How can Pennsylvania attract more people of color to become teachers?

Attracting more people of color to become teachers was at the center of a March 11 meeting between two high-ranking officials from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and East Stroudsburg University faculty, administrators, and doctoral students.
Children of color are expected to make up 56 percent of the student population nationwide by 2024, while the current educator workforce is about 82 percent white, according to the U.S. Department of Education. ESU is starting the Future Teacher Bridge Program this fall as a way to recruit a more diverse pool of students to consider education as a career.
“It is something that is sorely needed across the Commonwealth and the nation for that matter,” said Terry R. Barry, dean of the ESU College of Education. “That is, how do we effectively encourage minorities to enter the education field so they can go through this great program and then come out and impact students?”
The Bridge Program will offer 10 high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to take ESU’s Introduction to Teaching course free of charge, introducing students to the fields of Early Childhood Education, Middle Level Education, Secondary Education, Special Education and English as a Second Language. Participants will also be invited to join ESU’s Future Teacher Club.
'Not enough of us'The meeting was attended by Dr. Noe Ortega, deputy secretary of education of Postsecondary and Higher Education, and Dr. Debra Heath-Thornton, director of the Bureau of School Leadership and Teacher Quality.
Beth Rajan Sockman, Ph.D., professor and co-department chair of Professional & Secondary Education, said students of color are well aware that there few school teachers who look like them.
“They have said, ‘There’s not enough of us in education,'” Dr. Sockman said. "There needs to be more of us out there."
Harrison Bailey III, principal at Liberty High School in Bethlehem and a candidate in ESU’s doctoral program in Educational Leadership and Administration, said some families of color steer their children away from teaching because they fear their kids won’t make enough money to pay off their college loans and live comfortably.
“We know from a long-term prospective that education is an incredible place,” Bailey said. But, he said, “when you’re in a crisis, you’re not thinking about the long term. You’re thinking about how is my kid going to pay his bills when he gets out of college.
“If we’re serious about creating the presence of people of color in education, we have to change the narrative — that education actually does pay.”
Sockman said one of the biggest challenges in getting high-quality teachers at the high school level is "the stereotypes we face as educators."
“My chemistry majors receive ridicule from other chemistry majors and peers for going into teaching," she said. "That’s got to change.”
It’s also important to give education majors of all races a better understanding of the struggles that kids who live in poverty face every day. To that end, Brooke Langan, ESU director of field experience and partnerships, and Shawn Watkins, Ph.D., chair of the Reading Department, talked about how they have brought in staff from the nonprofit Pocono Alliance to run poverty simulations for education students so they will have a better understanding of what some kids grapple with at home.
Ortega said Pennsylvania has struggled to diversify the education field.
"We want to find ways to attract more teachers of color, but we also want all teachers prepared for the challenges of the modern-day classroom," he said.