- The National Center for Education Statistics says 44% of public schools will report teaching vacancies at the start of this year.

And more than half of those were from resignations.

- [Terzis] It's an issue the American education system can no longer afford to ignore.

- With thousands of teaching vacancies across the country, the nation appears to be reckoning with an exodus of educators.

- [Terzis] Teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

- So many of us are feeling drained.

So many of us are questioning, why are we still doing this?

Should we still be doing this?

- [Terzis] Long hours and minimal pay are the key factors driving teachers out of the classroom and keeping potential new ones from entering.

- We are all driven by money, right?

Even though we love teaching, we love being educators, we're always driven by our finances.

- More than half of public schools report being understaffed, and bringing diversity into the classroom is a big part of that.

In the 2020-2021 school year, fewer than 2% of teachers were black men, while 61% were white women.

- [Terzis] The United States teaching workforce is far less racially diverse than the student body it teaches, which makes recruiting and keeping teachers of color so very important.

- I came from a school where I was the only male educator of color in my building.

- [Terzis] A Charlotte based nonprofit is doing what it can to change that.

It's name, Profound Gentlemen.

- Our mission is to increase retention for male educators of color.

We want to basically keep black and brown males in education from being a classroom teacher up to policy work.

- Our goal is not necessarily the recruitment part, but really keeping us in the classrooms.

- [Terzis] Jason Terrell and Mario Shaw shared common backgrounds and challenges as Charlotte Mecklenburg educators.

In 2015, they formed Profound Gentlemen as a way of uniting and supporting educators of color.

- And they had their own personal experience, just in the space, feeling isolated, not getting the support that they needed, but also realizing that like boys of color needed more representative images of them because they noticed that the students would come to them and they'll treat them like their dad, or you know, they became their mentor.

And so like, we need more of this.

- [Terzis] Over the last eight years, Profound Gentlemen's footprint has expanded from Charlotte to cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Washington, DC, and now has over 700 members.

- It's about having a community of people that you can lean on that can support you in all the endeavors and accomplishments that you want to have in the field.

But above all, it's being able to have that and being able to know that you're not in this work alone.

- There's a power in teaching.

A lot of people don't look at teaching as being a powerful position, but it is.

I'm always reminding myself of the influence that I have as a teacher, how I can change communities, how I can change mindsets.

- [Terzis] PG recently held its annual conference in Charlotte, working to build community and grow professional skills.

- So we have 125 gentlemen here at the Community Impact Assembly representing 18 states.

- [Terzis] The workshop featured everything from full participant forums to breakout rooms where impact leaders presented various questions and scenarios.

- And so here is our problem statement for this session today.

Males of color often navigate a workplace that renders their identity, skills, and contribution to the district invisible, or to the network, for those of you who are at charter schools.

In addition to being, to feeling invisible in the space, stresses related to teaching during the heightened racial climate create toxic environments that push male educators of color out of the profession.

There's a big focus on recruiting teachers of color, but districts and schools need to do the work to address cultures that negatively impact male educators of color and their experiences within the profession.

In other words, new male educators of color are invited to a house that is not clean and has not been prepared for them, so they leave.

Here's the question.

How can we protect the psychological safety and mental wellbeing of male educators of color?

- [Terzis] The education system's inability to retain teachers of color not only harms the profession, but also the students, who lose out on the well-researched benefits of having a diverse set of teachers.

It also makes them less likely to choose the profession themselves.

- [O'Neal] There are systemic and historic influences to this.

So we do know that black and brown boys and girls are treated differently in schools, even especially, like inadvertently.

It's not always like overtly, but they get treated differently.

They get penalized more, more referrals, more expulsions.

And that, I think, has caused a cultural disillusionment.

And so when you think about the suspension rate, when you think about all the things that are negative, when you think about who's failing in education, many times those are our male educators of color.

And so, you are asking me to come back and to be inspired by a space that didn't work for me the first time.

And so many people are not like, oh, I wanna go back there, because I didn't, they didn't have a great experience.

And so that's what I feel is one of the greatest challenges is because if you don't have a great experience of something, why would you come back to it?

- [Terzis] But despite the dwindling numbers and all the challenges they face, the men of Profound Gentlemen are committed, committed to the profession and to the students they teach every day.

- We talk about it all the time.

You know, PG's just different.

It's a space where you feel, you feel safe, you feel, you feel like you have people who you can really lean on and support you.

- So the theme is Reground.

And so we're thinking that we want to reground our educators in their passion, in their professionalism, in their heart for what they do, in the instructional practices that will lift them.

- I love the mission, especially now that I'm a mother who has a four year old son.

- People love coming to PG spaces because it's rejuvenating.

They, it's like love in the room, and that's really a lot of the work.

The sessions and the content is cool, but they love to come and just be around other educators who understand the struggle.

And we talk about it, but we also celebrate it too.

- [Terzis] Profound Gentlemen, regrounding in their roots, in order to keep growing in their profession.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Jason Terzis reporting.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Jason Terzis reporting.