re going, what your next steps are, all come up as a byproduct of the relationships that your building with them, you know.

With Brothers Liberating Our Community the founding of it why don’t you give me the initial steps of how that idea formed and what was it like implementing it into what we see today?

Like I said, it’s been a long journey with a lot of great people involved. I’m really glad you use the term co-founder because it’s something that I couldn’t have done alone. Through my travels as an educator I found a conference called Amplify here in Kansas City. Amplify is a teachers of color conference funded by the Kauffman Foundation and hosted there every year.

And we’re in year eight, actually, of the Amplify Conference to be able to support all educators of color and so through that work, we really started to just look around and see, man there’s like no Black men around here. So I started to do kind of this national search for Black male educators. And what was the data around Black males in education?

I found some really great mentors in Philadelphia. So right now it’s called the Center for Black Educator Development, we went there in 2016 with five guys.

We were surrounded by a thousand Black men in one room, a thousand Black male educators, and we just couldn’t shake that feeling.

We knew that that power and that those conversations and that energy was something that we needed to bring back to the Kansas City area. Especially thinking about the way that Kansas City education is fragmented. So we have the Kansas City public schools, but there’s 14 surrounding districts and we often find one Black man over here, one Black man over here, one Black man over here.

And they’re not truly connected. So BLOC was kind of born out of this idea that we really just wanted to get the guys together and we wanted to create an environment and a network that the guys could lean on. I’ll never forget it. We’re at Brown & Loe, down on the riverfront, and rented a room in the back and was throwing around names and came up with this idea of Brothers Liberating Our Communities.

And what does liberation mean? How do we liberate? What actions does it take? What thoughts and ideas does it take? Because we know the education system is not working and we know that education is the key to liberation. Marcus Garvey’s quote is our is our organizational quote, Liberate the minds of man and you will liberate the bodies of men.

And at the time of our founding was 2016, we started doing this work. And we knew that education was a key to change.

And so we just kind of get it started doing professional development. Like I say, get in the Black guys together. Our very first PD ever. we had like four or five guys at it. We just got some Papa John’s Pizza and we had a conversation.

Now, Black men take on many different roles throughout the day in the school building that aren’t related to their actual duties. You know, they’re popping in a Susie’s class. They break up the fight. They’re popping downstairs to talk to Susie’s mama. They’re doing bus duty and they’re doing cafeteria duty. Right. And this was a direct experience of the work that I was having or that I was doing in schools at the time.

So having that conversation, a real conversation about real problems that Black men are having in schools and they’re having real conversations about solutions. Right. So how do you say no? How do you set up boundaries? How do you coach people’s capacity so that you don’t have to do everything yourself right? You can actually build a team around you to be able to help you delegate some of these tasks that you know are necessary that you feel burden to do, but that you can’t keep on doing everything for everyone.

So that was our first program and that just really developed into a monthly get together that we still do and now there’s three or four other programs that we run alongside of it to really help reshape what education looks like so that we can invite a new generation of educators into the space that will then actively like change how education is working right.

Again, education’s not working for anyone. Less than 30% of Black kids can read, less than 50% of white kids can read. It’s not working for anybody. We have to be able to figure out a way to do what education was truly intended for, which is to create informed citizens to participate in a democracy. We’re coming up on an election season, and we have children that are graduating from high school that not eligible to vote.

They can’t read a bill and can’t decide for themselves which candidates are best. It’s a actual function of the education systems to create a strong democracy. And right now our country is failing at doing that.

How do you feel we get more Black men in the field of education?

Well, I mean, first and foremost, it’s about it’s about pay it’s about compensation. But that compensation and that pay comes with a culture and a reverence that we’re missing. We don’t respect teachers. We don’t respect education. We see it as babysitting. Therefore we don’t compensate it highly. You see what’s important to society by what they spend their money on.

So, of course, compensation is first and foremost and culture of education. So I think alongside of the representation issue is the curriculum issue and the content issue.. So what are we actually talking about in schools? How are we communicating success to students? How are we measuring success with students and teachers?

These are all factors that disengage Black men from education. When you look at the data around why teachers are leaving and all teachers are leaving, running away from education. First and foremost is dissatisfaction with the administration and administration often is, you know, just passing down what they have to pass down.

The principals got to keep their job, right. So they’re passing down and doing what they are told to do. And so there just ends up being this filter down effect where policies and legislation and and standard based curriculums dominate teachers, dailies and teachers don’t have the ability to really teach what’s necessary. So, again, that’s the second frustration that I hear a lot from from Black male educators and I think, third, you know, it will be rooted around that representation because they just feel alone. The representation like the first domino in a train of dominoes that you knock down. If you add more diverse educators to the system, then they’re going to teach their own history. They’re going to teach what they know they’re going to teach from their perspectives.

