Signature Story
Dr. Robert Simmons
Share Our Strength | Managing Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
When he was 16 years old, Dr. Robert Simmons III had the dream to become a teacher and was heavily influenced by his Mother’s history of attending Spelman College, where she had very impactful Black educators. He started his professional education journey as an elementary school science teacher in Detroit, where he was born and raised. Now, he is the Managing Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Share Our Strength.
With over 20 years experience, Dr. Simmons was founding director of the Center for Innovation in Urban Education and the Institute for Urban Catholic Education at Loyola University of Maryland. He served as an associate professor of urban education and science education, while also taking on the role of a research associate at the Baltimore Education Research Consortium at Johns Hopkins University. Simmons served as the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and as the Chief of Innovation & Research with the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS); while at DCPS, Simmons was the chief architect of the Empowering Males of Color initiative. He took the position at Urban Teachers in February 2020, after serving as Chief Executive Officer of the See Forever Foundation and the Maya Angelou Schools in Washington, D.C.
Having authored over 50 publications, including the book Talking about Race, Simmons is unapologetically committed to anti-racism work and is a professorial lecturer at iAmerican University where he teaches Social Justice and Urban Education in addition to a course on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. He currently resides in Washington DC, with his wife and two sons.
The funny thing for me is that I was a terrible student…I hated school. As a matter of fact, I got plucked out of my neighborhood in Detroit to go to this elite Jesuit school. They had scholarships for kids from Detroit. They wanted to have more kids from the city go to this elite Jesuit high school. I was trying to go to my neighborhood school and I remember my mother came in and said,
“Oh, here’s your schedule for your new school.”
A., it was all boys. I had never been to an all boys school. B., it was the first time I ever had to go to school with white folks, because, I grew up a mile and some change from the social uprising in Detroit back in the 60’s. So for me, my whole neighborhood was Black, my police athletic team was Black. We used to play the white teams from the suburbs. I was shocked.
She was like, “Look, this ain’t a negotiation.”
I had a 1.8 GPA at the end of my sophomore year and my counselor comes to me and says, “You hate this school don’t you.” I was like, “I hate it.” I would take a bus, a public bus from my neighborhood, past all the rich neighborhoods in Detroit. Past two different high schools to come to this place that’s in a part of the city that has affluent Black people. But unlike all the SAT and PSAT scores, my score were so high they said,
“If you align yourself with your score with what your GPA should be, you should get a full ride to Harvard. So, it’s not that you don’t like education and learning. You just hate school.”
And Mr. Robers was my high school counselor and he said, “I’m gonna help you get out of here but you gotta commit to putting in the work.” And I said, “Ok, got it.” After that, I had a 3.5 the rest of the way but you know, when you start at a 1.8, there’s only so far I was going to get, so it limited my options coming out of high school.
But my senior year I did a service project at a school and it was at that moment I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I just knew, and I wanted to teach elementary school. In Detroit Public Schools at that point, they were paying people four steps on the pay scale if you taught at a critical shortage area. Man, that’s like an extra 10-15 grand, right? I go to the job fair and the person says, “We’ll pay you extra steps on the pay scale if you’ll teach math or science. I was one of the few people that had a teaching license in both.
I was going to teach elementary school. I knew I could get these four steps on the pay scale but I was like, “Nah, I’m cool.” You know, I grew up broke. So for me having an extra four steps was like, “I ain’t never had never had it before, so I ain’t gonna miss it.” And I get down there and they said, the woman, Beverly Schnieder, she says,
“You really want to teach in your city.” I said, “Yes ma’am.” She says, “You weren’t gonna tell us that you had a math and a science certificate or you just thought we weren’t gonna find out.” I said, “Well, I just want to teach elementary school.” She said, “Let me tell you something son…this is where you’re gonna go, this is your teaching assignment.” Alright, well, I guess I’m teaching science now. “Yes, ma’am.” You know, respect for her and from there, I was always in math and science.
I’ve always been in the classroom and I think that for me, when I finished my Doctoral degree, I was torn. Because I could either go in and do the research and train teachers or I could go back. And at this point, I walked away from being an assistant principal, and I left and went into higher ed. I’ve seen education from K through 16 and in the non-profit sector, and the need to recruit more teachers of color isn’t just exclusive to K12 but it’s also a thing in higher education. And when I got tenure at Loyola University of Maryland five years ago or whatever it was, I was the second African-American man in the history of the university. The university had been around for 100 years.
So I think this need around recruiting and retaining and supporting teachers of color…it’s what I wrote my dissertation about. It’s something that I advocated for when I was in the classroom. But I don’t think going into the classroom I was fully conscious of the scarcity of Black teachers. I just accepted the fact that in my cohort at the university, it was just me.
