At the end of the twentieth century, researchers began to predict that within a decade, minorities would account for the greater number of students in the United States. In their publication called Current Issues and Trends in Education, a book generally used for training new teachers, Jerry Aldridge and Renitta Goldman point out that “studies on immigration, migration, and fertility patterns have indicated that by the year 2010, about 38 percent of people younger than the age of 18 will be Black, Asian American, or Hispanic”1. Yet, why is it that despite of the changing demographics of our schools and the increased cultural diversity within them, the diversity of our teachers continues to lag behind?
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, during the years 2003-2004, about 83 percent of public school teachers were White. Teachers of minority backgrounds accounted for 16.9 percent, to include Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and Native Pacific Islanders2. This means that while our schools are becoming more culturally diverse, our teachers are not. That difference can ultimately lead to situations where students don’t necessarily identify with their teachers and therefore feel disadvantaged. These fundamental differences can be anything from diversity of background and experiences to language issues. We have to face the fact. Depending on the district in which we teach, most of our students will speak a language other than English.
So what is the best course of action? Perhaps we should encourage up and coming teachers to be fluent in a second language. Increased communication between students and teachers makes teaching and learning a whole lot easier. It also makes the educator more relatable to his or her students. But perhaps solutions lie in another place, as well. If we can encourage our minority students to aspire to the noble profession of teaching, maybe we can change this percentage difference and make it more equitable all around.
1. Aldridge, Jerry and Glodman, Renitta. Current Issues and Trends in Education. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.
2. Schools and Staffing Survey, http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_18.asp. Percentage of teachers in the United States broken
broken down by race and ethnicity.
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1 comment:
As we'll talk about today, what teachers need to be able to do is much more than what they are supported to do. Learning a second (or third) language is great, but not because it will help them to teach students. Learning a different language helps one's brain to develop new pathways. It literally learns how to think in new ways. That's good for teachers because they need to be able to think about things in many different ways.
On a side note, I really like how your blog is shaping up. You've done a nice job of personalizing it.
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