PUBLICATION: Ties That Bind? The Teaching and Post-Teaching Trajectories of Black and Latino/a Community Insiders and Elite College Graduates," by Brantlinger, A., O’Neal Turner, B. & Valenzuela, A.

Students, Friends, & Colleagues:

Happy to share this recently published piece titled, "Ties That Bind? The Teaching and Post-Teaching Trajectories of Black and Latino/a Community Insiders and Elite College Graduates, co-authored with Andrew Brantlinger and Blake O’Neal Turner in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737231162583

Abstract: 

"Community teachers, particularly those who are Black and Latinx, are assumed to improve retention and outcomes depending on retention in schools that serve low-income Black and Latinx students. Based on a critical quantitative analysis of data collected on the career trajectories and retention of hundreds of alternatively certified mathematics teachers, the study shows that community insiders exhibit significantly higher rates of retention in district schools than community outsiders and, in particular, those from elite colleges. Utilizing quantitative critical theory methodology, the study helps to move the field beyond race-neutral analyses of teachers’ retention and careers."

In short, the study lends support to the idea of growing our own, community-based educators, i.e., establishing pathways into the teaching profession, and why investing in community-based teachers that emanate from their local communities to subsequently teach in them makes good sense from a policy perspective.

Conversely, on the other hand, it encourages us to re-think introducing 

"economically and socially privileged community outsiders as teachers in low-income neighborhood urban schools under the assumption that, as the graduates of the nation’s most selective colleges, they will be particularly effective at improving student learning, even if they stay only for a few years (Higgins et al., 2011; Lovison, 2022)."

It was a pleasure doing this work with University of Maryland professor, Dr. Andrew Brantlinger and his newly-minted Ph.D, student, Dr. Blake O'Neal Turner.

-Angela Valenzuela

"DISD recruits in Mexico, Colombia to fill ‘hard to fill’ teaching jobs," By José Luis Adriano

We are in a definite teacher retention crisis in our state and nation. This piece is very informative on one of the Dallas Independent School District's creative approaches to addressing this shortage. 

Some number get hired with a J1 visa. Others with a H-1B visa. Via the former route, learn more here about the J-1 Teacher Program that other districts should know about.

Particularly with a district like Dallas where 45.1% of the students are either enrolled in a bilingual education or English as a Second Language learning programs, recruiting quality candidates like this is a definite stopgap measure. Longer term, instead of outsourcing, the teacher ranks can and should get built from within through improving teacher working conditions and establishing Grow Your Own educator pathways into the teaching profession.

-Angela Valenzuela

DISD recruits in Mexico, Colombia to fill ‘hard to fill’ teaching jobs

School district sponsor special talent visas for foreign professionals

DISD recruited in October professionals in Monterrey, Mexico to teach at Dallas schools.(Jorge Martínez/Especial para AL DÍA)

By José Luis Adriano

5:30 AM on Dec 28, 2022

Dallas ISD will hire about 100 professionals from Mexico and Colombia to teach during the 2023-24 school year and alleviate its shortage of teachers.

“We are bringing in the best candidates from Mexico and Colombia to teach our students, which is the most important thing, [and we’re] providing quality educators to our students,” said DISD recruiter Eric Castañeda.

The new educators were recruited at events in late October in Monterrey, Mexico, and in mid-November in Bogotá, Colombia.

Castañeda said hard-to-fill teaching positions in math and science sparked a lot of interest from foreign professionals.

More than 220 people attended the recruiting sessions on Oct. 28-29, in Monterrey. About 80 candidates were interviewed.

The possibility to teach in Dallas generated similar interest in the Bogotá event, held on Nov. 10-13, Castañeda said.

About 71% of the district’s students are Hispanic.

New teachers could make $60,000 annually, about 1.26 million pesos in Mexico, and 290 million pesos in Colombia.

Additionally, bilingual teachers get a $5,000 signing bonus; math, science and special education teachers get a $3,000 bonus.

The teachers selected during international recruiting trips have until Jan. 15, to submit certifications and approve an English proficiency exam as a requirement for getting hired.

Soon after, the district will determine the exact number of teachers hired with either a J1 or H-1B visa. The J-1 Teacher Program is a nonimmigrant cultural exchange program. The H-1B is a visa issued to foreign professionals in specialty occupations. The visas authorize professionals to work in the U.S. for up to six years.

