Moving the Innovation and Excellence Needle for ALL

Dr. Michael Conner

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening from wherever you are. This is Dr. Michael Conner, CEO and Founder of the Agile Evolutionary Group, but more importantly, the host for Voices for Excellence. And I want to say officially Happy Black History Month. This is the first episode in Black History Month, and we are celebrating today with the first episode of our celebration, but more importantly, who we have here. And he is a close, close brother. And when I say brother, I have known Curtis for over, what, five years now in this education space. We spent some time together as founding members of innovation for equity. We meet every year at Martha’s Vineyard to be able to talk about some of the most persistent issues of black learners. And now those conversations have continued. But more importantly, it’s created this network effect, where now we’re looking at education in a very divergent manner. That was where I met Curtis about five years ago. Now it’s hard to get on his calendar, you know, it’s hard to even get a text message from my man Curtis, because we know Curtis from Real Men Teach. And I was just talking to my brother where you have the household names of Kobe Bryant, you have the household names of Michael Jordan. When you talk about the education space, one of our fellow IFE brothers, Chris Endin, who is a household name, Dena Simmons, one of our IFE sisters that is a household name. Now, Curtis Valentine, five years later, is a household name with Real Men Teach. I just absolutely love what you’re doing, Curtis. I remember, like I was saying, just catching up with you five years ago, I remember we were on the Vineyard and you brought this up as a concept. And I remember telling you, I was like, well, I want to get involved with that. I know you coming out with stuff. I want one of those Real Men T-shirts. Now you place a order, it’s back-ordered. So, I mean, Curtis, it is good to have you here. Not only with Real Men Teach, you are a college professor, former administrator in the pre K-12 sector currently serving on the Board of Education for Prince George’s County in Maryland. So your contribution to the Education space is very broad and abstract, but hits really, really important critical threads within our ecosystem. So my brother Curtis Valentine, it is good to have you on Voices for Excellence, sir.

Curtis Valentine

Glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation. I know you could invite anybody on here, but you found in that robbery to invite a country boy from New Jersey on your show to talk about something I’m really passionate about, So I’m really looking forward to it. I will add, everything you mentioned is sort of in addition to my day job. And so 9 to 5, I work at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. I run a think tank and I run our Reinventing America’s Schools project. What we’re doing is researching and highlighting school districts and policies at the local and state level that are making the greatest gains for Black and Brown learners. And so all the things you mentioned from Real Men Teach to the school board to University of Maryland College Park to reimaging America’s schools, they’re all part of who I am. And they are the different parts of my vision for education, which is how to… how does policy and practice come together to support a system that is struggling on and of itself and struggling to address post COVID learning loss. A lot of issues around teacher satisfaction, retention, dealing with white supremacy and anti CRT, but also just in general, how we’re preparing children for jobs of the future. So all those things come together and I’m just really glad to be here today. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Yeah. Thank you, Curtis. And your work. You know, I failed to mention your policy work that you do very broadly, very impactful. And you know what you’re bringing, the vitality that you bring and then also to say the veracity that you bring in the context of the accuracy of the equity initiative through policy that you’re doing down in Washington. I still need to ask you, there’s 24 hours in a day. How do you find the extra five to get all this work done? 

Curtis Valentine

Well, these are all things that I get paid to do. I mean, I have you know… I’m on boards. I’m also very involved with Morehouse College National Alumni Association – that’s mentoring. But I mean, people have their hobby. People have things they like to do. And I like to exercise and take care of myself as well. But everything I do in my education is a labor of love. And something that really feeds a passion of mine – father to the public school students. My wife is a high school principal, and so in the Valentine family, education is a family affair, I say. I’m lucky enough, so my son attends a P-TECH school. Some of your listeners may know about P-TECH. It’s a model started out of New York City by the name Rasheed Davis, where you have this sort of pathway in technology, early college, high school. So my son is going to graduate with an associate’s degree. And so hearing about that as a father and as a policymaker, how are we looking at other states and districts so we can ensure that we’re lowering college costs, but also ensuring that we have pathways into teaching and to new jobs? My daughter is a middle school student, but she’s in a Montessori program. Looking at how different Montessori educational models can address creativity, looking at studies that have been done on most CEOs in Silicon Valley or tech founders or Montessori students at one point in time. And my wife is the school principal of the only high school in the state of Maryland that actually is located on the campus of a community college. So she’s physically located on a campus. And so all– everything we’re doing in the Valentine family is education innovation and we’re able to see it in real time to see, for me, as a policymaker at a school board level, we pass this idea. Then you have the school principal saying, I’m taking this idea and trying to push it through the system as a practitioner. And then you have the end user who are the students saying, you know, whatever you’re trying to push, I’m not getting. And so this how the sausage is made. But also implementation is what I think we don’t talk enough about in policy. You pass a bill you sign a law, you make the T-shirt, you put out the press release and then you go on to something else. I mean, you were in a big chair for a very long time. But it’s important how we apply these policies and make sure they actually do what we want them to do over a long period of time. And so I’m very happy to be a part of this on a daily basis. I can use some more time. We could use some more help. But you and I are both soliciting support. If you want to get involved, there’s more than enough work to do. But for those of us who do it every day, we love what we do.

