Cultivating an Interest in Becoming an Educator

Cultivating an interest in becoming an educator means creating the environment and conditions that allow for: racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students of color to see themselves as public school teachers; welcoming adults and other non-traditional students from under-served and immigrant communities into the education profession; and the removal of barriers to entering teacher preparation and licensure programs. It is a necessary precondition for potential educators to succeed in gaining the necessary credentials.

All students benefit from diversity among educators, but we cannot increase educator diversity if we do not first increase the number of racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse people interested in a career in education. Decades of implicitly and explicitly racist hiring practices have meant that students of color have rarely seen educators who look like them, and their own experiences in schools have alienated them from imagining professional lives spent in schools. Repairing that damage requires that people of color feel welcome, valued, and successful as students, and that they be reintroduced to the deep and rich legacy of teaching in their own cultural backgrounds. From that foundation, students of color must actively be introduced to career pathways in education and recruited into teacher education and preparation programs. In addition, we must seek out non-traditional sources of racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teachers, such as people from immigrant-rich communities who have credentials or teaching experience in their native countries and community members who can be supported to gain access to paraprofessional programs.

High-leverage strategies for cultivating an interest in education include emphasizing careers in education in existing career and technical education programs and other opportunities for learning and clarifying career pathways in education so that young people can imagine the full range of options for careers in schools and districts. In addition, a number of districts in New England with large populations of new Americans have created positions and incentives to “grow your own” teachers and paraeducators from those communities. Of course, any progress in this area must be predicated on effective antiracist work in schools to change the conditions that drive people of color away from careers in education.