The Need for African American Teachers
As we enter a new school year the problem of a lack of Black and teachers of color in general still exist. Our schools, both locally and nationally need to organize an aggressive campaign to recruit teachers from colleges and universities and to do a national search to find the best qualified teachers of color. This is not only a problem in the Buffalo school district, but it is a national problem.
When I invited Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu to Buffalo many years ago he stated that the teachers especially in the elementary schools across the nation are predominantly white and female. The same situation exists right here in our school system. This is a great concern because the majority of the student population is African American. We also have large numbers of immigrant children attending our schools. All students need to see teachers in the class room that look like them and are from their cultural background. This is not to say that this will solve all of the problems in the schools. However, more teachers of color and those who can teach from a Culturally Responsive perspective will have a greater chance of producing successful students.
This problem of a lack of teachers of color was evident when I was in the classroom 17 years ago and even earlier. This columnist certainly does not have all of the answers. However, I would like to suggest some ideas that might help to increase the number of African American teachers our schools. Here are several suggestions:
We must intro duce the idea that teaching is an Honor able profession. We can do this by making it a priority in our community and exposing our children to examples of good teachers. Many years ago, I created a Black Educators Exhibit at the Merriweather Library that showed many of our African American Teachers. I did this exhibit for several years highlighting these teachers and their accomplishments for everyone to see. I still have the articles on this effort that appeared in the Criterion newspaper.
At every opportunity we need to expose our students from the very earliest grades to teaching. We need to do this in our churches and community centers. Instead of promoting the athletes we need to promote our teachers who are doing a good job in the schools. There are many good teachers who work hard every day to help students succeed.
As a historian I would like to urge our community to point out those teachers in our history who made a difference not only in their own community but in the entire nation. These teachers include Mary McCleod Bethune, who took a few orange crates and started a school that later became a college. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, who created a school for Black girls in the early 1900’s, Dr. Rufus E. Clement who was a skilled teacher and who created three different schools. He also became a minister. Lucy Craft Laney was such a gifted teacher that many of her students also became teachers. Benjamin E. Mays was a gifted and inspirational educator who later became the president of Morehouse College in 1940. He taught and inspired many people such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are also hundreds of teachers right here in our community, retired and still working, who made tremendous contributions to education.
We must also increase the salaries of teachers so that they are competitive and will attract the best and the brightest teachers from our colleges and universities.
This columnist rejects any idea that these suggestions will not work because many of them have not been tried before. We are so used to talking about the problem until we can’t see the solutions before us. While we recruit teachers from other places let’s put a plan in place to “grow” our own right here in this community and beyond.