What’s Right With Our Schools: Project Inspire
HAMILTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WDEF) – Diverse classrooms call for diverse teachers. Project Inspire is working to meet that need with some pretty impressive results.
Dr. Dan Challener is with the Public Education Foundation.
He says, ” The research recently has shown that students who have a black teacher, a black student who has a black teacher is much more likely to graduate from high school and is actually more likely to go on to college. That’s a study from North Carolina Chapel Hill. There’s another really good, extensive study of Johns Hopkins that shows that black teachers increase and improve the achievement of all students, especially black students. So, this is a grant that allows us to do a better job, a more comprehensive job of recruiting teachers of color.”
Chandler Davenport is a World History Teacher at Howard.
She says, ” That’s part of why I am so adamant about teaching kids that look like me, because we can tell children all we want to, you can go do this, you can go do that. But if they don’t see it, if they don’t have access to it, then it doesn’t really connect with them in the way that we need it to. As you know, Hamilton County is growing. We’re diversifying every single day. And it’s not to say that you can’t be a great teacher if you’re not a person of color. It takes everyone, though. We have to make sure that the teachers in the classrooms are representative of the students in the classrooms.”
Davenport continues, ” We have a huge Hispanic population, many of whom still are learning English. And as they come along, they need folks that they know, okay, I can communicate with them in my native language. They may have an issue that’s not academic, and they just need somebody to talk to. I can’t imagine having a hard day and not knowing the people in my building that spoke my language.”
Dr. Edna Vanner is a Resident Coach for the Public Education Foundation.
Dr. Vanner explains, ” With teachers like Chandler Davenport and with some of our other graduates because they understand how important it is that children achieve, that teachers succeed and that they are all thriving. So even though there may be challenges, we come ready for the challenges. We come ready to be the teachers that make a difference.”
Chandler Davenport concludes, ” We have to show them that people who come from where you come from, people who look like what you look like, people who speak the language that you speak, can do these things. And if they can do these things, then so can.”
