Beyond Paying Lip Service to Diversity: Strategies for Recruiting, Training, and Retaining Black Male Teachers

Abstract

The concept of diversity in education is often a starting point for dialogue regarding the persistent achievement gap in American classrooms. However, simply advocating for diversity without recommending or adopting strategies to achieve diversity does not necessarily create the forum for fruitful dialogue. Various educational institutions and organizations pay lip service to the concept of diversity without actually engaging in practices to increase diversity. The state of education in our nation’s most impoverished and marginalized communities can be affectively addressed through various strategies, including increasing diversity among our teaching force. Nevertheless, even organizations like Teach for America, who recognize the importance of bringing diversity to the classroom, struggle to recruit, train, and retain African-American and Latino male teachers. This is truly a troubling circumstance because educating our African-American and Latino male students have proven to be a task that we as a nation are wholly inept and dreadfully incapable of accomplishing. If we are to provide better educational services for our most at-risk populations of students, we as a society must no longer simply pay lip service to diversity. We must devise complex strategies to bring diversity into our nation's classrooms in order to diversity our teacher workforce, and more effectively recruit, train, and retain African-American and Latino male teachers.

Citation

Golden, K. (2013), "Beyond Paying Lip Service to Diversity: Strategies for Recruiting, Training, and Retaining Black Male Teachers", Lewis, C.W. and Toldson, I.A. (Ed.) Black Male Teachers (Advances in Race and Ethnicity in Education, Vol. 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 205-217. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2051-2317(2013)0000001019