Latino males make up less than 6% of California’s public school teachers and Black males make up around 1% — two shockingly low statistics that have prompted a slew of new initiatives to bring more men of color into the classroom.
“There’s just simply not enough educated, Black or Brown men contributing to education,” said Joshua Shuford, a substitute teacher in the Rialto Unified School District. “Us teachers are taking back the power of freedom, unity and equality, from a system that’s not meant to help young men of color succeed.”
Shuford is a graduate of California State University, San Bernardino’s Project Impact, a program at the school’s College of Education that provides a community for minority males pursuing teaching, and helps deploy them to campuses in the Inland Empire.
CSUSB College of Education Dean Chinaka DomNwachukwu said that Project Impact is a “new face of the civil rights movement,” which trains educators to create a learning environment where their students feel represented, seen and inspired.
“A lot of Black men are in prison, or we’re homeless, or we’re dead,” said Project Impact member Dennis Baylis, who teaches in the Riverside Unified School District. “But having an opportunity to be able to teach and work with kids, to show them there is an opportunity for them if they apply basic learning skills, that’s what sold me into education.”
Similar initiatives exist at colleges of education at California State University, Fullerton and California State University, Northridge. And in Los Angeles, the Watts of Power Foundation is recruiting more Black male teachers through its Teacher Village fellowship.
Collectively, these programs are fighting the dire shortage of male teachers of color across Southern California.
To successfully do so they must overcome both the factors driving a national teacher shortage — low pay, stressful working conditions, lack of preparation or support — and challenges…
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