Group Five

** I am sorry guys, instead of posting a new blog, I commented to Group four so sorry this obvious earlier!!!  

Group FIve:

Picower reported an alarming statistic in The unexamined whiteness of teaching "90% of the K-12 teaching force is white...the immediate future will not be different because 80% to 93% of all current teacher education students are white females", According to the 2011 US census report the racial make up of the US population is 72% white.

Why is this profession seemingly more appealing to one race? In particular this statistic begs us to ask why a race that has remained the dominant culture throughout recent history remain the dominant race in the teaching profession?



In thinking about the racial make up of the teaching profession how have you seen your school districts try to combat this? Or have they not? If so how do you know this? If you are a preservice teacher what research have you read that seems like it would be helpful in combating this issue?

In the McDonough paper there is a section that discusses how Jaclyn's colleagues feel about parents in her class, commenting that, "You'll never see his parents." This is an ignorant statement at best, maybe this parent has to work and can not attend the parents night. This is an unfair judgement of the parent. Only being in the profession for eight years I have heard these comments as well. My question is how do we not appear to veterans as "new teacher who do not understand how 'teaching' really works and still stand up for these misconceptions? What would you do in this situation? Being silent and confronting what we believe is right in the moment seems just as bad as agreeing with them. Have you had experiences where a situation such as this has gone well?