The school district has 50 spots for J1 visas and 50 for H-1B visas to start classes in August 2023.

According to Castañeda, most professional candidates interested in teaching in Dallas are between the ages of 30 to 45, some are career educators, but other applicants are engineers and retired physicians, which fit into the profile of teaching positions DISD struggles to find teachers for —mathematics, physics and chemistry.

“Sometimes people think we bring unqualified teachers, but I can say that these candidates are excellent. They master English as if they were from the U.S. They are very accomplished, hardworking professionals”, Castañeda said.

José Luis Adriano, Reporter. Reportero de Al Día Dallas / Reporter at The Dallas Morning News. Originario de Ciudad de México. Le interesan la cultura latina, la tecnología y las historias locales. / Jose was born in Mexico City and just completed is MA in Data Journalism at the University of Missouri. He's interested in local journalism and technology.

 @adriano_dreamer

Reflections on Creative Resistance: A Personal Note on our work at Academia Cuauhtli by Angela Valenzuela Ph.D.

Friends:

I've been silent on the blog due to a lot of work these days that keeps me busy. Also doing a bit of traveling while keeping up with the seemingly unending craziness and horror in full display. Because of the work that many of us in the community do, it's hard not to see and indeed, important to acknowledge, the hopeful signs before us that our work and commitments inspire.

In this vein, I want to share a bit about travel to Oaxaca, Mexico, next week, as well as some wonderful updates pertaining to our Saturday school, Academia Cuauhtli (or "Eagle Academy" in Nahuatl) here in Austin Texas.

The focus of our school is with Austin's most vulnerable community that is working-class, Spanish speaking, and immigrant, with parents that mostly hold poorly-paid jobs as frontline workers in the Austin area.

In partnership with the Austin Independent School District and the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) where we are physically located, our school is a language and cultural revitalization project mostly for fifth- and fourth-grade elementary school girls and boys where they are exposed to a culturally enriching curriculum, including danza Mexica (Aztec dance)—where "danza" means ceremony and not dance. This nurtures in youth a deep sense of not just "identity," but their multiple identities where Indigeneity—including Afro-Indigeneity and Afro-Latinidad—gets centered. Our curriculum shifts from year to year, depending on what our parents and teachers seek.

Texas State University professor Dr. Chris Milk and a group of teachers are working over the Summer, as they always do, to produce a professional, standards-aligned, culturally-rich, Spanish-English curriculum that gets taught not only at Academia Cuauhtli in the Fall, but also districtwide, with mostly bilingual/dual language teachers, taking this up, we understand. Thanks to Jessica Jolliffe for another year of funding for this important work and to Chris for his superb leadership and commitment.

Thanks to excellent initiative and leadership by our Academia Cuauhtli Program Manager Maria Unda, website and communications Director Mateo Villafuerte, and Camp Director Azteca Sirias, another highlight this Summer is Academia Cuauhtli's second annual Aztech Kidz Code Summer Camp. It takes place at the end of July and early August at the ESB-MACC.

At this camp, children and youth will learn to code, create their own games, and learn now to monetize them to plant seeds in their minds of possible futures in technology, graphics, and computer design that are fully consistent with Indigenous identity, epistemologies, and aesthetics. This is coupled with danza Mexica. So happy to see maestra Katya Guzman and maestro Mario Ramirez offering instruction again this year.

Our Academia Cuauhtli maestras, our teachers, rock, too. At least 5 teachers will start 5 Academia Cuauhtli after-school programs in 5 AISD Elementary Schools this Fall. All will make use our curriculum and spread the good, healing medicine to other spaces and places. Hence, we are in a period of growth and expansion as we enter our 9th year of operation.

Regarding Oaxaca, Mexico, 13 of us, all educators, head out on Sunday. We will be meeting with our friends and colleagues at La Universidad Autónoma Benito Juarez de Oaxaca (UABJO), or the Autonomous University of Benito Juarez in Oaxaca, Mexico. While there, we'll participate in a symposium at the University and will visit schools taught by Indigenous teachers so that we can deepen our sense of Indigenous pedagogy, curriculum, and practices, and simultaneously with the students and faculty at the university, as well.

Thanks to San Diego State University and Chair of the Dual Language and English Learner Education Department, Dr. Margarita Machado-Casas, as well as to Language Institute Director Fernando Martinez for making this possible. Fernando and his colleagues prepare Indigenous, pre-service teachers to return to their communities to teach in ways that are decolonial, grounded in community-based knowledge, values, and ways of knowing from an asset-based perspective. In the U.S., we might call this a Grow Your Own Teacher program that is also about language and culture revitalization similar to Academia Cuauhtli.

