Promising Practices to Recruit and Retain Male Teachers of Color

Research scholars (Gay, 2010; Gorski, 2013; Howard, 2014; Irvine, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Noguera, 2008) assert that traditionally marginalized children suffer academically within educational systems that (a) refuse to acknowledge culturallybased epistemologies of students of color and (b) fail to create educational curricula and pedagogies responsive to students’ experiences and cultural knowledge. The cultural dissonance that exists between educators and students of color impacts (1) achievement rates (Burchinal et al., 2011); (2) representation in gifted and talented programs (Peters & Engerrand, 2016); (3) access to college preparatory programs (Farmer-Hinton, 2011); (4) access to advanced placement coursework (McBride Davis, Slate, Moore, & Barnes, 2015); (5) discipline rates including suspensions and expulsions (Skiba & Losen, 2015); and (6) the school-to-prison pipeline (Allen & White-Smith, 2014). On far too many occasions, students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds feel isolated, misunderstood, or treated as “other,” leading to lower graduation rates (Au, 2001; Gorski, 2013), and higher dropout rates (Fine, 1991).

While it is important to advocate for all teachers to engage in creating equitable and culturally-inclusive classrooms (Ladson-Billings, 1994), recent research revealed that when teachers who are not familiar or do not have experience with people who are different from themselves, they may perceive difference as less valuable or deficient (Egalite, Kisida, & Winters, 2015). Teachers who identify with their students may therefore see certain characteristics as attributes to embrace rather than as deficits