Recruiting and retaining educators of color is a growing challenge for schools. While public school student populations nationally are just 50% white overall, our teaching force is 80% white. Every school benefits from a balanced percentage of black, indigenous, and people of color teaching all students. In episode 9, Dr. Basiyr Rodney, chair of the teacher education department at Webster University in St. Louis, shares strategies and underlying supports that can help diversify a school's faculty. Tony Neal is our host. Episode produced and directed by Deborah Bohlmann. Engineering, music, and creative support by Alvin Zamudio.
Key Quote: "When we are working to dismantle structures of injustice, we all have to be open to that process." -Dr. Rodney
Teacher Voice: To lead off, we are listening to a spoken word performance by educator Clint Smith called “Aristotle.” He is a writer, an educator, and a doctoral candidate at Harvard University. Although we usually open our episodes with a youth voice to center our conversation, because we are focusing on the teaching profession today, we chose Clint Smith's eloquence to lead us into our topic. Check him out on Twitter for a regular dose of a-ha moments. Thank you, Clint Smith, for permission to include your work in our episode!
Resources:
- "Diversifying the Teaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color" published by the Learning Policy Institute (2018).
- "Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage?" by Myra H. Strober and David Tyack (1980).
- Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in the Best Schools by Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond (2015).
- For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'All Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin (2016).
- Black Males in Education (St. Louis) sign-up page