Читать книгу More Than an Ally - Michael L. Boucher Jr. - Страница 14

Systems and their leaders look for quick fixes to intractable problems. One answer put forth to make schools more diverse and to increase the buy-in of students of color is to bring more teachers of color into the classroom. Education leaders work to bring new teachers from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds into the profession, but their efforts have not been enough. Once teachers of color are in schools, they face challenges from students and adults, and schools of education are often not ready to aid teacher candidates of color in dealing with the micro- and macroaggressions that teachers of color experience.

Research has indicated that Black students who have even one Black teacher in their^[1] schooling experience in low-income schools have 29 percent greater interest in school and are 39 percent less likely to drop out before completing high school (Gershenson, Hart, Lindsay, & Papageorge, 2017). But as Milner (2006) explained, having a Black teacher in the classroom is not necessarily the panacea it is often hoped to be unless they are also culturally competent and refuse to engage in deficit models. Also, the assumption that Black students are merely in need of role models is also insufficient and again assumes no responsibility on the part of White teachers (Brown, 2012; Milner, 2006; Williamson, 2011).

It is imperative to approach the problem of student disenfranchisement from as many angles as possible. As the number of students of color continues to outpace the pool of teachers of color, increasing the number of teachers of color in our schools is an important aspirational goal (Stotko, Ingram, & Beaty-O’Ferrall, 2007; Villegas, Strom, & Lucas, 2012). However, White teachers are the predominant demographic of professionals working in schools, and there will not be enough teachers of color to change that experience for many years (Milner, 2006). So, it is crucial that these White teachers be the ones who work to break the structures that impede students of color (Sleeter, 2001b). Schools need more counselors. They need more and better multicultural curricula, more teachers of color, and more administrators of color, but if White teachers are not part of the changes, they will not be implemented in time to catch this generation.