#HarlemEd: Two Teachers College, Columbia University, alumni, Drs. - TopicsExpress



          

#HarlemEd: Two Teachers College, Columbia University, alumni, Drs. Travis Bristol and Terrenda White, weigh in on The Teachers Of Color Disappearance Crisis in a January 6th Education Week blog post. EXCERPTS: Response From Travis J. Bristol Dr. Travis J. Bristol is a former New York City public high school teacher and teacher educator with the Boston Teacher Residency program. His research focuses on the intersection of race and gender in organizations. Dr. Bristol is currently a research and policy fellow at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy and Education, where Linda Darling-Hammond serves as faculty director: Diversity drives innovation according to a recent study by Forbes of 321 global executives in companies with annual revenue of $500 million (see here). Executives state that a diverse workforce is integral to allowing their organizations to devise creative solutions to challenging problems. Americas schools should pay attention to this finding. At the very moment policy makers, such as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, advocate for increasing the ethnic/racial diversity of the teaching profession (see here and here) - teachers of color are disappearing. In city after city across these United States - Latino and Black teachers are exiting or quite possibly being forced out of the profession. This disappearance is most pronounced in urban centers. For example, in 2004, Latino teachers were 38% of all Chicago public schools teachers; today, they are 19% (see here). Similarly, in New Orleans public schools, Black teachers were 75% of all teachers; today, they are 54% (see here). Similar patterns hold in Boston (see here) - a school district still under a federal court desegregation order to diversify the teacher force. We cant have a conversation about the role of teachers of color in schools or increasing the number teachers of color without, first, addressing this disappearance crisis. Simply put, if there is a leak in the faucet, the solution is not to keep pouring water down the drain. The solution should be to identify whats causing the leak and, then, insert a patch. For researchers and policymakers, this is an important opportunity to explore why teachers of color are disappearing and, more importantly, to design polices that address this disappearance crisis. Why should we care that the teaching force in Americas schools is becoming less diverse? Shouldnt the quality of the teacher matter more than the teachers race in improving learning outcomes? While there are nationally representative data that find increases in learning when students have a same race teacher (see here and here), there is, of course, a great danger in suggesting that simply providing Latino and Black children with Latino and Black teachers will close persistent learning gaps. Given our flat or interconnected world (see here), all children need a diverse teaching force to prepare them to be global citizens. Finally, a diverse teaching force (i.e. increasing the number of teachers of color) isnt only good for students, but has the potential to create professional learning opportunities for teachers inside of schools. Similar to the realization by the 321 global executives, increasing the number of teachers of color in Americas schools can facilitate creative solutions to solving challenging problems - such as improving learning for historically marginalized students. Latino, Asian, and Black teachers are well positioned to bring new ideas to their colleagues on how to make the curriculum culturally responsive, for example. And, the presence of these teachers of color can serve as a sounding board to White teachers attempting to navigate unfamiliar cultural terrain. Diversity drives innovation: Americas schools should pay attention. ... Response From Terrenda Corisa White Terrenda White is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She studies market-based education reforms in urban communities and its cultural and pedagogical implications for classroom teaching and learning, including its impact on teacher dispositions and teacher professional autonomy and identity. Dr. White is also a former elementary school teacher: In order to benefit from more teachers of color in our public schools, we must learn from the ones we already have, and then ask ourselves why we chronically lose and dismiss so many others. Research on the impact of teachers of color includes not only their humanistic commitments to work in hard-to-staff schools or their presence as role models for students of color. Teachers of color also model diverse practices that broaden our conception and understanding of classroom pedagogy, student learning, and educational equity. Despite the current emphasis on test score production and technocratic definitions of teacher quality, successful educators of color have taught us the value of culturally responsive teaching, which includes warm demanders[1] who do not divorce rigor and achievement from the cultivation of relationships with students that are grounded in a value for students socio-emotional and cultural experiences in and out of schools. Indeed teachers of color are part and parcel of the on-going development of critical teaching practices and innovative approaches to pedagogy, such as hip-hop pedagogy and the inclusion of youth-based multi-modal literacies. These practices can improve levels of student engagement for all students, not only for students of color. In light of this knowledge, however, we have to consider why it is that teachers of color are chronically under-represented in our nations schools. Contrary to what many may think, the racial and ethnic gap between Americas teaching force and the demography of American school children is not solely or primarily due to growing enrollments of students of color or the lack of recruitment of teachers of color[2]. Instead, research indicates that our chronic need for more teachers of color comes from failure to retain the ones we already have--a relatively new phenomenon whereby teachers of color leave our public schools at higher rates than white teachers, and for very different reasons. For some educators of color, departure from the profession is not by choice, while for others it is a choice associated with school and organizational conditions that bar them from key decision-making opportunities and conditions that limit their autonomy (Ingersoll and May, 2011). These findings are significant because it means the chronic need for more teachers of color stems from failure to learn from the ones we already have, including those who may challenge working conditions or question narrow approaches to teaching and learning. Pre-retirement departures among veteran educators of color, for example, are not always by choice, and are sometimes the result of massive dismissals on the part of reformers in urban districts who have closed low-performing public schools. Reformers have mistakenly associated the struggles of these schools with teachers of color themselves who have disproportionately worked in high-poverty, hard-to-staff schools. The sad irony here is that as veteran teachers of color are now blamed for the conditions of these schools, one consistent finding about teachers of color was their commitment to work in the very schools where other teachers were less willing to work, and whose departure from these schools was historically much lower. Today, as we close public schools in urban communities and open scores of charter schools, these schools often struggle with high levels of staff attrition and turnover among an overwhelmingly green[3] workforce of beginning teachers, including novice educators of color[4]. As a researcher in these contexts, I have spent considerable time studying the experiences of these teachers and have witnessed factors leading to their decisions to leave or to stay. What Ive learned is that todays novice educators of color, like their predecessors, value culturally inclusive approaches to teaching and learning but have less and less opportunities (and professional protections) to voice their concerns and to actively shape teaching and learning in innovative ways, let alone the working conditions in their schools. Administrators who are interested in increasing the number of teachers of color in their schools, therefore, must value these teachers not only for diversitys sake, but for the sake of teaching itself and incorporate the range of ideas and approaches they bring to the classroom. In doing so, they move beyond recruitment and work toward needed retention.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 01:24:21 +0000

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