I was teaching elementary physical education in Maryland several years ago, when I noticed that the majority of the students leaving class to wander the halls were African-American boys. It soon became a habit for the school counselor and I to take turns walking these boy back to class.

One day, she and I sat down to find solutions to the skipping class problem. We started by reviewing school discipline data and discovered that the boys we saw wandering the halls had more disciplinary referrals for "being out of seat and disrespect" than most of their white counterparts. Why was this happening? We were not sure, but the data made us uneasy.

Years later I was teaching middle school physical education, also in Maryland. At the end of class one day, my physical education co-teacher said to a group of seventh-grade Black boys, "You all need to stop standing around like you?re standing on a street corner."

An image of Black boys and men standing on corners in urban areas flashed through my mind. It seemed like my colleague was racially stereotyping the boys and it bothered me.

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