Education Week - October 19, 2022 - 16

DarLisa Himrod, right, talks with paraprofessional Zharmeece Watkins while setting up her classroom at Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center in August.
New Teacher
at 50 l Inside the
Struggle to Rebuild
America's Black
Teaching Workforce
A suburban Chicago school
district was desperate
to hire more teachers of color
and root out racism.
Enter DarLisa Himrod.
By Benjamin Herold
Photography by Taylor Glascock
for Education Week
Evanston, Ill.
N
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 19, 2022 | www.edweek.org
othing in Room 129 was DarLisa Himrod's
own.
The 49-year-old aspiring teacher organized
bulletin boards, dusted off a feelings
chart, and studied the roster of incoming
1st graders at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Literary & Fine Arts School. But she remained overwhelmed
by old memories and the long road ahead.
Then her new mentor opened Pandora and hit play on her
gospel station. The lush voice of Tamela Mann filled the classroom
and a familiar place in Himrod's heart.
" I'm going to be open to what she has to say, " she thought as
Leslie Perkins, a 32-year classroom veteran who is also Black,
hung another laminated poster. " I want to learn. "
It was late August 2021. Two days later, school would start in
this leafy Chicago suburb, where white children bring home
some of the highest test scores in the country, but their Black
and brown peers tend to lag 30, 40, or even 50 points behind.
Himrod knew that divide firsthand. She attended King Arts
as a child, starting kindergarten when the school was still the
beating heart of Evanston's historically Black Fifth Ward. Then
it was relocated to a whiter neighborhood by Evanston/Skokie
School District 65. It was during the ensuing years that Himrod's
feelings about school had turned uncertain, bending the
arc of her life toward struggle.
Now, her hair was streaked with gray, and her knees were
stiff with arthritis. She loved directing the youth choir at Evanston's
Bethel AME Church, where her normally quiet voice
soared with the other sopranos on Sunday mornings. But Himrod
had spent most of her professional life toiling in area daycare
centers, taking nearly two decades to nudge her annual
salary up to $40,000. Even after landing a position in District
65's early Head Start program, she had to keep working nights
and weekends at a shelter for homeless teens.
" I want to do things with my life, " Himrod told her husband
that spring.
Then the opportunity she'd been waiting for fell into her lap.
CREATE 65 was the brainchild of District 65 Superintendent
Devon Horton. He wanted to attract more candidates of color
who are often shut out of the current teacher pipeline, then
provide them with a $30,000 stipend, enrollment at either
Northwestern or National Louis University, and a full year of
hands-on training at the elbow of an expert teacher.
The model is known as a teacher residency. More than 130
such programs are now in operation across the country.
But CREATE 65 came with a twist. Horton also wanted to
train his new teachers to be anti-racist. Then he wanted to
place them in strategic spots around the district, including the
brand-new elementary school he hoped to construct in the
Fifth Ward.
" Imagine building up these residents and training them the
'65 way' in equity and getting them staffed at the new school, "
the superintendent said. " There's power in that. "
The reason for such enthusiasm came into focus when a diverse
group of students entered Room 129, then Perkins and
Himrod set out to meet their competing needs.
When asked to write their names, two Black girls managed
only a scribble of misshapen letters, signaling immediately
that they would need extra attention. (The girls' parents did
not agree to speak with Education Week, so their names are
being withheld.)
An African-American boy named Quincy zoomed through
his lessons; his mother, the president of the King Arts PTA,
would soon complain the class was moving too slowly.
And then there was Felix, a white student who liked to loudly
yell out that Perkins was boring and took up much of the oxygen
in Room 129.
In response, Himrod began sitting on a stool next to the boy
and gently encouraging him to raise his hand and please be
neat, all classroom management strategies that were part of
the " culture of nice " that had contributed to Evanston's gaping
racial divides for generations. But when Felix reacted by flinging
his body onto the floor and throwing a tantrum, Himrod
decided to switch up to the direct, no-nonsense style that came
more naturally-and that everyone from Perkins to academic
experts to Felix's mother would later describe as part of what
made her uniquely well suited to establish a classroom environ

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Education Week - October 19, 2022

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