Grow Your Own Educator Programs: A Review of the Literature with an Emphasis on Equity-based Approaches by Angela Valenzuela

We absolutely do need a more diverse educator workforce.  Thanks to National Policy Director David Hinojosa at the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA), for bringing attention to this.  My particular focus is on growing our own educators which is what my edited volume, Growing Critically Conscious Teachers, is about.

I encourage you to listen to this IDRA EAC-South webinar (click here to watch the recorded webinar) moderated by David Hinojosa for additional guidance and strategies for states and school district to engage in to create a more diverse teaching workforce.  Other presenters are Desiree Carver-Thomas from the Learning Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and Mary Kelly from Randolph Schools, Alabama.

Emphasizing Equity-based Approaches

https://budurl.me/IDRAgyo

Grow Your Own educator programs are a potential strategy for states and district to employ to help recruit and retain teachers of color. GYO programs help address teacher shortages, retention issues and teacher diversity by engaging in a variety of strategies that aim to recruit teachers from local communities in hopes that the pool of candidates will increase in diversity and will be more likely to stay teaching in the community.

Equitable approaches and critical perspectives can combine the powerful roles of “homegrown” teachers, culturally-relevant curriculum, and social justice pedagogy in addressing achievement and opportunity gaps, especially for the nation’s woefully under-served, largely urban schools serving students of color.

Resources

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Summary: Summary of IDRA EAC-South Literature Review – Grow Your Own Educator Programs – A Review of the Literature with an Emphasis on Equity-based Approaches

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Literature Review: Grow Your Own Educator Programs – A Review of the Literature with an Emphasis on Equity-based Approaches, By Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, for the IDRA EAC-South

I hope that folks find these resources helpful.

Special thanks to UT undergraduate and graduate students, respectively, Irene Gomez and Sandra Rojas Telles, for their assistance with the literature review. Thanks, as well, to Drs. Conra Gist, Margarita Bianco, José Cintron, and Dean Maureen Gillette for providing me with guidance, as well.

Working my way through this literature, reflecting on our own experience here in Austin, Texas, with Academia Cuauhtli, and writing this literature review was very helpful to my thinking of GYO programs, as well.

 

Angela Valenzuela