Math teacher, scholar, and writer Jose Luis Vilson considers some of the essentials of recruiting and retaining teachers.
Recently, I saw an interview with a celebrity that floored me.
In the interview, Wilmer Valderrama on CBS Mornings talks about his experiences with being a teen actor. He tells the story of Mr. Tucker, who encouraged him to pursue his acting career while Valderrama was filming That 70’s Show during his last years of high school. My first reaction was “How do they always find a way to get in touch with anyone?” My second thought was just how serendipitous it was to have a teacher during a critical year in his life who saw him as a fully brilliant human being.
In one of the poignant moments of the interview, Valderrama says, “You know, you come to this country with the thought that anything is possible. And then it is. And then it’s individuals like him that say you can do it, and then all of a sudden you start thinking, ‘Oh, maybe I can do it, you know?’ Maybe I can do something bigger than me.’”
Yes, I felt that, too.
It made me reflect on this recent Pew Research article highlighting teachers’ perspectives on the state of the profession. One of the core tensions with teaching is how the occupational and economic concerns of teaching stand in contrast to the ethical, moral, and spiritual undertaking of the work. On the one hand, teachers deserve to get paid much better than they do. That’s been true well before I started teaching. The inertia baffles me. On the other hand, teachers that I speak to still struggle with the lack of school supplies, mounds of paperwork, and what we’ll call “student discipline.”
When it comes to recruiting and retaining teachers, the current strategies attempt to use flash over substance. In my view, the best recruiters for teaching are the current classroom teachers. But, for all the great teachers we have in our profession, we also have to listen to communities across the country naming the way racism, ableism, sexism, and other identity-based discrimination are keeping students from seeing themselves in our public schools. Teaching isn’t just about what’s being taught, but who’s doing the teaching.
In a perfect world, teachers’ interests and students’ interests would form a close-to-perfect circle. But it’s not close, so here we are.
Read the full post for insights about teachers and students as part of the process.