Therefore, the curriculum is automatically going to be more relevant. It’s going to be more authentic. It’s going to have more voices present. If you have more voices teaching it. Again, with the policies and the procedures; you go to a lot of schools and there’s zero tolerance policies that are burdensome on Black educators.

You’re kicking out the only Black boy in the school for wearing a hoodie.

I’m the only Black teacher in the school and I can’t stand up for him. I don’t have a voice for him because I’m trying to keep my job. And it’s a job that’s not even paying enough. So now you can kind of start to see the way that issues can start to compound over the course of a semester.

Tomorrow I’m going to get a really racist email from Susie, who’s my next door neighbor, about how I’m being too loud in my classroom and how my music is disturbing her class. Again, I don’t really have the leverage or the knowledge, the verbiage to defend myself. So again, this is where BLOC comes into play.

How can we start to, you know, line your pockets with a couple thousand dollars a month for doing programming and professional development for us? How can we start to help you read through your emails and create strong strategies for responding to some of these negative interactions that you’re having, these so-called microaggressions? There’s nothing micro about them. They’re aggressive counter-culture tendencies that are not only happening to our only educators in schools, but are happening to our students as well, on a regular basis.

If they got the gumption to send you a email, imagine what they’re saying to Johnny and what they’re saying to Johnny’s parents. So, again, the BLOC can help. “What email did you get today? Forward that to me Let me read that. You know, I know your principal. I know your superintendent. Let me give them a call and let them know what Susie is doing. And maybe we can provide some services for you.”

Or on the other end, ‘you know what dog? What music are you playing? You know, maybe we should tone that down a little bit.’ You know, have somebody that looks like you provide you with that tough feedback that you may need to grow in that moment.

So BLOC is something that I created, that I wished I had to help me stay in education. You know, if I had BLOC, somebody to pay for my master’s degree and link me up without two Black men in the city and meet up once a month and have free drinks and free pizza and, you know, talk, talk to guys, that that is a way that I feel like I can stay in education at least a little bit longer.

What’s been some of the feedback that you’ve received from fellow Black male educators who have come into the fold?

Nothing but positive. We’ve retained over 90% of our members in BLOC. I can’t ever sit here and say that we’re everything for everybody. I of course know Black men that have just told me straight up, “I just don’t feel like it’s for me..” I’ve seen it personally where they come to one event and come to every BLOC event afterwards.

So everybody is different. Every man needs something different. I would encourage any Black man out there right now that are feeling isolated, are feeling depressed, are feeling anxious about going to work tomorrow, come to an event and check it out or find some type of support. Because your students need you.

I literally got a text message last night from one of our current fellows that, you know, BLOC has been the best experience that he’s been able to have as a first-year teacher. I have several of my fellows that would say they wouldn’t be teaching still if it weren’t for BLOC and the work that we’ve been able to curate around them.

We’re not doing anything for them. We’re just doing it with them. We’re walking alongside them in their own power, in their own development and helping them sharpen the tools to be able to be the best educators that they can be. I get a lot of positive feedback from our accomplices as well. I don’t like the word allies.

I rather use the word “accomplices.” But white people know how important this work is. White teachers can look around their schools and understand. Every time I tell a white teacher, I’m trying to get more Black male educators in schools, white ladies hug me. Like, “Oh my God, thank you for the work that you are doing.” Because the Black boys that they love need to see Black men doing great things and doing positive things in their lives.

So not only is the response strong from Black men, the response is strong from non-Black men, it’s also strong from from students. I think I just have a gift for speaking with students and building relationships with students. But just overall, young men want to be around us, want to have this conversation about what’s wrong with education. They want to have this conversation of how can we make education better. No human being wants what’s bad for them. Every human being, every parent, wants what’s best for their kid and wants there kid to be better than them. Every person wants positive things for their lives. We just have to find the right triggers and the right levers to be able to get that going.

Just yesterday, for example, I was out at a school. I was there visiting the young boys mentoring group and the educators, there were like, four or five Black men that were convening the Black boys for this mentoring group. They get together once a month and there was one young man who did not want to come. He was adamant about this was not something that he needed.

He he wanted to to go and do what he thought was his passion and talent and what was going to benefit his time best. And there was an argument among the men about whether or not this young man should be forced to participate or made mandatory. You know, one man thought, “No, this young man said very clearly he don’t want to do this. He shouldn’t be forced to do this. I told him he could go.”

The other man was like, “No, I told him he should be here because even if he don’t think he will gain from this, he will. Have him come sit his little behind down and get something from this.” The young man ended up being in my group.

Of course, we ended up making a strong connection and him sitting there chatting with me 15 minutes after all the other kids had gone. Turns out his favorite thing was stocks. So he thought he wanted to go spend his time during their home run period trading stocks as opposed to listening to the Black men talk about masculinity.

