Engaging, Encouraging, and Empowering Young Black Men

Christopher Chatmon is the deputy chief of equity in California’s Oakland Unified School District. Chatmon was recognized as a school district Leader To Learn From in 2015 for his efforts to support boys of color. In this speech from Education Week’s annual Leaders To Learn From Event, he explains how schools can better serve African-American males. “Typically when people ask me to come speak, it’s always around the gloom and doom and deficits of black children or brown children,” he says. “If we don’t enter conversations around the beauty and brilliance and collective genius then we’re going to perpetuate this self-fulfilling prophecy.”