"This allows for the classroom to potentially be more familiar to the minority student and negate the isolation students like Chris experience in their AP classrooms," she says.
From Barton's point of view, a potential solution to increasing African-Americans enrolled in AP courses is balancing the many predominately white voices in the classroom with an African-American teacher. Many, like Skyline’s newly appointed equity teacher Lakesha Barton, believe there aren’t enough African-American instructors. While school districts cannot control which students take which courses, they do determine who they hire to instruct these classes. And they can make or break whether students take their class. Of course, teachers play an integral role in managing all of their students' stress and feelings towards the overall class. “I don’t want to be singled out by non-Black and brown people, when in these classrooms I just want to be looked at as a student like everyone else," Wallace says. These youth must ask themselves "How far am I willing to step out of my comfort zone?” when it comes to elevating their academic careers. So while many African-American adolescents in AAPS are accustomed to being a minority at their respective schools, enrollment in these courses subjects them to material that may intensify that feeling to intolerable levels. The book details African-Americans' complicated history with the criminal justice system and dives into serious stories that could easily discomfort an African-American person in a predominately white setting. In Wallace’s case, the popular memoir “Just Mercy” by author Bryan Stevenson was a cause for concern. While students have their personal stances on the teachings of these subjects, ranging from “insightful” to “whitewashed," African-American students must sit through these lessons while rarely being able to comfortably discuss the subject matter with other students in the classroom due to the aforementioned lack of diversity. The “certain subjects” Wallace refers to includes the array of racial topics that AP language or history classes may include in their curriculum. It was uncomfortable," says Skyline AP language student Chris Wallace.
“I never really noticed it at first glance, but when we got into certain subjects in class I suddenly realized I was the only Black male in the classroom. Such trends have been supported by the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets. It directly conflicts with the growing trend of African-American students who are willing to pass up attending highly sought-after Ivy League schools like Harvard University for historically Black colleges and universities, like Howard University, in order to belong to the ethnic majority on campus. This leads to a homogeneous classroom setting that may cause people of color to feel isolated. An overwhelming majority of the students identify as white. While Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) are renowned for their diverse group of advanced placement (AP) courses, the blend of students in these classrooms actually isn’t very blended at all. "I believe some youth feel they lack the ability to succeed in classrooms like mine for a variety of reasons ranging from their previous schooling to lack of encouragement by peers," he says. His experience has shown him the importance of African-American children being active participants in high-level high school classrooms to meet the ever-evolving competitiveness of college.
He previously taught at Detroit Michigan’s Cass Tech High School, has worked at the University of Michigan's Minority Engineering Program, and helped establish an academy for African-American students in Ann Arbor. "We need to take a deeper look into why more kids aren’t enrolling in courses like mine.”Īddressing the lack of diversity in his classroom has long been very important to Jones.
“There aren't enough African-American students in hard science courses and they are falling behind," Jones says. As he watched students eagerly coming back to school after a pandemic, the realization dawned upon Jones, the only African-American male teacher at Ann Arbor's Skyline High School: “Why aren’t there more faces like mine in this classroom?” In this installment, student journalist Isaac Mack examines the lack of diversity in Ann Arbor AP classes.ĭuring the first weeks of last school year, Michael Jones looked out across his classroom with a bothersome feeling he couldn’t quite put his finger on. This article is part of Concentrate's Voices of Youth series, which features content created by Washtenaw County youth in partnership with Concentrate staff mentors, as well as feature stories by adult writers that examine issues of importance to local youth.
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