Dr. Michael Conner

It’s your passion, Curtis. And that’s why you and I connect so deeply within this education thread. And, you know, more more importantly, when we look at it, we’re fathers of students or children that identify with generation Alpha and we know that they need a radically different education model in order to be in line with, as you’re so familiar with from the Mackenzie study, the Delta competencies, these 56 competencies that two domains are being left out and it’s by design of the business model in education. The level of salient systems that we see, policies that are Eurocentric and have implicit racism embedded in that, where inequities and disparities are noted within our education system. So we’re going to have a lot to talk about. But this first question, Curtis, is going to be a fun question. And you and I share a lot of the same music that we love. But what… I mean, there’s a multitude, a multitude of different threads that you live with in the education ecosystem, the density of your portfolio is very, very deep in the context of the network effect and also your accomplishments within this redesign transformation of education. But when you walk into a room, I was just talking to somebody where my education song is James Brown, Superbad. But what is your equity song that defines Mr. Curtis Valentine? 

Curtis Valentine

Equity song. I’m, you know, I do interviews. I hardly ever really follow rules, so I’m going to give you an album. And it blew my mind. This is my soundtrack. It is The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. And so you just play that and I’ll walk through the whole school if that’s playing. Being from Jersey, growing up in the nineties, having like that, whose, you know, her spirit, I mean, it was like when you heard her sing and then you had obviously Wyclef and Pras, brothers from the Haitian, from the diaspora and even the title of her solo album Miseducation, sort of hearkens back to Carter G. Woodson Miseducation of a Negro, obviously the reference to that. But some folks, if you really, if you’re a real Lauryn Hill fan, you remember all the interludes were of a black male teacher talking with students about life. But I imagine most of your listeners don’t know where that teacher is right now. That teacher who was doing the interludes on her album is currently the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Woah, did not know that. 

Curtis Valentine

Ras Baraka, son of Amiri Baraka, famous writer, was that educator. From a classroom teacher to a community organizer and city council member, and now the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. And his voice, even at that point in time, I heard this brother talking to students and the students talking about boys and love and all those things. And he’s talking and I’m like, wow, man like, we need more brothers like that. So I would love to talk to them more to let them know he impacted an entire generation of young men, particularly who thought, if I can be educated like him, then that’s something I’ve been– because we had so many images of education that didn’t really reflect who we were. But if you think about a soundtrack for me its definitely going to be Lauryn Hill, Miseducation of the Negro– of Lauryn Hill, excuse me. Which is a homage to Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Yes, yes, yes. And that is, Curtis, one of my all time favorite albums, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. And those interludes when we talk about one of her songs, you might win some, but you just lost some. And at the end, she came hard at that song, but at the end, you hear this black male teacher talk about L-O-V-E. I mean, just the nature, the flow into that. But yeah, that album was I remember that. ‘98 was that– yeah it was.

Curtis Valentine

Somewhere in there, I mean, I took– I saw… I saw the Fugees before when I was in high school in a very hole in the wall club. So they didn’t even really come out yet. And this is sort of 1994 maybe ‘95. I was in highschool. Yeah. And I remember because they… Lauryn Hill and Wyclef were on stage and they’re battling like freestyle battling. And again I think… there were so many points I think that I was like yeah, this young sister in this hip hop game and she was not intimidated by anything. She was… I can imagine being in a sister in the room thinking wow this sister is not backing down. And she’s better, she’s a better rapper, she’s a better rapper than this brother. And she’s talking about his clothing and his– and it’s like they’re battling. And I said, wow, man, like, this is what I’m talking about. And this is black excellence, you know, in many forms. But yeah, man, that was a golden era. And for many of us like yourself and I grew up around a lot of like conscious, conscious rap. And as folks who were, you know, historians, KRS One, Rakim, we’re talking about, you know, you know, Ethiopia and Egypt and Africa and wearing historically black college gear and really saying what I wear is a statement in of itself. And a lot of it, again, Real Men Teach is sort of reflection of who I am. I remember just growing up, seeing people wearing messages on their clothing in the ‘90s. It kind of went away a little bit in the 2000s where people did not sort of wear their messaging on their body, maybe for one reason or another. But I think we got back to that where what I wear, what it says literally and figuratively, is a reflection of who I am. So yeah, man, I’m a child of the nineties but proud of it. 

