Diversity amongst teachers to raise increasing diversity of our future students.
Teacher education programs must prepare future teachers to educate the increasingly diverse student population of our nation’s schools. Despite that public school students increasingly identify as people of color, white teachers make up nearly 70% of the teacher workforce. In California, over 50% of students are Latinx. Given the need for culturally sustaining and responsive teacher education, we have formed a Future Teachers of Color (FTC) group for UCSB Teacher Education Program (TEP) candidates who identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color. We formed this group to support teacher candidates of color in building community, professional development and networking, and to affirm the knowledge we carry as people of color to disrupt the white heteronormative schooling structures that are often upheld in teacher education programs.
