Call Me MISTER

A Virginia task force focuses on finding teachers who are more reflective of the state’s shifting demographics, especially men of color

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It’s a balmy August day, just a few weeks shy of the first day of school for public school students across the state.

Andrew Daire, dean of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education, is hosting a welcoming party for new undergraduate students and future educators, and he taps the microphone to grab their attention.

“There are a number of challenges that exist in high-needs schools and communities and families,” he says, noticeably warm even in the shade in the courtyard near VCU’s education building, Oliver Hall, but cheery nonetheless. “And these challenges are not going to be met with average effort or average thinking.”

Those challenges are many, and, in some cases, are rooted in an issue Virginia continues to face more than 50 years after schools were integrated.

A study of the 2014-15 school year by the Virginia Department of Education shows 48.7 percent of students are part of a racial minority while only 16.6 percent of educators are similar racial minorities — making Virginia one of two Southern states that have fewer minority teachers than the national average of 18 percent, according to a July 2016  VDOE report.

And by 2040, demographers at Weldon Cooper Center project the entire state will be a minority-majority, with 53 percent of the population identifying as nonwhite.

“Our schools should look like our community.” —Dr. Maurice Carter, adjunct professor, Longwood University

VCU’s Daire points to the education students before him, almost all of whom are white and female, and acknowledges from the standpoint of race and gender, there is a problem.

“Not only is it important to have teachers that look like [the student body], when we increase the diversity within teaching, we’re adding different dimensions of thinking and function that raises all of what we’re doing,” he says.

To that effect, Daire, along with other educators and administrators from across the state, have united under a new initiative, the Virginia Teacher Diversity Task Force, hoping to increase the classroom representation of minority teachers, specifically black men.

Dr. Maurice Carter, an adjunct professor of education at Longwood University, has been working to improve that representation for more than a decade.

“That disproportionate [ratio] doesn’t help Virginia. Our schools should look like our community,” Carter says from his home outside Charlottesville.

Carter initiated the Longwood chapter of the Call Me MISTER program about 10 years ago, hoping to tackle the issue of poor minority representation in the teacher workforce.  

Carter is all too familiar with poor minority representation in schools. Growing up in Fluvanna County, he says black male teachers were a foreign concept when he was a student.

“They were custodians or working in the cafeteria,” he says. “And that makes a difference with image and self-image.”

Carter’s background in administrative programs at public primary and secondary schools paved his path to teaching education at the college level. The creation of Longwood’s Call Me MISTER program started with his desire to address those issues. The effort got off the ground with help from a $300,000 grant from Dupont.

Call Me MISTER aims to catch kids while they are still in high school. Teachers, school counselors or administration members from across the state who notice underperforming youth fitting the program’s criteria refer them to Carter.

Young men are brought to Longwood for a Summer Institute, which gives them the chance to live in the dorms, learn study skills and meet other highly motivated individuals. They also hear speeches and interact with successful men of color who can be looked upon as role models.

Among those students in the early days of the program was Dwayne Morris. A Call Me MISTER alum and 2008 graduate of St. Paul’s College, Morris took a job this school year with Henrico Public Schools where he’ll take over a second-grade classroom.

He looked back fondly on the program which helped give him support through his college years by offering mentors and other support systems.

“[Call Me MISTER] helped us find out who we were and why we wanted to be educators,” he says.

Morris says he still uses the principles of the Call Me MISTER program, even though he works with elementary schoolchildren. “If you get them while they’re young, they have that experience to build from,” he says, noting he tries to be a role model.

“Being a black male, it gives them someone they can look at and say, ‘they look just like me,’ ” he says, indicating students who come from one-parent homes or experience trauma are in need of that kind of support.

Morris comes from a household in which both parents were teachers, so he was inspired at an early age to enter the classroom.

For Jalen Jackson, who graduated from Call Me MISTER and Longwood last winter, the program helped him rise above his childhood experiences. “I didn’t have the easiest childhood growing up. I needed not only one person, but a number of people to help get me through,” he says.

Jackson now works at a group home for boys in Charlottesville. He said his own troubled past, combined with the training he received at Call Me MISTER, makes him well-qualified for his current work. “[Call Me MISTER] was more about giving back. I always wanted to work with youth; someone gave to me, so I have to give back.”

Call Me MISTER is one part of the state’s Teacher Diversity Task Force initiative, and Virginia Secretary of Education Dietra Trent, who leads the task force, has been impressed with its results. She sees the program as one part of the strategy to address this state and national issue.

“There’s nobody who touches the lives of everybody like a teacher,” Trent says, noting the task force hopes to help lay the groundwork for educators who come later. “They will shape the future of our commonwealth and our country. We need to do better by our teachers.”