teachers of color

The Teacher Testimony Project: Mobilizing And Lifting The Voices Of Teachers Of Color

Our guest author today is Conra D. Gist, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Arkansas, and 2016-2017 Spencer/National Academy of Education Post-Doctoral Fellow. The following blog describes the genesis of the Teacher Testimony Project, an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Education Service Project designed to work with aspiring and current Teachers of Color.

Given the wealth of research indicating the value Teachers of Color* add to the teaching profession (Villegas and Irvine 2010), it is always surprising to encounter critiques that overlook their contributions. Yet, the Teacher Testimony Project was developed in a hostile political climate in which a deficit narrative began to arise about a grow-your-own program committed to their recruitment and retention.  This was troubling since numerous education scholars have noted the potential of home-grown programs to address teacher shortages (Learning Policy Institute 2016) and high attrition (Shanker Institute 2015), as well as to increase the likelihood of producing community minded teachers with cultural capital that benefits students’ learning experiences (Sleeter and Milner 2011). Scholarship further indicates that Teachers of Color often have knowledge of community and ethics of care (Skinner et al. 2011), positively impact academic and nonacademic outcomes for students of color (Gershenson et al. 2016), and have commitments to racial and social justice (Gist 2014).  Despite this research base, the negative rhetoric that began circulating about these teachers threatened to misrepresent their strengths and contributions. Thus, a pressing question arose: how could Teachers of Color reframe the discourse in ways that are authentic to their strengths and lived experiences?

One answer seemed to be the development and circulation of teacher testimonies.  As a critical education scholar, I created the Teacher Testimony Project to: (a) document and feature teacher testimonies by Teachers of Color committed to social justice efforts in education; (b) develop qualitative maps of unseen resources and strengths being invested in schools and local communities by Teachers of Color; (c) challenge and debunk deficit perspectives about the value that community-based Teachers of Color add to the teaching profession; (d) create communal spaces of healing and renewal for Teachers of Color through the writing and sharing of testimonies; and (e) center the voices of Teachers of Color to speak the truth about the ways in which they can work to be change agents in their communities.

Recruiting And Retaining Educators Of Color

Our guest authors today are Audra Watson, Travis Bristol, Terrenda White and Jose Vilson. Watson is Program Officer and Director of Mentoring and Induction Strategy at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Bristol is a Research and Policy Fellow at Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. White is Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Vilson is a math educator, blogger, speaker, and activist in New York City, NY

On Thursday, May 7, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) co-sponsored an hour-long webinar, in which researchers, policy makers, and practitioners shared best practices and strategies for increasing the racial/ethnic diversity of the country’s teaching force.

As discussed during the webinar, a racially and ethnically diverse teaching force is important for several reasons. First, in this flat, or interconnected, world, our children need a diverse teaching force to prepare them to be global citizens. Second, teachers of color are positioned to serve as role models and cultural brokers for children of color, who account for 50.2 percent of all U.S. public school students (NCES, 2015). Despite this diverse student population, Latino, Black, Asian, and Native American teachers comprise only 17.3% of all teachers (Ingersoll, Merrill & Stuckey, 2014). Third, several large-scale studies point to increased learning -- as measured by a standardized exam -- for students when they have a teacher of the same race (Dee, 2001; Egalite, Kisida,& Winters, 2015); Not discussed at the time, but equally important, is the fact that a diverse teaching force challenges the assumption that some of the qualities needed most by high-quality, effective teachers -- intelligence, intellectual curiosity, and deep content knowledge -- are difficult to find in large supply amongst individuals of color seeking to enter the teaching profession.

How Boston Public Schools Can Recruit and Retain Black Male Teachers

Our guest author today is Travis J. Bristol, former high school English teacher in New York City public schools and teacher educator with the Boston Teacher Residency program, who is currently a research and policy fellow at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) at Stanford University.

The challenges faced by Black male teachers in schools may serve as the canary in the coalmine that begins to explain the debilitating condition faced by Black boys in schools. Black males represent 1.9% of all public school teachers yet have one of the highest rates of turnover. Attempts to increase the number of Black male teachers are based on research that suggests these new recruits can improve Black students’ schooling outcomes.

Below, I discuss my study of the school-based experiences of 27 Black male teachers in Boston Public Schools (BPS), who represent approximately 10 percent of all Black male teachers in the district. This study, which I recently discussed in Boston’s NPR news station, is one of the largest studies conducted exclusively on Black male teachers and has implications for policymakers as well as school administrators looking to recruit and retain Black male educators.

Here is a summary of the key findings.

The Souls Of Black Teachers: Reading José Luis Vilson With W.E.B. Du Bois

This article was originally published in Dissent

The heart of education lies in the relationship between teacher and student. The quality of that relationship—its capacity to nurture, to inspire, to awaken the imagination and to cultivate the intellect—is crucial to student learning. This is an ancient truth, equally central to the pedagogy of Socrates in the West, Confucius in the East, and many others in between. But it bears repeating in an age when many self-styled “education reformers” seek to reduce the value of teaching to standardized test scores and statistical algorithms.

José Luis Vilson’s This Is Not A Test (Haymarket Books, 2014) bears witness to the enduring vitality of that relationship. Vilson teaches math to poor black and brown students in New York City middle schools, and his writing is rooted in his classroom experiences. His voice is an authentic teacher’s voice, with the resonance of a teacher’s calling and the timbre of a teacher’s passion for the welfare of his students. Teachers will recognize themselves in Vilson, from his fatherly affection for his students and disarmingly open accounts of classroom triumphs and defeats to his sorrow at a former student’s senseless death and anger over the poverty that throws up so many obstacles to student learning.

A Path To Diversifying The Teaching Workforce

Our guest author today is Jose Vilson, a math educator, writer, and activist in a New York City public school. You can find more of his writing at http://thejosevilson.com and his book, This Is Not A Test, will be released in the spring of 2014.

Travis Bristol’s article on bringing more black men to the classroom has sparked a plethora of conversation around the roles of educators in our school system. If we look at the national educational landscape, educators are still treated with admiration, but our government has yet to see fit to create conditions in schools that promote truly effective teaching and learning. In fact, successful teaching in otherwise struggling environments happens in spite and not because of the policies of our current school systems.

Even as superintendents see fit to close schools that house large populations of teachers and students of color, we must observe the roles that educators of color play in their schools, whether they consider themselves “loners” or “groupers," as Bristol describes in the aforementioned article. When the Brown vs. Board of Education decision came down in 1954, districts across the nation were determined to keep as many white educators employed as possible. While integration plays a role in assuring equitable conditions for all children and exposes them to other peoples, segregation’s silver lining was that Black educators taught Black children Black history. Racial identification plays a role in self-confidence, and having immediate role models for our children of color matters for achievement to this day.