Authenticity, connection and representation: What Matthew R. Morris brings to his classroom

Matthew R. Morris grew up in Scarborough both a good student and an athletic talent, yet at school it was always the latter achievement that his teachers encouraged.

“Very early, I was pushed into athletics simply because I won a race at recess or something like that,” recalled the educator and author of the new bestselling memoir Black Boys Like Me.

“It always seemed like I was pushed into these tropes of what Blackness is supposed to be.”

After becoming a teacher himself, however, he’s made it a point to challenge stereotypes of Black male identity and, by bringing his whole self to the classroom, setting an example for his students.

When Nathan Barnaby started middle school in Morris’s Grade 7 class, he recalls immediately being intrigued by the cool, stylish teacher with tattoos. Later, in Grade 8, when his attention started to slip at school, Morris helped steer him back on track.

Students who feel understood will open up more easily to teachers — for instance, if they dig deeper into the whys behind a kid skipping class, explained Barnaby, now a 19-year-old preparing to study carpentry in college.

“That’s the thing he always did: [he] went the extra mile.”

Teacher pens bestseller on how schools treat Black boys like him

Matthew R. Morris turned his experiences as a Black student and a teacher into a bestselling memoir called Black Boys Like Me. He talks to CBC’s Deana Sumanac-Johnson about navigating the education system from both sides of the classroom.

Seeing Morris at the front of a classroom back in Grade 7 and Grade 8, Shaun Morgan remembers feeling represented and understood in a way he hadn’t with other educators, as if “being taught by an older version of myself.” Now 25 and training to become a police officer, Morgan aspires to become the same kind of role model Morris was for him.

“I want [young people] to have those same examples and look and feel comfortable to talk to me [and] feel open expressing themselves,” he said.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.