{"id":8698,"date":"2020-03-03T14:52:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T19:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2020\/03\/04\/education-department-to-host-panel-on-diversity-in-teaching\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T18:30:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T23:30:07","slug":"education-department-to-host-panel-on-diversity-in-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/education-department-to-host-panel-on-diversity-in-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Education department hosts panel on diversity in teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t until Shira Brown \u201909 had nearly completed her master\u2019s degree that something occurred to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized from my kindergarten year through college, being a black female, I had never had a black teacher in my whole educational career,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd when I think about that, that\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now an assistant principal at R.P. Dawkins Middle School in Spartanburg, South Carolina, she sees firsthand how important it is to have diverse teachers and administrators in schools and also how difficult it is to achieve that diversity. That is a big reason she agreed to be one of the panelists at Tuesday night’s \u201cChallenges of Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Teachers,\u201d which was open to the public and held in Plyer Hall\u2019s Patrick Lecture Hall.<\/p>\n

\"Shira

Shira Brown ’09 works with a student at R.P. Dawkins Middle School in Spartanburg.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not seeing a lot of black or diverse teachers going into the field,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s a little disheartening, because it doesn\u2019t match the population of our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel discussion was part of the Furman Department of Education’s<\/a>\u00a0Centennial celebration and was funded by a Diversity and Inclusion mini-grant. Other panelists include Rima Dakhlallah M\u201918, literacy coach at Heritage Elementary School in Travelers Rest, South Carolina; Bernard Frost \u201905, director of teacher quality and staff development for Spartanburg County School District two; Leonard Galloway M\u201907 and EdS\u201913, principal of Glenview Middle School in Anderson, South Carolina; and Sherrie Jeffries M\u201903, a reading recovery teacher and reading interventionist at Houston Elementary School in Spartanburg.<\/p>\n

Shameera Virani, coordinator of Furman\u2019s Teacher Residency Program<\/a>, was thee moderator.<\/p>\n

Brown was born in San Francisco and lived in New Jersey before moving to Columbia, South Carolina, just before high school. She knew she wanted to be a teacher from the time she was an elementary school student and never seriously wavered from the goal despite friends \u2013 and her own mind \u2013 occasionally trying to talk her out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy third-grade teacher had a great impact on me \u2026 Since then, I\u2019ve loved school and I love kids,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it helped once we started taking the classes (at Furman) where you could get in the classroom. I was seeing the teachers interacting with the kids, and that\u2019s when I stuck the course and knew I wanted to stay in education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown has seen the value she can have for students who look like her \u2013\u00a0and their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen black students see a black female in this leadership role, I am able to make connections. Black females will come to my office more, and some parents appreciate that (too),\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey feel a little more comfortable I\u2019m not out to get their child when I talk about a choice their child made, so I feel like I have had an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown thinks many factors come into play when it comes to the lack of diversity among teachers and administrators, but an important one may be as simple as students not seeing themselves reflected when they\u2019re in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think some kids might think education is not for me, because I\u2019ve never seen a teacher who looks like me,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s a real problem, and I don\u2019t know the answer to how to fix that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Professor of Education Mike Svec<\/a>, white students are now the minority of the K-12 student population in the country, accounting for 48%, but teachers are still more than 80% white. That doesn\u2019t make for optimal educational outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere that\u2019s important is for the children, representation matters. It\u2019s not that they have to have 100% of their teachers be like them, but having a teacher or two during their school career does matter,\u201d he said. \u201cIt results in higher achievement, higher satisfaction and a stronger sense of belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Svec also hopes current education students of all races will listen to the panelists and remain inspired to continue Furman\u2019s long and proud relationship with Greenville and the surrounding community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve provided hundreds of teachers in this county,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s important for (the students) to hear from Furman graduates who represent all of South Carolina and have knowledge about some of the challenges that they\u2019ve overcome and why they persist.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t until Shira Brown \u201909 had nearly completed her master\u2019s degree that something occurred to her. \u201cI realized from my kindergarten year through college, being a black female, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":18358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,60,70,28,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni-profiles","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-education","category-top-four-news-1st-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}