African American Teacher Recruitment Analysis

Recruiting and keeping teachers is difficulty, but attracting minorities into the profession is extremely difficult. As an African American teacher, I have a unique perspective on the topic of recruitment. My first year teaching I taught in a predominately white school, I was the only black teacher in the school luckily the assistant principal was also black and I was able to talk with her about specific things. Over the years, I have taught in four different schools in four different states, in three of the four schools I was the only minority teacher in the school. I have been at my current school for twelve years and during that time the number of African American teachers has increased to eight. I was the only minority for several years

Children need to feel as if they can relate to people in school, they need to see someone who looks like them. In a school with forty percent or more minorities I do not care how educated a person is the students and the parents need to feel they are understood and have someone with whom they can relate. Several years ago, my class was having a discussion, a student did not want to share out with the class but she did write her comment on paper. Her comment was, she had never had a black teacher and she was thinking about becoming a teacher. I have had African American and Latino males pass end of grade tests for the first time while in my class. I am not saying I am the best teacher in the world, what I am saying is that I agree, things must be done to increase the number of minorities going into education and remaining in the field. States need to increase scholarships for minorities that are interested in education or reduce the tuition. Teacher pay needs to be increased. Programs need like the North Carolina Teaching Fellow Scholarship Program need to be increased especially if there are over two thousand applicants for five hundred scholarships that shows people are