Dr. Michael Conner

And I’m glad you brought that up. Because yesterday I just I went into the store and I wore my Rosa Parks sweatshirt with her quote that she said, “It only takes one person to change the world.” And I wore that yesterday. And what you have on today, Real Men Teach. And the variety that you have, like I said, within the education ecosystem, you have impacted each thread with this high degree of strength and strategic approach with this. When we talk about wearing what we feel, wearing or expressing ourselves – Real Men Teach. This organization… it has just been successful nationally and it has taken off quickly. And I mean quickly everybody, because I remember five years ago, we were just talking about this, Curtis and I. And Curtis, man, you know, thinking about it in a think tank context where he was getting more ideas, ideation around this Real Men Teach and how he wants to be able to ensure that we are represented in the education ecosystem where, I don’t have the exact data nationally, but I believe, Curtis, it’s under 5% where there are male or I should say black male teachers in the public education space. And what you have is you got to put attention, you have to put the necessary attention where we’re not just talking about this recruit black male teachers, but retain and a level sustainability for growth. So just to give our audience today, right. What is Real Men Teach, and what’s the vision for this as you continue to grow this coalition? 

Curtis Valentine

No, I appreciate it. And I think you referenced five years. So Real Men Teach has officially… we launched two years ago, Black Friday 2020. But in many ways, Real Men Teach, the idea of it comes back… It starts back in 2013, the first year I joined the school board and the first year I met a brother named Albert Lewis. Albert Lewis, at the time, was the Teacher of the Year in the Prince George’s County Public School System, which is the 20th largest school district in the country, we’re talking 130,000 kids, 210 schools. At the time, there was a young brother. He had to have been in his late twenties, Morgan State alum. I said, brother, you’re the Teacher of the Year out of 9000 teachers. I said, man, this is outstanding. Having been a black male teacher in my district, as you know already, just understanding how how tough it was, but also to see a brother represent us, we got to work together to recruit more men like you. And so at that point in time with him, and another brother named Victorious Hall, who was a Dean, an Academic Dean at a middle school, but someone who I connected with previously. Our sons are the same age, they go to school together. The three of us put together something called the Men of PTCPS. The men, which is the Male Educator Network of Prince George’s County Public Schools. So in the course of seven years, we did some focus group conversations with men/male educators, asking them why did you become a teacher? Why did you stay? And if you leave, what would be the reason why you left? Have you spoken with those who’ve left and why did they leave? And so at every sort of point we were able to glean a couple of areas. One – information, which is how do– how am I best able to to do my job better a an educator? Capacity building is just sort of knowing how to do the work. The second part is sort of growth areas like how do I become… how can I stay in this profession but move up in the leadership training? And so that led us to understand a lot of these brothers needed and valued interview preparation because they were interviewing for jobs outside of the classroom but were not being successful. And so we started doing trainings. Then we said, well we’re not only teachers, we also have other interests. And so they only started organizing. We called community partnership speed dating. And so we brought in companies – Home Depot, Chick-Fil-A, Local Chamber of Commerce. And they would go around the room and say, how do I get Home Depot into my school? How do I partner with your company, how do partner with your company? So now, you know, I may teach math, I may teach English, but I’m also wanting to start an environmental club where I may want to help rehabilitate the football field. And so it also, again, it constantly encapsulating their fullness. But we also understood in many ways it was about appreciation and being seen and so we did an annual award ceremony, which I think probably was the biggest surprise, but also the biggest hit. We said we want to nominate one educator from every school. So at the end of the year we had 210 brothers. And if you could have seen a room full of 210 male educators, but not only them, their entire support system, their spouses, their children, their parents. And then those folks came in with balloons, signs, Daddy, we love you. The students came. It became a regional event that we had NBC commentators coming out, sponsors. Then, I’m sure you could appreciate this, then we have fraternities that would co-sponsor. And so we’d have Alpha Phi Omega fraternity incorporated, they would come out and they would bring in 50 brothers. And they would line the stage and they’re shaking every hand, 200. So the alpha’s are saying, brother, it’s not just you. We are– We’re the backup. We did Alphas one year, we did the Cappas, we did the Omegas, we did the Sigmas. We had… we had 100 black men, you name it. It was the village. And so the sense of being overwhelmed, the sense of lack of appreciation, the sense of lack of environmental issues that are around us teaching and the struggle of saying, do I have support from my my administration, my school board, my students, parents? And for the first time, we were saying we all have your back. You… if you need us, we’re there for. You want us to come to your school? You want us to do– you want us to mentor? You want us to… You have a problem with a student? You want to meet? Here’s the full committee. So all those things over seven years and then, some– around COVID time when we could not meet, what we said was how do we take this nationally? And so through the use of apparel, I eventually trademarked the term through the federal government and it’s understanding, it’s the role of images through proliferation of social media. And Instagram really allowed us to do so, to say, how can we continue with the recognition part and showing love and centering black male educators, not just sort of as comparisons, personal athletes and musicians. We want to put them on par with them. And so we started– that was part of it, but also the understanding of funding. And so your viewers understand every piece of apparel that we sell, the proceeds go to a scholarship. So we also understood that there were also some financial constraints as well. So our brothers who were taking the process exam and other exams and couldn’t afford to take a test or needed money for a tutor or there are folks in college who were looking to become educators and needed money to graduate. And so it was a funding aspect of it as well. But over time, Real Men Teach came about with the mission to recruit and retain men of color through what we called the Re-Imaging, which is how do we take back this idea that teaching is a profession mostly for women and mostly for white women, and say it’s for brothers. But the images of the brothers are going to be one that you never seen before. It is going to be the black male educator wearing his Real Men Teach sweatshirt, wearing his white and blue Jordans with jeans that may have some tatters in them. That’s in style. But it’s a brilliant brother who’s going to teach your children about biology, chemistry, philosophy all those things, but do it in his own way, because that’s really what young people are saying. I would love to be a school teacher, but I’m not going to give up my self in order do what I want to do, so how can I be both? And this is what we really are. Our mission really is to do that, but also to build community. And we’ve been able to do that right place, right time. And so to your point about us having such momentum coming out of COVID, the one thing that black men, we all really need it, but I think particular black male educators need is community, community, community. We gave them that. But they also needed recognition, recognition, recognition. And to be seen, to be seen, to be seen. And we’re able to do all three of those with Real Men Teach.

