Minorities in America are quickly becoming the majority, and in order to keep up with the times, national education leaders attended a symposium today in Cambridge on the strategies and solutions for reforming public education based on increased minority representation.
Many of the key speakers were from Cambridge College, which has a diverse population of 47 percent minorities and an average student age of 40 years old.
Mahesh Sharma, provost and executive vice president of Cambridge College, said he believes the diverse experiences students bring into the classroom should be the starting point for learning. Teachers should understand how to teach classroom topics to different cultures and backgrounds, so students can more closely relate to the subject material.
“I believe in Socratic teaching, how to bring out what you already have and to bring new information into these theories; essentially to integrate theory and practice,” Sharma said.
In order to combat the teacher shortage that is facing the United States, Sharma said the teaching profession needs to seem more attractive. This can be achieved by diversifying the teaching force and implementing new teaching methods.
According to Charles Desmond, chair member of the Cambridge College Board of Trustees, it is vital teachers know and understand the backgrounds of their students and bring that understanding with them into the classroom.
“The most essential component of teaching is content knowledge,” Desmond said.
Diversified teaching not only brings powerful knowledge into the classroom, Desmond said, but it helps students make connections to the real world and real people. Although the United States is such a complex country, many teachers go into the classrooms lacking the tools to take advantage of that complexity, he said.
“America is the magnet of the world. People come here seeking opportunities and they need to be able to find these opportunities in the classroom too,” Desmond continued.
Gerald Chertavian, founder of the Year Up program, said he feels “care” is the primary necessity in teaching. Year Up is a national organization that helps low-income 18 to 23 year olds, who have the professional and technical skills to be successful, work their way into the mainstream workforce.
Providing guidance for young adults is important because they need someone there to support them and help lead the way in their educational futures, Chertavian said. He suggested hiring more guidance counselors to help develop the social networks students need in order to be successful.
Teachers must be able to approach teaching with flexibility and understand that each student is different, and find a way to build on each individual student’s strengths, said George Greenidge of the National Black College Alliance.
“America is changing dramatically and one thing we have to look at is that many of these higher educational institutions lack the demographics of what is actually going on in this country. We need to re-examine equality in these institutions and accept more high caliber minorities who deserve a college education,” Greenidge said.
President of Cambridge College Eileen M. Brown also emphasized the importance of the United States education system including all of its citizens.
Brown encouraged hiring more teachers who represent the demographic diversity of the students, teachers who would understand the students and treat them as “their” children in “their” community. Many current teachers are very disdainful towards the diversity of students, she said.
“Not enough attention is paid to the fact that America has nobody to waste,” Brown said.