As horrible as the world is right now, Academia Cuauhtli remains an enduring bright spot, a true beacon of hope that fosters resilience and makes our otherwise toxic, current political life as a country, not just bearable, but rewarding and fulfilling.

Ours is a way of knowing that Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodriguez in his book 2021 titled, "Writing 50 Years (más o menos) Amongst the Gringos," describes as "creation-resistance." Another way to think about this is that the day we become bitter, negative, and withdrawn, is the day that "they," the powers that be, win.

These are matters of the soul. And no person or institution is entitled to the taking of ours, or anyone's joy, love, or striving.

Here is a great point to cite Benito Juarez himself, "El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz," or "respect for the rights of others is peace." So simple, yet so profound.

Creation-resistance maps on to other concepts like "transformational resistance," advanced by Solorzano and Bernal (2021), as well as the notion of writing from a "theory of the flesh," as put forward by Moraga and Anzaldúa (1981) where our best thinking is born from that tender and frequently fraught place of lived experience where pain, love, joy, and crushing exploitation reside.

Drawing on Vizenor (1999) and Indigenous scholarship, Sabzalian (2019) marshals the concept of "survivance," where surviving and resisting work creatively to negotiate meaning within educational contexts amidst colonial dispossession. Sabzalian also notes how survivance—and I would add, creative and transformational resistance—disrupt individualized notions of "resilience" and "grit" that unjustly place the onus of achievement and conversely, failure, on the students themselves.

Props to University of Oregon Professor Leilani Sabzalian for winning the Outstanding Book Award of the Year in 2020 by the American Educational Research Association for her book titled, Indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. I highly recommend it for the Ethnic Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies college classroom.

It's all a mix that, at its best, invokes what our ancient ancestors termed, floricanto, translated literally as "flower and song." And how better than to create just such a world in the now, in the present, with the children who will also someday be ancestors to the coming generations?

I saw an amazing Netflix movie this week titled "RRR" (meaning “Rise Roar Revolt”), out of India that I highly recommend as it, too, speaks to the power of flower and song to dismantle oppressive symbolic orders and tumble empires, helping me to think of floricanto, creation-resistance, and survivance as liberatory and revolutionary praxis as non-violent, social justice mechanisms for change.

Taken together, these are ways of knowing that are not always explicit—albeit powerfully tacit— where our heartfelt, collective need for greater peace, justice, and unity in the world is neither a slogan nor an idea, but instead, a creative way of life that holds an array of meanings and possibilities for us.

It means uplifting both our youth and families, together with their bilingual education/dual language teachers so that they can teach from an additive, strengths-based perspective, anchored in children's stories, histories, languages, cultures, and identities so that youth can envision positive, bold, and expressive futures for themselves— just as they are—as members of a community that has their backs.

To us all, this IS the movement that nurtures and empowers self in community. Would that all of our communities had such powerful spaces for teaching, learning, reflection, and healing.

Major thanks for UT doctoral students Patricia Nuñez Porras and Julia Hernandez for working hard these past several months to make our trip to Oaxaca happen. A shout out to Tiffany Guridy at LLILAS, as well, for her hard work in addressing the minutia of detail associated with international travel for us all.

As always, we are also indebted to our ESB-MACC family, Director Michelle Rojas, Lori Navarrete, Olivia Tamzarian, Frank Baca, Ulises Gave, and all the other staff for partnering with us on this truly awesome and beautiful journey.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Anzaldúa, G., & Moraga, C. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press.


Rodriguez, R. (2021). Writing 50 Years (más o menos) Amongst the Gringos. San Antonio: Aztlan Libre Press.


Sabzalian, L. (2019). Indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. Routledge.


Solorzano, D. G., & Bernal, D. D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36(3), 308-342.


Vizenor, G. R. (1999). Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance. University of Nebraska Press.

Study Finds Students of All Races Prefer Teachers of Color

Super interesting. Researchers Cherng and Halpin analyze data sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation involving "1,700 sixth- through ninth-grade teachers from more than 300 schools" and arrive at this finding of a preference by all students for teachers of color.

