Earlier today, I attended the TOWN HALL Meeting on the TEACH Initiative with panelists US Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Howard School of Education’s Dr. Fenwick, singer John Legend, DCPS Interim-Chancellor Kaya Henderson, and distinguished DCPS High School Teacher Ms. Angela Benjamin. This event aimed to inspire, motivate, and encourage more of the best and the brightest minorities to enter the teaching field as currently 91% of the teaching force is of Caucasian decent. When I reflect on my own educational experience, I remember that it was only in my 6th grade English class that I ever had an African-American teacher (not including my graduate studies at Howard, which is a historically black university). Secretary Duncan wants to ensure that the “Teacher workforce reflects the demographics of our students.” This will be a task since only 3.5% of the nation’s teachers and black and Latino males. I think that events like this will in fact recruit more college-educated individuals into the education field, if by no other means than by letting our “best and brightest” know that it’s ok and extremely beneficial for our communities for them to work in the classroom.
To drive this initiative, there are several financial incentives that the goverment is providing. These include a $4,000 per year TEACH Grant towards undergraduate and graduate studies in exchange for a commitment to teach for 4 years in an 8-year period in a high needs field in a low-income school. This may sound like a lot of stipulations, but it can provide up to $16,000 towards a person’s education. Also, there is a program that promises complete loan forgiveness after 10 years of teaching. School systems like DCPS in the Washington, DC boast that first-year teachers can make up to $73,000 with salary and bonuses, and I will admit that this exceeded my expectations. Ultimately, school systems want to “celebrate and reward highly effective teachers,” according to Interim-Chancellor Henderson because as John Legend put it, “An effective teacher is the single most important factor in improving student performance.”
One of the biggest things that I took from this town hall meeting was that students (our children) need:
- Adults that have the highest expectations of them
- People who believe that no matter where they have come from, they can achieve
Students (our children) desire:
- Teachers that inspire them
- Teachers that know what they are doing
- Teachers that come out of the textbook sometimes
But at the end of the day, “The most important thing that our best people can do is to TEACH,” according to Chancellor Henderson.
I have included some images from this event below. For the record, I found out about this event at the last minute, so I did not have my trusty Nikon with me, and my cell phone had to work. In this post, I am less concerned with quality of the picture as I am with the effectiveness and urgency of the message!
By the way, I was quoted in a post in response to this event, feel free to check it out on ESSENCE.