By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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DIGITAL BOOK (PDF): A Long Walk … Towards Care, Concern, Respect, and Advocacy
Monday, December 15, 2025
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
Purchase The Book!
Index
- Introducing Author Derrick Brown
- Summary
- Review (By S. Thomas Everson)
- Excerpt (PDF) (82 Pages ... Contains Table Of Contents and Figures, Summaries and Review, "How To Navigate This (Digital) Book", Acknowledgements, Forewords, Introduction, and Indexes)
Introducing Author Derrick Brown
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Author Derrick Brown
Derrick Brown is a veteran educator,
storyteller, curriculum designer, and autoethnographic writer with more than
twenty years of experience guiding students, teachers, and communities.
His work integrates critical pedagogy (through an approach he calls #TheSeeSayShow), spiritual reflection,
ethical prompt design, #StandupStorytelling (a fusion of rap, spoken word,
oration, teaching, and singing), and narrative inquiry.
He is the creator of #TheSeeSayShow Fellowship
and Curriculum,
the
Empath Remixes series, and the Born(e)
Witness One-Man Show.
His writing has resonated with educators, families, pastors, counselors, and
leaders seeking relational clarity and emotional truth.
What happens when a teacher tells the truth about what teaching feels like?
During a medically supported leave from the
classroom, educator and storyteller Derrick Brown embarks on a reflective
journey that becomes both a reckoning and a renewal.
Through twenty-nine deeply human “Virtual Walks” with students, pastors,
colleagues, leaders, and family members, he examines the emotional landscape of
modern schooling with honesty, clarity, and courage.
These walks unfold as slow conversations …
the kind that allow truths to breathe.
They reveal the quiet weight carried by Black male educators.
They illuminate the patterns of containment, misinterpretation, racialized
expectations, and moral injury that often remain hidden beneath institutional
routines.
And they show how care, concern, respect, and advocacy can become pathways
toward dignity and healing.
Woven through the narrative are seven
foundational documents that trace Brown’s evolution from overwhelmed
practitioner to reflective witness … from classroom teacher to architectural
storyteller … from solitary endurance to intentional fellowship.
Together, these materials form a powerful autoethnographic portrait of a
profession in crisis … and a soul reclaiming its peace.
A Long Walk … Towards Care, Concern,
Respect, and Advocacy is not a book
of accusations.
It is a book of invitations.
It invites readers to walk slowly … to listen deeply … to honor lived
experience … and to imagine more humane ways of teaching, leading, learning,
and relating.
For educators seeking meaning, leaders seeking understanding, families seeking truth, and communities seeking hope … this book offers a lantern for the journey.
Selah.
Book Review (By S. Thomas Everson)
1. Overview
A Long Walk … Towards Care, Concern, Respect, and Advocacy is a
reflective, autoethnographic narrative that blends memoir, educational insight,
spiritual discernment, and social-emotional inquiry.
Written during a medically supported leave from the classroom, the book
chronicles the journey of a Black male educator who pauses his professional
life long enough to examine the invisible emotional labor that has shaped his
teaching, his identity, and his spirit.
Through twenty-nine “Virtual Walks” with students, pastors, colleagues,
leaders, friends, and family members, Derrick Brown constructs a slow,
dignified, truth-telling journey that reveals the complexity, generosity, and
vulnerability required to teach in today’s social and institutional climate.
Each walk becomes a layered conversation grounded in care, concern, respect,
advocacy, and peace.
Each walk also becomes a vehicle for processing trauma, navigating paradox, and
imagining more humane forms of leadership and learning.
Woven throughout are seven foundational documents that dissect the realities of modern schooling, expose racialized and emotional patterns often left unspoken, and articulate a vision for new learning models rooted in #StandupStorytelling, ethical prompt design, and fellowship-based education.
This book functions as memoir, mirror, testimony, and blueprint.
It is a call for institutions to honor humanity … for communities to value
relational clarity … and for educators to reclaim their peace and dignity.
2. The Need for This Book
Across the United States, educators are leaving the profession at alarming
rates.
National surveys reveal that exhaustion, miscommunication, racialized
experiences, lack of administrative support, and moral injury are driving
teachers away.
