Summer Recruitment Underway for Male Teachers of Color

While New York City's public school students reflect the global ethnic and racial mix of the city's population, their teachers do not. 

That discrepancy is especially acute for boys of color who make up 43 percent of the student population; only 8.5 percent of all New York City teachers are men of color, according to the Department of Education.

That's why the city organized a hiring fair on Wednesday to connect hundreds of men interested in teaching to school leaders from about 150 public schools. The effort was part of the Young Men’s Initiative which vowed to add 1,000 men of color to city classrooms by 2018. 

“We are looking for men of color who are passionate about education, who are interested in influencing the lives of our youth, and who are committed to making sure that they’re not only serving their students, but are making an impact in their schools, and in their communities,” said Crystel Harris, director of diversity recruitment at the Department of Education. "What we're not looking for are individuals who are simply looking for a nine to five."

Justis Lopez, a high-school social studies teacher from Connecticut, said he thought it was very important to have things in common with his students. 

“When you think about the teaching profession, it’s predominantly a female-dominated profession,” he said. “When you think of some of our students who need the most role modeling and the most assistance in our classrooms,” he added, they often are black and Latino boys.

Lopez said of the schools he met with at the fair, one really stood out. The Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science brought some of its students along.

"When you come to these big networking events, when you come to these big conferences, it can be overwhelming," Lopez said. He preferred interacting with the kids he may teach some day.

Another possible recruit, McEdwin Charles, said he wanted to work in special education. A former bank employee, Charles said he was in the Teaching Fellows program, inspired partly by his experience working with children at his church.

And he remembered the influence the only male black teacher at his junior high school had on him.

"The way that he acted with us was always somewhat familiar to me, because it reminded me of how my father acted with me," he said.  

Annually, New York City hires about 6,000 new teachers for its public school system.