Urban Ed Academy

Every student deserves to see themselves in the classroom.

Urban Ed Academy is on a mission to build equity in education through representative leadership in and around school by placing one Black male teacher in every elementary in San Francisco. 

Urban Ed Academy was founded as part of a strategy to inspire excitement for learning in young boys of color by matching them with mentors who looked like them. From 2010 to 2016, SMART Saturdays introduced over 800 boys in San Francisco to STEM project-based learning experiences led by Black and Brown men. The strategy worked on Saturdays, but our children deserve more — we need men of color to be full-time classroom teachers. To make this happen, we must address the intertwining challenges of teacher shortages, the lack of culturally responsive training, and the housing crisis. Since 2018, UEA has been investing in solutions that innovatively tackle these challenges.