My Brother’s Keeper: Nurturing In-School Relationships for Young Men of Color in New York City

Paul Forbes is the senior director of the Expanded Success Initiative at the Office of Equity and Access, New York City Department of Education. Sarah Klevan is a research analyst at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools and a doctoral candidate at New York University.

A program centered around the concept of Umoja (“unity”) highlights the importance of positive in-school relationships for young men of color and describes how those relationships help them to succeed in school and deal with trauma in their lives.

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Issue 48

The Boys Aren’t Broken, The Systems Are: Changing the Narrative about Young Men of Color

Scholars and practitioners in school districts around the country are collaborating to build an asset-based counter-narrative about young men of color and develop evidence-based strategies to better serve them. However, these change agents do not always have a chance to work with their peers in other districts to collectively challenge structural racism.

This issue of Voices in Urban Education builds on a 2017 conference, sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and organized by NYU and AISR, that aimed to address this need. Researchers and practitioners from seven sites gathered in New York City to share system-level strategies that challenged deficit mindsets and implicit bias, nurtured healthy and respectful relationships, and developed culturally sustaining practices. In this VUE issue, you will read some of their stories.

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