Dr. Michael Conner

And I appreciate that, Curtis. A couple of points that you you highlighted and when you talk about you know, blackmail teacher coming into, let’s say, school wearing a Real Men Teach shirt, wearing some white up towns or wearing the sixes as we know it, the Michael Jordan or Air Jordan number sixes, which is overtly popular, it even was popular when Curtis and I were growing up. I remember when the Air Jordan’s number six, when they cost $100. Now, I went to the mall and I saw them for 500 and I said, wait, wait, hold on, how could– Jordan’s? But anyway, when you say that coming into a classroom to teach 20-25 individuals, a brilliant mind… I think that we have to, as leaders, start metabolizing cultural competence in a new way if we want to be a system that is culturally relevant. Yes, it is okay for our black male teachers to have braids in front of your kids. It’s okay for our black male teachers to wear Jordans and have the latest jeans on. It’s okay because yes, that does defy the standardization of education, especially the business model. But if we want to look at how are we going to be able to reach our kids where 50% are black and brown, we have to have our– we have to have the economic demand be embedded into our classrooms, i.e. black male teachers that do not have to hide to express themselves. So I appreciate that. And also two, is that, yes, a real plight that we do see with African-American educators, specifically our African-American educators that are graduating pre-service programs, is the PRAX-1/PRAX-2 cost, and also meeting a specific benchmark score. And if they don’t meet that benchmark score, they have to take the test again, which could become an economic burden for our young brothers who are trying to just get into the space of education where we’re seeing tests… We talk about state assessments, right? And we know the plight and the issues with regards to that. But these pre-service program tests or state tests to become or to receive your license in education is proving to be a national inhibitor as well. So I really appreciate you recognizing that. And Real Men Teach, the organization recognizing that because those are some of the things that are not talked about. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned also this idea of walking into a classroom for cultural competency, but it’s also about the ecosystem as well and also allies. So we also often times… we have to question this idea of we’re recruiting young people of color and trying to integrate them into certain spaces that are not prepared for them and are not conducive for them to thrive. And so when we rolled out our Real Men Teach gear, we had women who were saying, Well, I can’t wear it. I’m not a black man, I’m not a Latino man. I said, well, no. I said, well, me as a black man, can I wear a sweater that says black girls rock? Absolutely. You’re making a statement that you are supporting a community that clearly can’t do it on their own. And so when we started having particularly women, white women, Latina women, women in general wearing our gear, they were saying, I support this mission or I’m a school leader who’s doing the best I can to prepare my school, to adopt, to bring in a Curtis, to bring in a migrant. And we’re going to prepare our staff to say, first of all, when Curtis and Michael come in, they are not the security guard. They are not they’re not going to be the basketball coach because they’re black.

Dr. Michael Conner

Assistant principals only doing discipline.

Curtis Valentine

You know, the big, big black man syndrome. No. Curtis and and Michael are passionate. And they’d rather play… they better play tennis, or they’d rather play chess then coach the wrestling team. And if they don’t want to coach wrestling, basketball, or football, don’t look at them sideways because you have to take them for who they are. Maybe they want to start a comic book club, but when you’re integrated into this space, and we are… every black, every black man who’s been a teacher has had to serve as a security guard or after the extra lunch duty or do things that literally people will say that’s not the reason why I left, but that sure didn’t help any. And so we’ve said, how do we build this ally-ship? And so you’ll see on our social media feed, you’ll see white women wearing it and they’re saying I’m wearing this for… I’m a principal, I’m an assistant principal, I’m wearing this for my teachers because I want to let them know when you come into this space, you see I’m an ally and we all should be allies to communities that affect us personally and directly and indirectly. And so that’s a part of this idea of only certain communities need to be in leadership and only certain communities need to be getting training and only certain communities. This is an all hands on deck approach to education, and our children need all of us on the same page. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Absolutely. Absolutely. Curtis, thank you for bringing that up. But I want to I want to switch gears now. Switch gears completely, because within your answer, you kind of talked about you serving as a board member for Prince George’s County School in Maryland. And I want to strategically tie in both your work, from your work in Washington with regards to policy and your role as a board member. You we know that the governance structure in education is heavy, it’s heavily underscored by policy. We know that boards are supposed to do two things, or three things: Evaluate the superintendent, adopt policies that are equitable for students and pass a budget. But you have really pushed the needle in Prince George’s County through the policy language and lens that you are with the Board of Education and pushing for more resources to be able to support the most marginalized that are in Prince George’s County. But when you helped to elicit this, the adoption of the strategic plan, strengthening the governance model that exists in Prince George’s County, what advice would you give board members, specifically board members that are part of our audience today on how to successfully root a strong governance structure where policy guides equity excellence and innovation in their teaching and learning organizations? 

