Education Week - May 17, 2023 - 17

Stop Telling Students to
Never Get Into Teaching
By Sharif El-Mekki
H
iring season is here.
School systems around the
country are looking to staff up
and address retirements, job
changers, and leavers of all
kinds. This is the time of the
year that principals vacillate
between dreamy ambition about how to strengthen their
staff for next year and outright panic that they won't
have enough people in classrooms to open for the first
day of school.
It's an annual ritual.
As that yearly tradition gets underway, I'd like to
take the opportunity to challenge all of us who have
responsibility over hiring and staffing decisions to
undertake that work in a way that meaningfully invests
in the future. Principals and district leaders should
absolutely be focused on getting the best teachers
and school staff that they can today, but they should
also think about the actions they are taking that
shape what talent may walk in the door five and 10 years
from now.
A principal or school leader can start by looking at the
talent sitting in their high school homerooms right now.
Especially for Black and brown students, the power
of positive experiences with culturally competent
teachers is well established. Black and brown students
do better when they have more Black and brown
teachers and when they have teachers that make them
feel understood and safe. That kind of connection also
shapes how those students think about the teaching
profession.
In my work with the Center for Black Educator
Development, I have heard countless stories that echo
my own experience that Black men are more likely
to consider a career in teaching when other Black
educators invite them into the profession. It was a Black
teacher that showed me my future in the profession.
Despite the utter dearth of Black men in teaching (fewer
than 2 percent of teachers nationally identify as such),
it took just one to show me the rewarding and enriching
potential of a career in the field.
A recent study of teachers of color
by DonorsChoose found that 50 percent of
respondents were inspired to become teachers by
their experience with another teacher when they
were a student. How we teach students is also how we
present the profession to our high school students-
classroom instruction is truly the primary recruitment
ground for future teachers.
Unfortunately, we rarely treat it as such. As education
professor Christopher Emdin shared with our Black
Male Educators Convening participants, recruiting
young Black men into the profession often is like
recruiting someone to return to the scene of a crime,
a crime committed against them.
How many times have we overheard a colleague
casually telling their pupils to " never get into teaching "
or something similarly dismissive of the profession?
Those words matter, those sentiments give shape
to perceptions that influence future choices. We
should approach these things with some degree of
intentionality-especially as Black and brown educators
interacting with Black and brown students.
That's because the high school years for our Black
and brown students are especially important for shaping
their sense of agency and associations with the teaching
profession. Many Black and brown students attend
majority nonwhite high schools, but of those who go
on to college, many will often do so at a predominantly
white institution. Diversity in teacher-prep programs
outside of historically Black colleges and universities is
EDUCATION WEEK | May 17 2023 | www.edweek.org/opinion | 17
abysmal, according to research by TNTP. As a result,
we need to give Black and brown students all the
momentum we can coming out of high school.
That means providing an inspiring and empowering
experience of teaching. We would never tell our students
to shirk from fighting for a more just and equitable
society because it's too hard or because the work can
be less than ideal at times. In the same way, education
leaders should share how empowering it can be
to work to improve schools and strengthen learning,
showing students that by learning from our mistakes, we
can run faster, go further, and move toward a more just
and equitable public education system.
We can be transparent and share what activism,
organizing, advocacy, and teaching well looks like and
how it comes together. By inviting our youth not only
into the profession, but also giving them opportunities
to share their educational experiences and using that to
inform our policies and practices today, we will attract
more students to consider leading a classroom of their
own one day.
At the Center for Black Educator Development, we
have found that our paid teacher apprenticeship for
Black high school and college students allows the youth
in our communities to explore the mindsets and skills
necessary to be effective educators. Since we launched
the program in 2019, the early exposure and experiences
have already produced more than 30 graduates who are
now teachers or in a teacher-residency program. When
we give young people hands-on experience in paid high
school teacher apprenticeships, they are invigorated
to see the connections between education and racial
justice. When they understand the real history of public
education in this country, they recognize that teaching
superbly is the purest form of activism.
Discouraging students from exploring a career
in teaching is to discourage them from embracing
their agency; it pushes them to give into despair and
helplessness. It reinforces inequity and injustice.
Instead, what if we helped them see that there is no
higher calling than to teach children well? There is no
better way to challenge the system and remake it for
the better than to run toward a career in teaching.
EL-MEKKI, a former principal and teacher, is
the founder of the Center for Black Educator
Development.
The Principal Is In In this biweekly column,
principals and other authorities on school
leadership offer timely and timeless advice
for their peers. Interested in contributing?
Email AskAPrincipal@educationweek.org.
V
a
n
e
s
s
a
S
o
l
i
s
/
E
d
u
c
a
t
i
o
n
W
e
e
k
v
i
a
C
a
n
v
a
http://www.edweek.org/opinion
Education Week - May 17, 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 17, 2023
