That's Not My Mom, That's My Teacher!

In today’s world of schooling, many teachers believe they are only supposed to parrot a bunch of information to their students to fulfill the job of teaching. However, according to Sunny-Marie Birney, African-American female professors possess characteristics that make their teaching style not only intellectually engaging but also motherly.

In Voices of Our Foremothers: Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Women Educators, Birney explains why her Black women professors in college filled the void of the Black mother she never had in her life. She says that they, “cared not only about [her] academic work and the adjustments [she] was making at the collegiate level, but they were concerned overall with [her] mind, body, and spirit, past, present, and future” (Birney 50). Where did this motherly aspect of Black female educators derive from? It comes from the many years that Black women have had to be the primary caregivers of their families and communities. During slavery and post-slavery days, African-American women were the backbones who were responsible for looking out for the well being of everybody under their wings. That same attitude has been passed down from generation to generation and is embedded in the African-American women educators of today.

Some may question the idea of a teacher teaching a student as if that student were there own child. Shouldn’t a teacher just teach the student what is required for them to learn and leave it at that? People may argue the affirmative to that question. On the other hand, I believe a student can benefit more from a motherly teacher. When a teacher shows they truly care about a student’s success inside and outside of the classroom, I feel it pushes a student to want to do the best they can do. It’s even been proven by Jacqueline Johnson Irvine in a study she did for an article she wrote. The compassionate methods Black women teachers use to educate their students may be very foreign to some, but it can inspire students and even increase their success in school.