Shattering Archetypes with Jaylin Pringle
“There’s an archetypal viewpoint of what a teacher looks like,” says 24-year-old Jaylin Pringle, a graduating senior at Morgan State University. “I take my role as a representative of an emotionally healthy and inspiring Black man very seriously.” Considering that Jaylin’s primary audience consists of elementary school students, it’s no wonder that he has spent considerable time reflecting on how he wants to be viewed by the children he teaches.
The national numbers speak to the significance of Jaylin’s influence. Fewer than 2% of the country’s preK-12 teachers are Black men, and especially in the younger grades, women make up the vast majority of the workforce. And while he will begin his career as a full-time teacher this fall, Jaylin has spent much of his undergraduate experience working and interning in elementary classrooms and literacy programs. As he may be the sole or one of very few Black male educators his students will encounter, he has considered it essential to “make an effort to show up as my pure, authentic self.”
Jaylin’s journey to his eventual calling as a teacher began as early as sixth grade while living with his grandparents in Charlotte, North Carolina. “My childhood wasn’t very privileged, but I didn’t know that. My family always put me in a position to be as well-rounded as I could be.” In this case, it was an International Baccalaureate (IB) school that afforded Jaylin with rigorous, enriching academics that served as a solid foundation for his high school years in Prince George’s County, Maryland. At Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, he fostered his love of speech and debate and also made his mark on the school’s rugby team. These experiences began to crystallize the connection between school quality and opportunity, a connection that has been underscored through his work over the past four years in Washington, DC and Baltimore.
What makes a “good” school? Jaylin asserts that oftentimes, we’re judging by the wrong set of markers. “People will see a school with crumbling physical infrastructure, where the test scores aren’t that high, and they make assumptions.” He feels fortunate to have already been exposed to “so many excellent schools and excellent teachers who are doing a lot of great work to make sure students are getting the resources they need.”
Teachers are in fact a school’s most valuable resource, and Mr. Pringle has already proven himself to be an example of this. Recounting an experience from his internship in a fifth grade Baltimore city classroom, he shares an example of his efforts to give a struggling reader the attention that he needed. “Students were given an independent reading assignment and he was sitting at his desk, staring at the paper. I knew he wasn’t going to read it on his own, so I called him over and said, ‘We’re just gonna read this together.’ We turned our backs to the rest of the class, and I just read with him. He kept saying, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ but I just kept reading with him. I told him, ‘I’m not going to give up.’ And a tear was falling out of his eye. In that moment, I wanted to cry with him too. But we got through it. And I’ve never felt so emotionally full and so fulfilled. Because I knew I was in the right place.”
Often, Jaylin maintains, the difference between a strong and weak educational experience for a young person lies in the existence of high expectations or the lack thereof. “Students will say, ‘It’s elementary school. None of this is going to matter until I get to middle school.” But of course, it matters deeply. The research is clear that students’ future outcomes are at great risk if they are not reading with proficiency by the end of third grade. “I want all of my students, [as early as] kindergarten, to understand the seriousness with which I approach the work. And I want that to inspire them to be serious in their academics.”
Having been on the receiving end of inspiration on many occasions, Jaylin cites caring mentors as critical to his decision to pursue teaching. Originally intending to study architecture and then political science, it wasn’t until sophomore year that he walked into the School of Education and Urban Studies to speak to the department chair. He wasn’t expecting to meet Dr. Thurman Bridges, who shared his own experience with transitioning into education from a different career, a story that immediately resonated with Jaylin. “His energy was so representative of the whole education department at Morgan.” Jaylin later had the privilege of learning from professor Dr. Simone Gibson, who introduced him to the science of reading and connected him to a summer fellowship teaching first through 8th grade students in Washington, DC. She also opened doors to the wider world, as Jaylin took part in a study abroad trip to Cuba to learn about the country’s literacy brigade in the 1960s.
Jaylin’s skills teaching literacy and passion for the work will undoubtedly afford him many options in his job search for the coming school year. Citing a dedicated principal, low staff turnover, and community buy-in as key ingredients of well-defined, affirming school culture, Jaylin is excited to find a school home where both he and his students can flourish. In addition to his classroom teaching, he hopes his future school will enthusiastically support his plans to be a speech and debate coach, starting a team from scratch if there isn’t one. “I don’t want to be in a place where I have to fight to do something positive. I know I want to contribute.I want to be involved.”
And what is Jaylin’s dream for the field of education as a whole? “I wish people would have respect for teachers when it comes to their students’ academic health in the same way that they respect pediatricians with children’s physical health. Illiteracy is just as dire as a physical ailment, with potentially worse outcomes.” With brilliant minds like Jaylin Pringle committed to combat low expectations and scarcity of opportunity for young people, that dream doesn’t feel so out of reach.