Curtis Valentine

Well, no, come on, that’s incredibly important. And school boards struggle with this. And I would say that the one of the reasons why many struggle and I also mentioned that I’m also on the steering committee for the Council of Urban Boards of Education, which is sort of the equity we call the consciousness of the National School Board Association. So they are members of school boards I collaborate with on a national level around this, and we have conversations around a source of tension within school boards that is what is the role of a school board like this at its basic level? And you’d be surprised. And I really challenge those who are listening to do so. If you’re on a school board or if you have taken the school board members, just ask them, is the role of the school board to run the day to day operation of the school system? Is the role of the school board to work collaboratively with the superintendent, to come up with a unified strategy, a unified vision, to come together on a plan to implement and find over a five year period of time? Is the role of the school board to be, in some cases, a rubber stamp for the superintendent? Is the role of the school board to go about being adversarial with the superintendent, seeing the executive and the legislative as two areas of opposition? And you’d be surprised how you lean on the same…You have five people having very, very different views. Now you want to ask me what my view has always been, it’s that policy has to emanate from the people. And so your connection to those at the at the household level, at the community level, at the school level will make you an immensely better policy maker than if you were to come to my think tank. And I would give you a report about what’s happening in Indianapolis or in Denver and what’s working to address learning loss in Dade County, Florida. When you’re on the ground and you’re listening to teachers, you’re listening to your community members and your community partners, it will quickly come to light what the vision is for the community and the children existing where you and the school system, what role you all play in that process. You also quickly understand how much power or lack of power you may have in changing that, but also there’s a level of persuasion and how you quietly inject yourself into into conversations around a vision for communities. So to me, I’ve always seen our superintendent as a partner, but one as a partner who required accountability and deliberation, but all in the same, moving in the same direction towards ensuring that we had a school system that was going to graduate students better than we brought them in. And so what does our value add as a school system, but more importantly, how we do it in partnership with families, with community partners, and with our, in many ways, our economic community, because a lot of ways people see education as a means towards a job, other people may see education as a means towards a college education and then a career. However, you see that you have to understand and it varies. It’s very difficult for me to drop a parachute into a community and say, I’m going to run for school boards at other schools other than Prince George’s County. And I would… as much as I love myself and I think much about myself, I don’t think I’ll be very successful because it’s very much an organic conversation over time that it takes. I’m a better member of the school board because I’m a parent of a of two children. I’m a better member of a school board because I am to this day, in the ten years I’ve been on the school board, I’m the only member of the school board that was taught in my school district. I’m a better member of the school board because my wife is a school principal. I’m a better member of the school board because policy is coming from students, from teachers, from the educator network that I mentioned earlier, that I’m hearing from educators saying, I know this policy was put in place with this intention in mind, but this is how someone like me reads it and this is how I’m going to interpret it and implement it. Is this not what you had in mind? Well, this is not what we had in mind. We did not. But so now we have a conversation. And so I don’t I think policy in and of itself, the term seems so finite. It’s a law. It’s a rule. To me, the best policies are conversations that go within the community, within the policymaking space, within the superintendents office and within, you know, the stakeholders, which are your educators, your school leaders, whose job it is to make sure the rubber meets the road in the way you envision it. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Absolutely. And Curtis, key word that I think we have these multiple definitions of governance and you contextualized it perfectly. I wish more people that are board members would be able to not only just conceptualize it, but contextualize it where governance had this one easy definition or one word definition of governance partnership, Superintendent partnership with Board of Education, Board of Education partnership with Superintendents. And your first question is what is the role of a school board? I mean, that should be the first question that every year should be revisited right on this level of reciprocity in the context of your change management process within the teacher learning organization, because you, you and I know, Curtis, when you start working from the ground, a core of innovation and equity, there will be rumbles in the community from people. And as this going, know the role that this is, what we’re standing for and we’re going to partner with the superintendent to accomplish these community goals of ALL. So really loved how that partnership aspect of governance is underscored within your work. And I mean, that’s a key strategy for any of our board members that are listening this evening or today. But I want to touch upon… Oh, go ahead, Curtis. Yeah, please.

