Contextualizing the Demographic Imperative: Teacher Education for Students of Color in a Rural Community

• In Event: 70.048 - Toward Racial Justice and Democratization of the Teaching Force

Abstract

Teacher education programs designed to recruit and prepare teachers of color remain contested sites, often operating in isolation and lacking associated longitudinal research. One critical, but often overlooked, aspect of such programs is the impact of context (specifically, university context and geographical location). For the past fifteen years, the State University of New York College at Cortland, a comprehensive college with a large teacher education program located in a rural area in central New York State, has operated a scholarship program designed to recruit and prepare students of color to become teachers in urban areas -- the Cortland Urban Recruitment of Educators (C.U.R.E.) program. Critical Race Theory creates space for rejection of the common acceptance of the “good enough” program preparing “good enough” teachers of color for urban schools. Using CRT, we discuss three critical aspects of the program that serve to illustrate the constraints and affordances of a rural, homogenous campus and community context, drawing on internal research data. The three critical aspects include the excellent academic achievement of students of color in the program in relationship to perceptions others hold about them, challenges of developing cultural competence within the program’s context, and development of teachers as critically conscious activists. While rural environments are often seen as limited areas for preparing teachers of color, we have come to embrace this environment as an opportunity.

Author

• Anne Burns Thomas, SUNY - College at Cortland