Panel: Educational equity for Black students

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

“Black students should have a sense of belonging within their learning community,” said Derrick Pannell, a 1989 graduate and dean of students and a moral theology teacher at St. Augustine High School, at a recent webinar on Catholic education for Black students in New Orleans hosted by the Center for Equity, Justice and the Human Spirit (CEJHS) at Xavier University of Louisiana.

“They should feel as though they have a voice and feel encouraged to express themselves in the classroom and on social issues,” Pannell said during the discussion led by Dr. Meghan Berger, a post-doctorate fellow conducting research on educational equity for the CEJHS at Xavier.

Berger shared her preliminary findings with Pannell and fellow panelists: Pamela Rogers, St. Mary’s Academy president/interim principal; Dr. Kathleen Dorsey Bellow, director of the Xavier Institute for Black Catholic Studies and a Xavier University Black Catholic theology teacher; and Dr. Crystal Valteau Morgan, equity and inclusion director at Christian Brothers School.



Current challenges
The panelists exchanged insights from the classroom, recognized current challenges in the Catholic school system and collaborated to inform future research inquiries.

“The panelists offered great insights about how they foster a sense of belonging to support Black students in their respective school settings,” Berger said.

Dr. Cirecie West-Olatunji, CEJHS’s director and a counseling professor at Xavier, introduced the session. She mentioned how educational equity is one of three focus areas along with environmental and criminal justice since the center was instituted in 2017, with an emphasis on Xavier’s Catholic spirituality to demonstrate faith in action.

West-Olatunji said starting a dialogue with educational leaders on this topic and forming a game plan to help students, teachers and administrators better reach Black students are the goals. She said there hasn’t been a discussion about the black Catholic experience, and the dialogue so far has been missing the voice of parents who have students attend Catholic schools as well as the students.

Study funded by Kellogg
A $500,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation to the CEJHS to study educational equity made it possible for Berger to focus her study on the Black male and public education. With Xavier being a Catholic institution, Berger also delved into how Black students fare in Catholic schools in New Orleans and the state.

She discovered a disparity in the numbers of Black students who attend a Catholic elementary school and then go on to a Catholic high school – approximately 20,000 in primary education down to 14,000 in secondary education.

West-Olatunji said it was challenging to find hard local data on Black students in Catholic schools since Catholic schools collect academic data differently than the public schools. Some national data was found, however.

“It depends on what you are looking for,” West-Olatunji said. “(Catholic schools) may be great for parents who are looking for particular ideals and a certain set of moral guidelines. Their children are going to get that. If that is the goal, then parents seem to be happy with that experience, but we do not have hard data” in New Orleans or elsewhere.

The panelists spoke with experience about Black students in Catholic school – agreeing how education has been the path to freedom for Blacks.

Social justice issue
Dorsey Bellow thinks the community at-large under-appreciates the gifts of Black students as the community under-appreciates Catholic education.

“Education of our young men is one of the biggest social justice issues,” Dorsey Bellow said. “(Catholic schools) offer an environment where Christianity is a way of life from the beginning of the day and through the end. Black teachers understand and love their culture, and that helps form students. It is imperative for the church at-large that the black Catholic community help promote education.”
Pannell said the current societal atmosphere of injustice in the U.S. requires classroom instruction that is “culturally responsive, socially conscious and reality-based.”

He said St. Augustine High creates a culture strong in recognizing social justice and informing students of social consciousness. Campus ministry leader Father Tony Ricard, pastor of St. Gabriel the Archangel in New Orleans, lead trips to the Northeast that highlight sites of former slavery and freedom routes. Even spiritual songs are taught at school.

Morgan said Christian Brothers School has a school population of about 13% minorities. She sees it important to infuse a Black Catholic identity at the school in music, Black history month celebrations and other things “to build cultural competency so students appreciate people’s uniqueness and differences.”

Morgan has started a social justice committee with faculty and parents, has celebrated a Catholic Mass that included liturgical dance before the opening procession and teaches the U.S. Catholic bishops’ curriculum on racism.

“The  more interaction students have with people of color,  the more they see that we are more alike,” Morgan said.

Pannell encourages efforts in schools to meet the needs of Black students and emphasized how Black Catholic schools must work together because there is strength in collaboration. Pannell said Black parents need to support Black Catholic schools as well.

“Students must be in an environment where they are loved, valued, appreciated and celebrated as opposed to simply being tolerated. Children should never feel segregated or marginalized,” Pannell said. “Black students should see themselves in their lesson  plans and their instructors.”

Will continue qualitative data
In her second year at Xavier’s CEJHS, West-Olatunji hopes to grant more awards to students doing post-graduate studies to incorporate spirituality in their area of research, to do research that is transformative, enacting St. Katharine Drexel’s words “to create a more just and humane society.”

“We hope to start rolling out those research awards to encourage faculty to incorporate social justice into their research – whether it be in biology, pharmacy, art, sociology – to demonstrate faith in action,” she said. “How do we transform the world using our research and teaching students, while they are in their studies, to engage in scholarship, collaborate with the community, come up with solutions and be consultants about the work they are doing in their own lives?” 

This summer,  the CEJHS will sponsor an educational equity summit, also funded by the Kellogg Foundation, where educational equity and the Black Catholic experience will be discussed.

Dorsey Bellow said a pilot program this summer involved helping white teachers – who have never been exposed to Black children – understand their culture and the importance of culture.

“It will help the decision-making across the board in respecting cultural diversity as a gift rather than a challenge or problem to be handled,” Bellow said.

To watch the CEJHS webinar, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKfL2yHw-c

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