Agent Kwame Sarfo-Mensah (Teacher Identity)

Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to examine how your various personal identities intersect and influence how you interact with students and colleagues. The special agent assigned to help you with this task is Kwame Sarfo-Mensah, owner and founder of Identity Talk Consulting.

Kwame Safro-Mensah has over 14 years of experience in the classroom, teaching middle school math and science in Philadelphia, and then Boston, public schools. In addition to this, he has written two books and various articles, offers tutoring for students and online classes for first year teachers, and has his own internet talk show, “Identity Talk 4 Educators LIVE”, where he interviews guests about their personal stories and the specific elements that shape who they are as educators. Kwame was also named the 2019 Member of the Year by Black Educators Rock, Inc. and the 2019 Massachusetts Celebrity Educator of the Year!  I talked to Kwame in early April, a little over a week after he and his family had come back to Boston, after spending a year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where his wife was working as a director for the Peace Corp. Kwame is obviously an incredibly busy person, however his family was in quarantine after returning to the States, which was unfortunate for them, but a great opportunity for the podcast, and I was able to speak to him over Zencastr.

Links:

• Kwame’s website
• His books:
  • From "Inaction" to "In Action": Creating a New Normal for Urban Educators
  • Shaping the Teacher Identity: 8 Lessons That Will Help Define the Teacher in You
• Articles:
  • “Bringing a Culturally Responsive Lens to Math Class”
  • “3 Fun Activities for Strengthening Numeracy Skills”

 

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