Despite the increasingly diverse student population, diversity among teachers fails to mirror this trend, begging the question of why minority professionals scoff at the idea of teaching.
Teaching, like any profession, is a passion. Excitement for teaching develops through being taught with enthusiasm.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers union polled teachers in 2015 on why they wanted to get into education, and the top three answers, according to The Guardian, were "wanting to work with children, the joy of seeing children learn new things and helping children to enjoy learning." Unfortunately, their passion does not translate well for minority students.
The Chicago Tribune reported that "Nationwide, two percent of public school teachers are African American males, and two percent are Hispanic males." That is a significant discrepancy, considering that nearly half of all students K-12 are students of color.
The gap between minority teachers and minority students is concerning, considering that studies have shown that minority students tend to perform better when taught by minority teachers. Adjacently, those same studies have shown that minority teachers tend to hold minority students to higher expectations compared to their white colleagues.
Minority students feel better about school knowing that there are people like them in positions of authority. Most minority teachers often serve as role models for young students of color, which gives them a more favorable view of their experience in education.
Even for white people, having a minority teacher is some students' first time experiencing a person of color having authority over them, broadening their view of race relations. From a sociological perspective, more black teachers mean better black student performance and better diversity, but unfortunately, young black professionals aren't catching that vision.
The sad reality of being a minority teacher is the oppression that you face.
Being a person of color already invites oppression, but being an underpaid teacher in schools where your successors are dropping out and failing adds to a depressing situation. The Center For American Progress reported that only "70 percent of African American teachers are satisfied with their jobs, and only 37 percent were satisfied with their pay. It went on to state that "both percentages are significantly lower than white teachers."
School systems see it as a rarity if black teachers outperform white teachers in the classroom. The result is more black teachers teaching in low-income schools, instead of the more privileged schools with better compensation and benefits.
For the few that land jobs, regardless of where they teach, "the turnover rate for black teachers is 22 percent nationwide, compared to 15 percent for white teachers," according to the Department of Education.
As a result of the lack of exposure to minority teachers, young minorities do not feel encouraged to enter the teaching field.
Based off the studies above, if you're a black student who had a rough experience in school, being black and unable to build strong relationships with your teachers, what would encourage you to think that you could do the same in the opposite situation, as a teacher?
The first step to increasing the number of minority teachers is to acknowledge that the lack of minority teachers is a problem and not just a coincidence.
Diversity is as American as apple pie and should be the goal in any profession. In 2000, Clemson University adopted an educational program based on recruiting more students of color to enroll in education programs while in university.
Called Mentors Instructing Students Towards Effective Role-Models (MISTER), the program acts as a mentoring and support service for aspiring minority teaching professionals, and it awards scholarships for tuition. Since the inception of MISTER, the program has expanded to 32 universities, yet minorities are still underrepresented in public school systems.
To high-achieving minority scholars, teaching is not very attractive. That is something that is not likely to change anytime soon.
One of the faults in the lack of black teachers is that it creates a lack of black administrators who can make the profession attractive to young black professionals. Until then, public school systems across the United States will be reactive, rather than proactive, when the number of minority students surpasses the number of white students.
In the meantime, hold up your minority teachers. The path they took to teaching was turbulent.