However, very few books capture:
· the emotional and spiritual burden carried by Black male educators
· the intersection of teaching, trauma, and calling
· the reflective interior life of a teacher navigating inequitable systems
· the lived cost of “containment” versus true professional support
· the healing potential of storytelling and autoethnography
· a practical framework for dialogue, peace, and boundary-setting
· a humane model of teaching grounded in empathy rather than compliance
Educators, pastors, school leaders, counselors, and parents are seeking
language for what they feel but often cannot articulate.
This book offers that language, that lantern, and that long walk.
3. Unique Contribution
This book is distinctive because it offers:
A. A rare autoethnographic account by a Black male educator
Very few published narratives center the emotional and spiritual life of Black men in the teaching profession … especially those navigating containment, marginalization, and racialized professional dynamics.
B. A hybrid structure that blends memoir, spiritual reflection, and educational critique
The twenty-nine walks create a narrative architecture that is innovative and accessible.
C. A pastoral, invitational tone that avoids bitterness and centers healing
This book is not a grievance.
It is a gentle truth.
D. A model for dialogue rooted in #StandupStorytelling and ethical prompt design
It introduces a practical framework for schools, religious communities, counseling settings, and leadership groups.
E. A visionary path forward
The book outlines the author’s next chapter through the #TheSeeSayShow Fellowship Lab, Born(e) Witness, and fellowship-driven learning communities.
4. Target Audience
Primary Audiences
· K–12 teachers (especially Black, male, and marginalized educators)
· School leaders and district administrators
· Educator preparation programs
· Counselors, therapists, and pastoral care providers
· Parents and caregivers
· Higher education faculty and researchers in education, race, ethics, and leadership
Secondary Audiences
· Faith communities
· Community organizers
· Leadership coaches
· Readers of literary nonfiction and memoir
· Book clubs centered on spirituality, healing, and justice
5. Market Positioning and Publisher Fit
Publishers Aligned with the Book
· Beacon Press (racial justice, public education, spirituality)
· Harvard Education Press (autoethnography, educator narratives, educational reform)
· Eerdmans (spiritual memoir, reflective Christian scholarship)
· Paraclete Press (Christian formation, pastoral reflection)
· Luminare Press (hybrid memoirs with social impact)
· Routledge (autoethnographic scholarship, critical race studies, education studies)
Why This Book Fits
This book is reflective, morally urgent, spiritually grounded, and written
with academic clarity.
It will speak to readers seeking depth, nuance, and honesty while also offering
a new pedagogical vision.
6. Comparable and Complementary Titles
1. The Will to Teach by Lisa Delpit
This book provides insight into the emotional and cultural dimensions of
teaching in racialized environments.
Brown’s work adds a deeply personal autoethnographic lens.
2. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood by Christopher Emdin
Emdin centers culturally responsive teaching and narrative.
Brown extends this direction with spiritual reflection and healing.
3. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy
Both works examine the emotional toll of racialized environments.
Brown applies these frameworks to schooling with a personal, relational
approach.
4. The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris
This book explores trauma and healing.
Brown applies similar insights to teachers working within high-stress systems.
5. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates uses epistolary reflection to explore race and identity.
Brown builds upon this tradition through dialogues and “walks.”
6. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Brown’s framework for dialogue, reflection, and empathy echoes Freirean liberatory pedagogy.
7. Book Description (Long Form)
During a season of emotional exhaustion and professional strain, Derrick
Brown steps away from the classroom and begins to write.
What emerges is a profound, layered examination of what it means to teach,
lead, love, witness, endure, and heal in environments shaped by chaos and quiet
inequity.
The book unfolds through twenty-nine “Virtual Walks” that revisit critical
relationships.
Students affirm the meaning of his work.
Pastors name the spiritual cost.
Colleagues reflect institutional tensions.
Leaders offer clarity and disappointment.
Family members reveal generational patterns.
Each walk helps Brown see his story more truthfully.
Interwoven with these walks are seven foundational documents … a body of
writing that captures years of suppressed insight and rising clarity.
These documents diagnose the realities of modern schooling, analyze racialized
professional patterns, and articulate a vision for new models of learning grounded
in fellowship, reflection, and narrative truth.
By the time readers reach the final pages, they witness a teacher becoming
something more than a teacher.
They witness the birth of a new calling.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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