ABSTRACT
This chapter revolves primarily around the following question: What happens when Black male teachers, dutifully answering saviorist appeals to embody and perform patriarchal modes of manhood in the classroom, encounter the gendered power dynamics and participatory politics of a predominantly female field? It shows how some participants spoke in frank terms about the challenges of being men in the predominantly female workplace of schools. As a researcher, the author was intrigued by the gendered lens that such commentary afforded on participants' navigation of urban schools as Black men. The chapter reveals that for some of the men in this study, negotiating the gendered participatory politics of the teaching realm was a complicated endeavour. Most of the accounts revolved around antagonistic encounters with women in leadership positions, and a few spotlighted particular tensions with Black female colleagues and administrators.