Curtis Valentine

I mean, what I think– when I do, when I do speak to school boards that have been successful and I’m, again, I’m learning… I’m in a learning mode as well. I don’t care if you remember the school board local or state, superintendent local or state, there’s always room to grow and within our district where we had some disagreement amongst board members and we had some board members more going– using the media to to sort of be a policy arm and at the same time shaping an image of the school system because of what they saw on the news. I had other members of school boards saying, well, Curtis, we have similar issues in our district. We just handle them in-house. And so what I realize is that when you really have this approach to education and governance as again, we are family that can disagree. But I get in particularly black families, we keep that disagreement in the house. You may not agree but when we go outside and we present the mission and the vision and the policy that if you disagree with it, we came together as a team to do so. And so you look at districts, particularly a D.C. metro area that has done very well. My colleagues will tell me, Curtis, no, we had a knockdown drag out. Oh, people disagree. But you all wouldn’t know that. We will let you know that because it’s in the interest of our children and our educators to know that we are… that we have a clear vision because once you start having these these dynamics and these divisions, then you’re really impacting parents, students and staff and their ability to really follow your vision and carry it out, which is why you see so much turnover oftentimes in school leadership and or lack of intention and implementation or lack of sort of adoption of a vision, because the vision seems so disjointed, like you can’t there’s nowhere that works. If it’s in business, government in any form, you have to have a clear, unified vision or the people will not carry it out. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Curtis, textbook. I mean, just textbook. And one thing that we always talked about, that shared vision, that shared collective mental model and you just listed on it perfectly, how to get everybody aligned to that mental model and those dragged down fights, but you would never know because you want the real deep conversations that are uncomfortable. But the level set will always be how do we advance our community, our kids and our and our families forward? But I want to touch on something light here, Mr. Valentine, okay. So a lot of people don’t know this about you, this side about you. I do. I’ve seen you, my kid, Mikey, my family and your family at Martha’s Vineyard spend a lot of time together, I know your kids, they’re smarter than you, Curtis. Just want to let you know that… smarter than you. We have a good future. We have a good future. 

Curtis Valentine

That’s the goal. That’s the goal.

Dr. Michael Conner

And the lovely wife who is making significant changes as a high school principal, but I want to share this about you. So just this year, and I know Curtis, I know you don’t want me to share this, but I am going to share this because they need to know this about you. This is how big your heart is, right? Just this year, Curtis goes back to… he’s a Morehouse College graduate, he goes back to Morehouse. He already know I’m bringing this up, brother, because this is why I love you. He goes back to Morehouse, goes back to his freshman dorm, knocks on the door, kids open up. Curtis has a long talk with them about this used to be my room, I remember when I was a freshman. Yeah, I’m gonna a bring it up. When I was a freshman, I wanted to do some homecoming activities. I couldn’t do any homecoming activities because I didn’t have any money, you know? So I was on the outside in. But I don’t want this to happen to you. So I’m a Morehouse Graduate, here you go, brothers. Here’s some money. Don’t know what the amount was. I know it was a lot because I saw a lot there. And you gave them money because the struggles of a freshman wanting to be, or students wanting to be a part of homecoming. But there’s a cost to that. They don’t know that give back about you. I wanted to say that because not only does that strike right here, Curtis, but that’s just who you are as a person. But we know the pandemic has insidiously affected our black and brown students, our black learners, specifically male learners. When we talk about it, we need more mentorship. Your mentor, I mean, you got so many mentees ranging from my age all the way down to your son’s age. But having– knowing this impact that the pandemic created, how do we now increase mentors or find people that act as mentors for our young black men, for our young brown men, for our young black women and our young brown women, which we know make up 50% of public education today? So how can we find mentors or get mentoring involved in schools the way we need it because of the impact of the pandemic?

