Brooke Brown has taught English language arts and ethnic studies in Tacoma, Wash., for the past 14 years. In September, the state named her 2021 Washington Teacher of the Year.
Ms. Brown is also a biracial Black woman and a participant in a new program in her region aimed at retaining teachers of color, in a state where 88% of teachers in 2019 were white, according to a state agency.
The program, the Educators of Color Leadership Community, “has been instrumental in me not just finding my voice as an educator and as a woman of color, but also having the agency to learn how to advocate for my voice,” she says.
It is part of a growing movement within the education community focused on addressing racial inequities in America’s schools, starting with its teachers. Educators have long promoted the benefits of increased diversity in student body and curriculum, but an emerging strategy is focusing on teachers themselves. Students of color already make up a majority of the public school population, and their numbers are projected to increase by 2029, but teachers are still predominantly white, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. If programs like ECLC succeed, America’s increasingly diverse students will be served by more teachers who look like them, an outcome which studies show can improve student performance.
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