In Brookline, Black teachers might not be many in number, but they create community in different pockets of the high school, as well as within mainstream departments. Through leading affinity programs and intentional check-ins, Black teachers find community in a predominantly white school.
According to the school and district profile, as of 2025, about 30 of the 312 full-time equivalent staff at the high school are Black-identifying. Black teachers work in all departments, as well as across various administrative roles. However, the comparatively low number of Black teachers spread across all eight departments, can pose a challenge to finding community and affinity in the workplace.
Sense of Community
African American Latino Scholars Program (AALSP) and English teacher Emma Siver, who identifies as American Black, works with many other Black and brown colleagues. However, she said that the mainstream English department also has a fair amount of diversity.
“In English, I do think we’ve actually, in recent years, had a greater hiring pool speak to more diversity,” Siver said. “ I would say, I have two other Black colleagues, and I have indigenous colleagues. I have Hispanic and Asian colleagues. So I would say honestly, my department, I feel there’s a solid grouping of BIPOC individuals.”
AALSP Program Coordinator Stephanie Hunt identifies as biracial, Cape Verdean and Irish.
She said that AALSP provides students and teachers with a shared sense of community and affinity.
“I love that we’re able to talk about Black and brown history and current events. It’s definitely something that I wish that I had the opportunity to do more of in high school, just in terms of exposure for these topics and conversations. But more than the curriculum, it’s just the community of students that are in our program that makes scholars the very best,” Hunt said.
Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) Program Coordinator Karim Azeb said that he identifies as Black and Arab, and as a teacher in a town that is neither of those things, he doesn’t seek extensive community and is content with his small but strong network of support.
“I’m unique in that I am an isolationist. It’s my own personal identity. But having my friends in this building that are actually my friends, and the talks we have, it’s a similar experience for them,” Azeb said. “No matter what we do, we still have our small community, and we’re never going to lose each other.”
While Hunt now works mainly within the affinity program AALSP, she said it was not as though she lacked community in her old role as a social studies teacher.
“I love my colleagues in the history department. I transitioned into this role [as AALSP Program Coordinator] in the 2017-18 school year, and all of my history department colleagues were so supportive,” Hunt said. “I got married in 2018, and most of the department was at my wedding. I did feel an incredible sense of community in the history department, and I still do.”
Hunt said that overall, affinity opportunities at the high school for teachers and students have increased in the past years despite voices in the community and outside it who don’t support such initiatives.
“Despite what’s happening on the national level, BHS has done a good job of reinforcing our values and the way in which we strongly believe in affinity and in inclusion,” Hunt said. “Scholars has continued to thrive. You also have the AAPI LEAP program that is doing incredible things. And you also have QSP, which is incredible.”
Brookline METCO Director Malcolm Cawthorne, who identifies as Black or African American, grew up in Brookline and taught at the high school from 1998 to 2022. Cawthorne said he had a lot of teachers in his family and had Black affinity outside of the high school.
“One of the things that allowed for me to be in position and sustain myself is that I actually don’t look for [affinity] in jobs,” Cawthorne said. “It took me a long time to realize that’s not normal for most people. Most people do look to their jobs [for] affinity, and I never really did,”
Having started working in the social studies department in the 2019-20 school year, Azeb said his impression and experience as a Brookline teacher was marked by the pandemic. He said COVID made it very easy for teachers to retreat to their bubbles.
“I’m Black, I’m Arab and I’m Muslim. This is not a Black, Arab or Muslim community at all. Actually, it is the exact opposite. So for a large part, I kept my head down and was quiet,” Azeb said. “COVID changed a lot. I think COVID divided this community. It physically kept people apart from each other. So even when we came back, things were not as they were, and so it was easy to pull away.”
From living and going to school in Brooklyn, New York, to his prior teaching positions, Azeb said most of his teaching and educational experiences have been in Black schools. Now, as METCO Program Coordinator, Azeb works primarily in Black spaces at the high school. Azeb said the only reason he stayed at Brookline was because he got the opportunity to transition from a mainstream social studies teacher to the METCO Program Coordinator at the high school.
