WASHINGTON – To better support Black students in K-12 institutions, school teachers must learn from the pedagogies of Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and provide young students with proactive, hands-on mentorship starting as early as kindergarten, said educators at a daylong summit here on Tuesday.
Like at HBCUs, K-12 instructors should also actively cultivate pride in African-American heritage and instill a can-do attitude in students even as they stress high standards in academics, they said.
“[Black students] have been discarded for so long,” that they absorb negative stereotypes in their K-12 years, said Dr. Hakim Lucas, president of Virginia Union University. He spoke about the role HBCUs can play in K-12 learning at the event hosted by the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).
He said HBCUs then rebuild these school students’ “belief in themselves in the context of an environment that gives them a sense of responsibility for the future of our people.”
Imagine the gains if mentorship and building pride could be started a lot earlier, said Lucas and other speakers at the summit that was held in conjunction with the release of a new report titled, “Imparting Wisdom: HBCU Lessons for K-12 Education.”
The report, too, points out that Black students often experience a “belief gap” – a discrepancy between what they think they can achieve versus what they can actually achieve in school. It also cites research that shows non-Black teachers have implicit biases that make them set lower expectations for Black students compared to Black teachers.
Mentorship at an early age could instill belief in young school students of color, so they aren’t relegated to the back of the class.