This finding might ruffle some feathers in light of the fact that most public teachers are white. However, this is consistent with a growing body of research which shows not only that students who are "ethnically matched" with their students register consistently higher levels of achievement, but that white children benefit from these environments, as well.

For example, read Dr. Easton-Brooks book titled, Ethnic Matching: Academic Success of Students of Color, as it supports the former claim. I refer to an earlier post to this blog on Easton-Brooks' findings, as well.

Regarding the latter, Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard (1999) additionally found that the test scores of Anglo students also benefit from a large presence of teachers of color. I also address this in my book, Growing Critically Conscious Teachers at some length.

It's great to see additional confirmation for findings that are turning up in the research literature on teachers and students in classrooms. The evidence is increasingly pointing to a need for districts to actively recruit and retain teachers of color for the benefit of the whole.

Although this study provides insights through survey data, qualitative ethnographic research can get a better grasp of how race, class, and gender dynamics position teachers of color optimally for today's classroom. A deeper analysis would also examine the uniqueness of community-based educators such as those emanating from Grow Your Own (GYO) educator pathways.

Additionally, I can't help but wonder about the extent to which any of this maps on to university classroom contexts. That's for someone else to study.
Thanks to Dr. Greg Pulte for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela


Study Finds Students of All Races Prefer Teachers of Color
October 7, 20167:00 AM ET

By Anya Kamenetz | NPR


LA Johnson/NPR

"Do you speak English?"

When Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng walked into his summer school classroom for the first time as a brand-new teacher, a student greeted him with this question. Nothing in his training had prepared him to address race and identity. But he was game, answering the student lightly, "Yes, I do, but this is a math class, so you don't have to worry about it."

"Oh my gosh, was that racist?" he says the girl asked, and quickly checked her own assumption: "'That's exactly like when I go into a store and people follow me around because I'm black.'"

During the time that Cherng, who is of Chinese descent, taught in an 85 percent African-American middle school in San Francisco, he enjoyed a good rapport with his students, and he wondered what role his own identity played in that.

Now Cherng is a sociologist at New York University and he's just published a paper with colleague Peter Halpin that addresses this question. It seems that students of all races — white, black, Latino, and Asian — have more positive perceptions of their black and Latino teachers than they do of their white teachers.

Cherng and Halpin analyzed data from the Measure of Effective Teaching study sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also supports coverage of education at NPR.
They looked at a group of 1,700 sixth- through ninth-grade teachers from more than 300 schools in cities around the country. The students had completed 30-question surveys, asking about a variety of different dimensions of teaching.

For example:
· How much does this teacher challenge his students?
· How supportive is she?
· How well does he manage the classroom?
· How captivating does she make the subject?

Although NPR Ed has reported before on the pitfalls of student evaluations used in many undergraduate classrooms, this particular student self-report measure may be more valid because of its thoroughness; it's been independently linked to student learning gains on standardized tests.

Cherng and Halpin found that all the students, including white students, had significantly more favorable perceptions of Latino versus white teachers across the board, and had significantly more favorable perceptions of black versus white teachers on at least two or three of seven categories in the survey.

The strongest positive relationship was the flipside of what Cherng experienced in his own classroom: Asian-American students had very rosy views of their black teachers.

The relationship persisted after controlling for students' age, gender, their free and reduced-price lunch status and their academic performance. The researchers also controlled for other factors like the teacher's level of experience and education, their gender, and even outside expert ratings of the teachers' effectiveness, based on classroom observations.

No matter what, students had warmer perceptions of their teachers of color.

Cherng calls the findings "surprising."

"I thought student awareness of the racial hierarchy would influence the results," in favor of whites, he says.

Other studies have found evidence for "race matching," or the idea that students and teachers of the same race or ethnicity perceive each other more favorably. And NPR Ed recently covered research on "implicit bias," the idea that teachers of all races look less favorably on students of color.

"We're not done," investigating this finding, Cherng says.

His working theory is that teachers of color score more highly because of their ability to draw on their own experiences to address issues of race and gender, which, he says, can be highly germane even to teaching subjects like math, especially in America's majority-minority public schools. He's currently working on a series of studies that look at preservice teachers and teacher training, to provide more evidence about the relationship between teachers' multicultural beliefs and awareness and their effectiveness in the classroom.

As a math teacher, and now a sociology professor, Cherng was never prepared to really understand or address race or gender dynamics in the classroom. But, he says, there may be good evidence that these are essential tools to being a good teacher, period.