“Being a part of the METCO program in Brookline, even though I’m in Brookline at large, I’m in Black spaces, primarily in the Scholars room,” Azeb said. “When I venture out of this office, I’m in a Black classroom. For me, that’s largely important. This position has afforded me that ability to feel comfortable in the non-Black and brown space in general.”
Cawthorne said Brookline’s commitment to diversity can feel uncertain.
“I think it’s always been unclear what the investment is into teachers of color,” Cawthorne said. “Is it just for visibility’s sake or to actually have the multitude of voices that would, in my opinion, make Brookline a better place?”
Gaining and retaining teachers of color
Siver said that while she experiences a lot of community, other teachers of color don’t, which may contribute to the retention problem.
“General education can be a field that, for a variety of reasons, is very fatiguing,” Siver said. “I feel fortunate enough, though, that I exist in a space where fatigue doesn’t necessarily always come from not being in affinity spaces. I feel like at times the inability to retain teachers of color comes from the fact that people aren’t able to be in community throughout a decent portion of their days.”
As he became a more senior teacher, Cawthorne said he checked in on new teachers of color to make sure they were feeling supported. Because there were so few, he said teachers of color could get scattered across departments, which made it harder to seek those connections.
“I started to realize it was really important [to connect with teachers of color] and tried to think of ways to pull, in particular, Black teachers and teachers of color together,” Cawthorne said. “But that wasn’t as much for my personal [relationships] as it was something I took very seriously: to help keep more Black teachers and more teachers of color to stay by trying to help create some form of a support network and structure.”
Azeb joined Brookline as part of the statistically most diverse hiring class at the high school. Even so, he said there were only a handful of teachers of color in total. According to Azeb, it can be hard for teachers of color, especially introverted ones, to carve out community in predominantly white schools, which might push some of them to leave.
“If you’re someone who’s a natural introvert and a person of color, and you come into this space, there’s not a lot of us. So, if you’re someone who’s regularly picky [about people], this place can be daunting. And again, it’s massive,” Azeb said. “As for change, [the high school is] over 100 years old: it takes a long time to get something moving forward in this place. Not everyone has the patience for that.”
Cawthorne said he enjoyed getting to serve on multiple hiring committees, which, as a Black man, allowed him to understand and point out particular aspects of an applicant’s experience that others might overlook, such as if they went to a historically Black college or had certain affiliations.
“You look for cultural adds, not cultural fits, because that’s what people do. They’re comfortable, and they say, ‘Yeah, I just want this person to fit in.’ And I’ve always been like, ‘No, we want this person to add to the culture,’” Cawthorne said.
Student-facing representation
Having grown up in a small, predominantly white town in Connecticut, Siver said she did not have her first educator of color until she was a junior in college. Though she enjoyed and appreciated her education, she said she lacked that aspect of representation and wants to provide it for her students.
“I feel really grateful to work in AALSP. Every day, these kids show me different ways in which we can navigate our experiences with color and race,” Siver said.
As a classroom teacher, Cawthorne said working in the mainstream social studies department provided students with diversity they might not otherwise have encountered.
“I knew the impact [of being a classroom teacher], not just for me, but for all kids. I can’t tell you how many times a [student of a] different racial identity said I was the first Black teacher [they’d had], and what that meant for them in terms of impact,” Cawthorne said.
Siver said that her identity impacts the way she approaches teaching, and that this is true for every teacher who brings their true self into the classroom each day.
“I’m teaching a class like American Literature, and we’re talking about lived experience, and some of the lived experience comes from being a woman or being a minority, or specifically, being a Black person,” Siver said. “I typically will share anecdotes here and there, and I think at times because [the students are] physically looking at me, that makes the experience feel a bit more accessible or tangible.”
While teaching in AALSP is full-on affinity, Siver said her role as an English teacher can provide indirect affinity to students.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or Asian or anything of that nature. Sometimes you are the only person of a particular identity in that class,” Siver said. “So I feel kids have been able to, at times, confide in me about that experience, or, just [get help] navigating aspects that might feel like there’s conversations that we haven’t been able to have yet as a class.”
