Snehalkanodia
Schools hire and quickly lose faculty of color.
Numerous recent research studies bear out the importance of having teachers of color in classrooms. Low-income black students who have at least one black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate high school, for example.
In light of such findings, numerous school systems have pledged to hire more teachers of color, and school districts and regional consortiums are hosting job fairs for teachers of color and reaching out to minority-serving institutions to find prospective teachers. But any district that recruits teachers of color must also commit to work to keep them. And that’s where they often fail. Teachers of color are far more apt to leave the profession than their white counterparts.
While the recruitment process can rely on tangible goals and “one and done” moments of engagement (like recruitment fairs), retaining teachers of color requires a level of engagement that challenges the broader mission and culture of a school district. That means revising curricula so that it is both culturally relevant and historically accurate. It also means committing to diversifying faculty and staff, and facilitating mandatory cultural competency training for all faculty and staff.
A few years ago, I was one of those teachers of color who decided to leave the classroom for an administrative role. As a teacher in New Jersey, where only 16 percent of teachers are of color, but students of color make up more than half the K-12 student body, my experience was that few school districts are committed to this broader work. The experiences that precipitated my exit from the classroom mirror the experiences many other teachers of color have had.
Because I am a black man, for example, there was a desire on the part of my colleagues that I assume the role of a disciplinarian first, and serve as a teacher second. They couldn’t understand that being a disciplinarian first and a teacher second ran counter to my drive to be a teacher committed to social justice.
Because I am a black man, my colleagues assumed that my role was as a disciplinarian first, and a teacher second.
The respect I gained from my white colleagues and supervisors derived from my ability to discipline students, rather than from my work a teacher. When I was asked for input, it often had to do with student discipline rather than my area of expertise.
I connected well with my students, many of whom were black, due to our shared experiences. Because of my ability to leverage culture to achieve student compliance, I felt a constant pressure to prove my ability to teach. If my students performed strong academically as a group, I would hear the peanut gallery wonder if my students really performed —specifically, if student learning transmitted into literacy assessment scores.
When I received a financial reward due to student performance on state testing, I was told that I was lucky to have all of the “smarter” students, as though I didn’t do the work to deserve the reward.
The lack of relationships with other teachers was a real burden. Teachers of color leaving the profession often have feelings of isolation in an already isolating profession. Teachers of color often choose teaching as a profession because they want to improve the academic experiences of students of color. This provides many of us with an orientation towards social justice. Yet teachers of color are often outnumbered by colleagues who do not reflect the same values, race or culture.
Yet school districts often lack a commitment to social justice and cultural competence as they relate to teaching children of all races and backgrounds.
Public education in the United States has a history of being used as a tool to de-culture and assimilate people, essentially enabling cultural genocide. Many teachers of color are committed to working with students to critically examine social inequities and their impacts on school and life. But a school district that does not value that intrinsic mission will have a hard time supporting and retaining those teachers.
One day, I may return to the classroom. I must admit, I do miss the energy and excitement of teaching. But in order for me to return I would need assurance that my school district supports my drive for justice and efforts to challenge harmful norms in public education.
Specifically, these assurances include (1) a tangible strategy for hiring more educators of color; (2) professional development training for white teachers in cultural competency and racism; (3) teacher training on the potential of non-Eurocentric curricula to combat racism; and (4) support for teachers of color such as mentoring and professional development.
I may never get that assurance. But without it, I will continue to work in other positions that will support my goals. If school districts don’t wise up, they’ll continue to lose more teachers of color and their faculty will get whiter as their students get darker.