He was a great contributor in a group around the topic and we sat and went through my Robin Hood after and checked out my stocks and he gave me some advice on how to do some some quick trades. It’s about finding the entry point with these young people and figuring out what is their lever to be able to see the world in a different way.

But the response is overwhelmingly positive that we need more Black men in schools. Black men want to be in schools, they just can’t afford to, so I love for BLOC to be able to find them, opportunities to engage.

What’s been the most difficult parts of getting the vision off the ground? And what’s been your favorite part of being the executive director of this group?

My favorite part is watching everybody around me do great work. I’ve been able to bring together a team — shout out to Dante Goodwin, my program director and Ralph Cairo, manager of operations — to be able to really help put the infrastructure behind BLOC That’s been my biggest challenge. I think we as visionaries and entrepreneurs, we have a vision and we have an idea that we know is necessary.

We don’t always know the nuts and bolts to make it run and so we need people around us, strong people around us, to help us fill in the gaps. That’s what my team has been able to do. So it’s been great to watch my team grow and watch the work continue to get done. Shout out to all my program coordinators and all the volunteers that work with BLOC.

They wouldn’t get done by myself and the difficult part, I think, is the opposite of that. It’s watching the organization grow and understanding that you don’t have the capacity to do it. And, knowing that you have to go out and create a network, create groups of people, create volunteers and employees, create the revenue to be able to pay those employees and pay those contractors so that the work can keep going.

Philanthropy is not fun . Raising money is not my favorite thing. I’m not bad at it, don’t get me wrong. The organization is worth a million and a half dollars. I’ve done a pretty good job, but it’s not something that I enjoy. I’d much rather work with students. I coach in the afternoons because I just love to be screaming outside with kids acting like a 16 year old, you know?

But I have to put on a button that says executive director every day and make sure that these babies have enough passionate Black men to keep their experiences going. I can’t do it all by myself, and I couldn’t do it all as a superintendent or a principal either. You have to be able to find the lever that allows you to make the most change And BLOC has allowed me to do that.

I love waking up every day, and my day is different every single day. You know, I really have to check my calendar first thing in the morning to plan my day out and I love that I don’t go to one building every day. That drove me crazy, you know? And so that’s another favorite part of this work, being flexible and being able to live life.

I’m a parent of two young children, and you don’t get these opportunities twice, you know what I mean? My son’s Black History Month program is right after this. Thank God there’s only 30 minutes and not an hour because I’m able to run over there and make that a memory that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get.

And if I was teaching in a school, I wouldn’t be able to get it either, you know? So I’m grateful every day for the work that I’m doing, even though it can be difficult and it’s been a growth opportunity for me on a daily basis, which can be uncomfortable,

Okay, so where does BLOC go from here? You guys have made some substantial strides in the past few years. Where do you see BLOC going in the next several years?

So we’re launching our fifth and final program this year. So for our four programs, you heard about one in details block building or monthly professional development. The second program that we launched was called the Akoma Ntoso Fellowship, and the fellows is an early career accelerator for Black male educators. We target young men in their first seven years of education, pay for their master’s degree, get them an instructional coach, partner them up with the school and really provide that wraparound support.

They get discounts in Black owned restaurants and discounts at local shoe stores to help show their love and support for Black male educators. Our third program. It’s called Liberatory Leaders. We know real change starts with principals and deans and heads of schools. And so we try to create a particular environment, curated environment for them, where they meet twice a year at the beginning of the year in the year and they do school visits. Our fourth program is what’s called Equity School improvement.

So of course we don’t just drop off Black men at your front door. We have a full wraparound school system that we do professional development in your school for all educators and provide those opportunities for a diversity, equity and inclusion, belonging, representative curriculum and effective pedagogy for our for all students.

The fifth program will be Future Liberators. So we tried to create, imagine a jar, like a clay jar, that’s got a bunch of cracks and holes in it. That’s the education system. It’s not working. Whatever you pour into that jar, this is going to fall right out of the side, whether it be water or Kool-Aid or lemonade. All the cracks in the hole of the bottom of the jar. It’s like educators who are poured into the education system that are falling right out of the side.

BLOC’s work at the very beginning in the first five years has just been patching those cracks in the jar. How can we stop the retention leak that we’re seeing from Black male educators and create programs that support them..

So we’re looking forward to a partnership with Crossroads Prep this upcoming year to fully integrate a third grade through 12th grade grow-your-own teacher program where we’re grabbing students that have potential for education as early as third grade and telling these young boys, you’ll be a great teacher. Let’s work your way towards a great profession and figure out how you can support your community, liberate your community through education.

It’s taken us generations to get here, is going to take us generations to get back.