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Ensuring a Diverse and Learner-Ready Teacher Workforce

Tue, April 9, 8:00 to 10:00am, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Floor: 200 Level, Room 203C

Abstract

This presentation will begin with the presenters personal and professional journey as a WOKE
educational leader: a child of West Indian immigrant parents, career as a high school teacher,
path to becoming a teacher educator and current work as a national education policy advocate.
The presentation will then focus on the work of a national initiative she currently leads,
designed to increase the racial diversity of the teacher workforce and ensure all teachers
regardless of race demonstrate culturally responsive practice (CRP). All students benefit from
being educated by teachers from a variety of different backgrounds, races and ethnic groups, as
this experience better prepares them to succeed in an increasingly diverse society. However, in
the United States, five of out 10 students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools
are students of color and the ratio for teachers lags far behind, only 1 in 5 are teachers of color.
Additionally, more than 40 percent of public schools have no teachers of color on staff. While
all students benefit from a racially diverse teacher workforce, research shows students of color
in particular benefit from seeing teachers from their own racial and ethnic group who can serve
as academically successful role models.

In an era of “post-truth”, arguments for supporting a racially diverse teacher workforce are
often conflated with a false narrative that White teachers are not well equipped to teach
students of color and/or that teachers of color are better equipped. Attention to the racial
diversity of the teacher workforce as well as the ability of all teachers, regardless of race, to
engage in CRP are critical to ensure each student experiences equitable educational outcomes.

This presenter will share a vision and policy guidance paper designed to
support national-level scale-up of best-practices and model policies being incubated within the
initiative. The guidance highlights ways that state education agencies can work collaboratively
with education preparation providers (EPPs), local school districts, and national education
organizations to support both policies and practices that contribute to increasing the racial
diversity of the teacher workforce and ensure all teachers demonstrate culturally responsive
practice. One clearly isolatable power that state education officials possess is their authority
over the initial licensure of teachers and the approval of the programs that prepare individuals
for those licenses. The presenter will show how states can employ their authority over these
policy levers to increase the racial diversity of the teacher workforce ensure their state’s
teachers demonstrate CRP.

As the Director of an organization that provides technical assistance and federal advocacy
support to state-level education officials, and her experience in a highly related set of
expositional activities, she is positioned to offer particularly pointed recommendations
regarding how best to support systems level change that will result in the equitable distribution
of diverse and teachers to students in our nation’s P12 schools and ensure each child receives
the supports needed to achieve equitable learning outcomes.

Author