There’s a dire shortage of Black K-12 teachers. This Pitt program is drawing students to the field.

When Kevin Lowry began ninth grade at Brashear High School in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, he had little interest in becoming a teacher. Then someone mentioned, with admiration, the easy rapport he built with younger students during school activities, which made him consider a career in education.

But it wasn’t until he joined the Genius, Joy and Love Academy at the University of Pittsburgh that Lowry realized what an important choice he was making — for his future and for all the future students who look like him.

According to the National Teacher and Principal Survey, Black men made up only 1.3% of the nation’s teachers during the 2020-21 school year, and the U.S. Department of Education reports just 7% of all public school educators are Black. Lowry, now 18, had three Black teachers in his 12 years at Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) — and he was lucky. Just one-sixth of PPS teachers identify as people of color, and some students graduate without ever setting foot in their classrooms.

Though the teacher shortage is more pronounced among teachers of color, it isn’t unique to them. According a U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the nation lost 233,000 teachers — 7% of the teaching population — between 2019 and 2021.

This is the reality that prompted Valerie Kinloch, former dean of Pitt’s School of Education, to create the Genius, Joy and Love Academy. The monthlong summer program invites rising high school seniors and first-year college students from PPS to Pitt’s campus, offers them a mini-college experience and encourages them to consider careers in education.

[New this fall: The Bachelor of Science in Teaching, which will certify more Pennsylvania teachers, faster]

Participants have the added bonus of qualifying for the Advancing Educators of Color scholarship, an extension of the Pittsburgh Promise that provides additional funds to students who train to be educators, pursue their teaching certificates and teach at PPS for at least five years after graduation. Between the program and the scholarship, PPS hopes to add 35 teachers of color to its classrooms in the next seven years.

During the academy’s inaugural summer of 2022, 14 PPS students participated. This summer, that number nearly doubled. Lowry, who will attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the fall and major in education, has attended both years. He’s impressed with the program’s growth and with the way his fellow “geniuses,” as Kinloch calls them, have taken to the cause.

“Everybody here has the drive to become a teacher,” Lowry said. “They have the commitment because they know we need more.”

Educating the educators

Recruiting and retaining Black educators isn’t just an ideal put forth by the School of Education; it’s an imperative for the educational system. Research shows students of color perform better academically and are more likely to stay in school, graduate and pursue higher education when they are exposed to teachers who share their race or ethnicity. In the current teacher shortage sweeping the country, those are the very educators who are quitting in the largest numbers. According to a 2022 report from the RAND Corporation, Black teachers were twice as likely as other teachers to say they planned to leave their jobs.

[Interested in becoming a teacher? Here’s how to apply to Pitt.]

Genius, Joy and Love not only attempts to backfill those losses by inspiring students to choose careers in education, but it also strives to prevent future losses by inviting Pittsburgh-area teachers from all districts to participate in a concurrent educator institute. The institute focuses on the ways instructors can integrate equity and innovation into their curricula.

Over the weeks, participants listened to lectures from Pitt professors, visiting experts and retired Black educators; visited museums and community education centers to see education in action; and participated in hands-on lessons about yoga, art therapy and meditation.

During the penultimate week of the academy, students and teachers attended workshopping sessions at MuseumLab — a program partner and makerspace where older kids and teens can experiment with tech and art. Gathering around tables littered with fidget devices and art supplies, they shared their experiences in the classroom and brainstormed solutions to issues of inclusivity and social justice.

The discussion was followed by an open mic, where students and educators sang or read poetry while a jazz band played in the background.

For students like Lowry, it was an opportunity to be heard. For educators like Ryan Devlin, a media teacher at suburban Fox Chapel High School, it was a chance to examine the practices and language he uses in his own classroom.

“It’s good to be here and reactivate the mission,” he said.

And for Kinloch, it was a time to see her concept in action.

“I love the idea of bringing students and teachers together — for educators to hear what students are saying and thinking, for them to be in the same learning environment, and no one is the expert over anyone else,” Kinloch said. “Everyone is here to feel, to learn, to think with each other, and then we all leave as geniuses that we didn't think we were — that's the ultimate goal.”

Though Kinloch left the University just days after the student/educator session to take her new position as president of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, she is not leaving Genius, Joy and Love completely behind.

“I’m not sure I can do that,” she said with a laugh.

She’s already laid out plans to expand the academy beyond PPS in the coming years, to other area school districts who are similarly in need of Black educators. She is also hoping to create a sister program at Johnson C. Smith, a historically Black university.

“If we can have educators and students in Charlotte, North Carolina, thinking deeply about what it means to be in classrooms and communities and having conversations with the educators and students here — that's my next goal.”

— April Johnston, photography by Tom Altany

Watch for the Winter 2023 issue of Pitt Magazine, which will dive deep into the ways Pitt is combating the teacher shortage.