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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
When Teaching, Does Race Matter?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My colleague, Brian Feagans, had an interesting story this past weekend about a brouhaha in South Georgia over the hiring of foreign teachers, mainly Jamaicans.
Apparently, a couple of school board members in Glynn County were so irritated the system recruited and hired more than a dozen experienced teachers from Jamaica, they dredged up an arcane state law from 1938 — which prohibited foreigners from working in state government, except in limited circumstances — to force the board to cancel some of the teaching contracts.
While the issues surrounding the use of immigrant teachers are interesting, I was more interested in the issue of race. Apparently, the hiring of these Jamaican educators helped diversify the system’s teaching ranks, which was important in Glynn because the schools were under a federal desegregation order.
The article got me thinking about what characteristics teachers need to successfully teach students. Is being the same race a factor?
