For people to think that being a teacher is somehow a sucky job, our system is sick.

For teachers to track non-white kids into remedial programs as the default, our system is sick.

For students to get through school without having one black/latino/native role model, our system is sick.

Jose, is the part that is itching you about this issue that there are a whole lot of good teachers who know this yet we aren’t collectively doing something about it besides writing about it?

I think that many of us do our best by being good people, by showing our students literature and learning beyond what ‘dead white men’ (I’m quoting Willingham here, from his book on why students don’t like school. Don’t read it.) have decided is important to learn, but we are doing it in our classrooms, with the doors closed. Even if we say the doors aren’t closed, high school is generally set up so that others don’t walk through our open doors.

Maybe our present system is so sick we need to go beyond working from within it. Could this be a question of making new schools?

Tracy, who apologizes for writing this mega comment but I sure have a lot to say on this.

I am very conscious of the differences between my students and I, but I am also equally conscious of the similarities. We are all in a patronizing system that devalues us and our potential contributions; a system that even if it is not set up to maintain and deepen class divisions, sure seems like it is.

When I teach my Latino, Afro-American, Indian, African and central European students I see each as a potential President, doctor, teacher and auto mechanic for each student holds many possibilities. My job is not to decide what they will be but to give them every tool possible to be whatever it is they want to be.

I am fortunate to have colleagues, and my students fortunate to have male and female teachers, who are African-American, Latino, Indian, and Caucasian.

Yes, we have differences that could divide us if we allow them to, but we have far more similarities than differences. I am not denying that racism and discrimination exist, I am just not willing to let someone else define me or tell me what I’m supposed to think or how I’m supposed to act. Fortunatelty, the people I work with feel the same way, and our students — all of them — are the beneficiaries.

Another problem is representation of these ethnic groups in higher level classes. In my school, there was one African American female taking AP calculus, none in AP physics and only a handful (if that many) in many of the other AP classes.

I hate to say this but discrimination is alive and well in 21st century NYC.

1. like nursing, teaching is seen as a female profession
2. many teachers told tell me that if they had to do it over, they too would not be teachers (maybe professors or administrators)
3. private sector pays a lot more than teaching
4. the bullshit with being underfunded (how can you underpay someone and yet expect them to dig into their funds to pay for supplies)
5. the reality that teachers are middle classe and no matter how hard they worked, their income was predetermined
6. children in impoverished neighborhoods tend to have ‘issues’ that many people do not want to deal with/be a surrogate parent
7. teachers working multiple jobs to make ends meet
8. my undergrad = actuary from purdue
my masters = mba from chapel hill
my loans = astronomical
i can not afford to teach

It is a racial issue, in that it is a STUDENT issue, and that our students are human beings with different cultural and racial backgrounds. A child in my city could go all the way through public school under the mistaken impression that being a White female is a prerequisite for a teaching certificate. (I’m no exception to that de facto rule – and not surprisingly, it is harder for me to inspire and connect with my Latino male students, because they tend to see me as an outsider to their world.)

Our students would be so much better off if they had male and female teachers, White and Black and Latino and Asian and Middle Eastern and American Indian teachers. But if they don’t grow up with role models in those positions, is it any wonder that they don’t think of being a teacher as a career possibility? It’s a Catch-22. I’m hoping that teacher diversity is better outside of my cultural bubble – it’s definitely in our students’ and schools’ best interest.