Curtis Valentine

Well, again, I think it takes a reframing of the term. I think when… if you were to ask 100 brothers, what was the first word that comes out when you hear mentor, there’s a time sacrifice. You know disadvantaged youth, frustration. I mean, all the things that are not necessarily positive. And so if you see mentoring as just sort of something that ousted all your to do list, then you dedicating time or passion or coming to that space with with a full heart, it’s just diminished. What I would like to say in my own testimony, my experience around mentoring is I get more from mentoring than I give. And so you reference something we call the Homecoming Challenge, where we’re going back to class, my male dorm and supporting and people don’t know how much that meant to me or how much for me to go back. Because I would talk about those like you and I, we’re always asked to pour into other cups. But my question is, who’s pouring into your cup? Once your cup is empty, you can’t help it. You can’t pour into your spouse, your kids, your community, a fraternity, if all you’re doing is is pouring out. So how do you fill your cup? And for me, unequivocally, it’s mentoring. It’s talking to young people, but seeing them as equals. This is also the thing that I think (the way I mentor is much different than a lot of other brothers) is when I’m talking to– I had a brother email me this earlier, a brother who I mentor, who’s actually now a classroom teacher in New York City. One of the biggest statements about me is that the number of young men who I’ve mentored are now classroom teachers and usually I don’t talk about that very much. But it’s the idea that he say he and I have a conversation and it’s not like me talking down. It’s having a man to man conversation with someone who is going through a life decision about teaching or about something happening in the connection to their father or whoever. And so once we start reframing that mentoring is a, is a… it’s an act of reciprocation. I’m giving out and I’m getting back. But also it is one that has a long term effect, not only on you but on your community. And so what I tell people, everyone I’m mentoring is going to mentor my son one day and I am planting seeds with people. And not so much specifically because I’m thinking about my own son. But I had mentors and I called their names out, called out Carl Wade and Kevin Johnson and Carl Brooks. These are men who to this day follow my work, who support my work. And I said, you can see this little 13 year boy who used to wander around your school and you can see me in real life. But my 14 year old son and my 12 year old daughter how does that make you feel? Curtis, you beast of a man, I am so full. So he’s getting dividends from his mentoring. Mentoring is the best thing you can do, particularly right now post COVID for young brothers like myself and yourself. We’re also going through some social anxiety, some changes, and a lot of us are are getting into therapy, which I think we all should. But this idea of the best way to get something back is to give. And so mentoring is the ultimate gift. And so I promote it wholeheartedly.

Dr. Michael Conner

I love that about you, Curtis, because yes and the episode after you, Curtis, we have Dr. Tanisha M Ranger out of Las Vegas, and she is a clinical psychologist who has two books out. One is A Black Woman’s Guide to help them find in a therapist. And we talked about it’s okay for black men, brown men, brown ladies to say we need help and we need therapy, or we need to be able to seek guidance around some of our internal issues. So absolutely. Please, in our society today, seeking therapy and help and asking for help is not a negative for everybody. It is not a negative. It is your start to an intervention to move towards the direction that you want to go. So, Curtis, thank you for bringing that up as well. But when you talk about the shoulders, mentoring, I know that I would not have gotten to where I’ve gotten to in life, and wrote in my book if it wasn’t for these three men who provided the visual model for me and also the emulation when I seen them in their professional personal settings. Dr. Reginald Mayo, former superintendent of New Haven Public Schools, was my superintendent when I started out as a teacher, and that was the model that I saw. And at that humble age of 22, I said, I want to be like him. I want to be a superintendent like Dr. Mayo. And of course, you know him, Dr. John Ramos, Dr. John Thompson. These were the individuals that I call my giants. And, like you said, we’ve been pouring a lot and who’s pouring into our cup as well. And we have to remember that sometimes because we do give, give, give, give, give but we also need to replenish our cup and that is through mentoring brotherhood. That’s something that I love doing to this day. 

Curtis Valentine

And so funny enough, we’re actually in the middle of a campaign. So I mentioned Real Men Teach, we’re prolific on the social media and recently we joined Tik Tok, so we’re going straight to young people because we understand tomorrow’s teachers are not in a lot of places that… they’re not necessarily on Facebook, they are on TikTok. And so we’re in a middle of a campaign called My Favorite Teacher, and so we have black men, brown men, women testifying and giving a testimony about their favorite educator of color or male mentor. And so we often open it up because someone say, well, Curtis, I didn’t have any black or brown male teacher. So, do you have a mentor? Oh, yeah. A baseball coach, a preacher and so and so and so. They’re giving testimonies and we’re posting on five days a week of someone saying, hey, my name is Curtis Valentine. I want to thank Mr. Carl Way for everything he’s done for me. And they’ll go on and on and on. Yeah, we want to give you their… We want to give you their flowers. We want to normalize showing appreciation and support for mentors and teachers. But what does it also do? A lot of the people who are talking are also educators and they’ll say, I’m a teacher because of this teacher. I’m a teacher because of this mentor. I’m a mentor because of this mentor. They are saying specifically I would not be here, I would not be running my fraternity’s young youth mentor program if it wasn’t for Mr. Johnny who taught me how to ride a bike and tie my shoes, who told me I could be anything. I don’t know where he is, but I want to thank you. And here’s another point we’re seeing. We’re posting these videos on our Tik Tok Real Men Teach. We’re seeing, in some cases, children of the mentee saying my father passed away, but to hear you talk about him, I didn’t know this about him. And you’re touching me. The child of the mentee saying that your father touched your life. And so I appreciate that. Or in some cases we actually do have the mentee who’s, again, maybe the mentor student who’s hearing someone saying, I want to say to Johnny, wow, I didn’t know that you felt this way about me or no one’s ever said thank you to me. They’ve always said, come mentor, you have so much, you should give so much. But we all need that thank you. We all need our cup refilled. And in many ways, Tik Tok, we’re on Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, we’re on LinkedIn… this is us putting out into the world. We are going to take back what it means to have positive images around men of color and Real Men Teach is going to be the leader of that. 

