Abstract
This chapter emphasizes the importance of implementing culturally competent recruitment and retention practices, which suburban schools and systems can use to ensure that all students have a well-trained and high-quality teacher of color. Changes in teachers' expectations for student success and strategies in managing administrative and behavioral tasks are all required of all novice teachers. Methods of recruitment, strategies of organization management, and student demographics should be factors in supporting the approaches to implement culturally competent policy change, impacting the outcomes for teachers of color and the student's they serve. A positive organizational culture to include culturally responsive instructional leadership, adequate teacher salary, and critical professional development are determinants for sustaining high-quality teachers of color not only for students of color but for all learners. An emphasis on valuing the cultural identity of teachers of color in suburban schools will be emphasized as a preventative measure for the othering of teachers of color.
TopBackground
It is common for Urban-defined schools to have negative reputations. When a school building is aesthetically unattractive, needing renovations and repairs, and the residing neighborhood of the school is believed to be dangerous and unsafe, employing high-quality educators is almost impossible. “The persistence of multigenerational poverty is the most villainous explanation for these continuing disparities, with structural racism as its regular sidekick”. (Edly & Darling-Hammon, 2018). The school building should be functional with adequate resources. With the exodus of people of color from Urban to Suburban areas, definitions of Urban are now becoming blurred. Urban-defined schools are described as having a majority minority population demographic above 65% with a Free and Reduced Lunch population about 50%. Moving to the Suburbs, many have found, does not necessarily remove one from a Low SES status and a question of identity and belonging becomes glaring.
While an Urban-defined school can substantially improve with a supportive public policy, the actuality of Suburbanization is necessary to help mandate the needed changes. School policy should be written to design a school as a “safe haven” for students, teachers, and administrators where the cultural identity of all stakeholders are intact and valued. Teachers of color often bring alternative pedagogies to the school environment that counter traditional thoughts of schooling and learning as they introduce children of color to “culturally relevant” instructional practices (Ladson-Billings, 1994). Teachers should have a sense of satisfaction; students should be healthy and learning as the whole child; and administrators should have a sense of security in remaining in their roles. This is the ongoing description of Suburban schools in affluent areas. However, teachers of color in these Suburban settings often experience feelings of isolation, marginalization and frustration through a lack of being valued as professionals (Lee, 2013).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Burnout: The emotional and mental exhaustion, weariness, and fatigue that results bouts of depression, anxiety, and overwhelming feelings of hopelessness.
Efficacy: One’s innate belief in their ability and skill to accomplish tasks, goals, and assignments.
Othering: The intentional and unintentional exclusion of an individual or group based on differences in culture, gender, race, ethnicity, non-binary, class, and ability.
Cultural Responsiveness: Ensuring and promoting culturally safe environments through the enactment of policies which support and promote individuals to be fully themselves by recognizing and acknowledging their unique and individual cultural identity.
Stereotype Threat: The perceived self-fulling prophecy of imminent failure that people of color, particularly African American men and women, endure as a result of a history of systemic oppression and discriminatory practices that have successfully excluded them and impeded upward mobility and career advancement.
Trust: Acceptance of one’s given word and promises as infallible and believable.
Cultural identity: How an individual personally identifies, which may be counter to the defined categorization or label provided by U. S. and/or Western Civilization social constructs.
Strategic Planning: A decision making process that includes conducting needs assessments, collecting data, soliciting input from impacted stakeholders, and aligning goals of implementation with timely and measurable outcomes.
Gaslighting: Manipulation tactics performed by individuals in order to create a psychological and emotional advantage through lies and fear over a perceived yet unrealized threat to their position, power, or privilege.
Cultural Competence: The intentional and specific acknowledgment and implementation of culturally responsive and culturally relevant practices in all planning, evaluation, assessment and decision making.