Dr. Michael Conner

Absolutely. And Curtis, you made me want to say this. Even though I filled their cup in my book, I want to thank Dr. Reginald Mayo, Dr. John Thompson and Dr. Ramos for being the, I would say, my shoulders or I should say your shoulders, too that I was able to step on because I know without them, I wouldn’t have became a 36 year old Superintendent Curtis. I took it 37, 37. And for a black male at 37, in a state like Connecticut, where I believe I was one of four or five at that time four, is simply remarkable. So those three individuals set that up for me. And I just want to say thank you to them, especially during the taping of this show, which is the airing of the show, which is Black History Month. But final question, Curtis. I’m going to try to limit you to three words, brother. I know that’s tough. I know that’s tough, but three words. First episode of Black History Month and what three words do you want today’s audience or today’s participants to leave with regarding excellence, equity and innovation as it pertains to transformation? Now, our audience and our participants, they received a lot of different nuggets, multiple perspectives, multidimensional in the context of governance, mentoring established in nonprofit organization, work to continue the mission Board of Education policy standpoint. But what three words, and looking at this as a conglomerate, three words that you want our audience to leave with today?

Curtis Valentine

Brother, that’s too easy. I’m gonna say it, but it’s self-explanatory. Real, men, teach. Now, let me explain it now. Every word matters. The first one we say real. To us, it’s all about authenticity and identity and affirmation and appreciation. Because so many times people go into teaching and say, I was teaching that was not really me. People didn’t see me for who I was. And so I was faking it the whole time. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. And so I’m no longer teaching because I cannot be my my real authentic self. It’s a civil war when it comes to men. And this is a thing that, again, is pretty controversial for some people. And this gets into the idea of masculinity and gender and gender identification. This idea that again, teaching is mostly woman, it’s a feminized career. And so when people say to the young boys, I want to be a teacher, there’s this sense of why would you want to be a teacher when only women teach? Or if you’re going to be an educator, you have to be, again, the security guard, basketball coaching, you know, And so now you’re saying you want identify my man… you’re going to tell me what my manhood is. And so we have young people again, Gen Alpha, saying, I defined my manhood on my own terms about how I wear my hair, what colors I wear, whether I paint my nails or not. And so for me, it’s this idea of me being who I am, to me declaring for myself who I want to be. And the last word teach, because and we talked about this earlier, about this mentor piece. And oftentimes, and I’ll say it again, real men teach, personal apparel, some people say, well, I’m not a schoolteacher. And I’ll say, well, it’s the term teach. We use it loosely, and then I’ll say, what’s the best lesson you ever learned in your life? Did you learn that in a classroom, in front of a chalkboard? Oh, no, I learned that on the football field, I learned that in church, I learned that on a basketball court, I learned that in a corner store, I learned it down the block. In that moment, whoever taught you that lesson was the teacher. And so this idea, this ecosystem of education, that it takes a schoolteacher, the bus driver, the paraprofessional, the maintenance man, the uncle, the pastor, the teacher, all of those have to surround our children again with a singular vision of high expectations, support and a level of grace for young boys of color. And so when I say real men teach, I don’t say it in jest. I say each word matters because for too long, people’s authenticity, their manhood and their titles have kept them from being teaching teachers. And right now, those words can get in our way because again, we declare, I declare what real men teach means and what it means to me. And everyone can define it in their own terms.

Dr. Michael Conner

You heard it right here, folks. The definition of real men teach. And you know you’re not going to hear that anywhere else besides the founder and the creator, Curtis Valentine. You have started such a movement, Curtis, that many people want to join and be involved in. How would they be able to get in contact with you and website for Real Men Teach or even just maybe questions pertaining to board governance policies and structures? How would my audience be able to contact you? 

Curtis Valentine

RealMenTeach.com, you’ll see links to all of our social medias and my email. If you want to follow us on social media, you can go to again LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tik-tok @RealMenTeach and follow us, share some of our work, go to our website. We’re posting jobs, posting scholarships, we have curriculum, and we just have images and videos of men of color in education, standing in their lives, in their true selves with the role and goal of recruiting and retaining more men of color in education. This is incredible time to be in education. And we just want to make sure that children, like you and I, have opportunities to see people who look like them in teaching. It can be and will be a game changer.

Dr. Michael Conner

Absolutely. And Curtis, one of the things that I really appreciate from the Real Men Teach Twitter handle is that you highlight educators on their birthday as well as the founding days for fraternities as well as words. And we thank you for that. I know you highlighted me on my birthday on January 29th. I appreciate you for that. You’ll be the first episode in Black History Month and a lot to celebrate and a lot of progress, especially, you know, when we talk about giants creating an environment for us, it’s just an honor to actually have this level of conversation with you and for our giants that create this platform where you and I can be able to have this high level conversation. So, Curtis, from your brother, thank you so much for being on Voices for Excellence and for everybody tuning in, thank you for joining in and Happy Black History Month, Curtis.

Curtis Valentine

Thank you so much. Happy Black History Month to you all to.

Dr. Michael Conner

Onward and upward, everybody. Take care.