Equity needs to be seen with in educators


 In order to ensure our students are given an equity-focused education, we should also be looking at who is teaching them. According to USAFacts, 80% of teachers nationwide are white (USA Facts, 2022). The population of students is only 51% of the students being white (Census Bureau, 2019). This does not show the students the world is equity-focused, so how do we curb that?

We need to hold our values alongside our teachings. We need to value diversity in all its ways. I have been talking about how to create a classroom that welcomes differences and does not change what we are learning, but how it works best for them. We as a society and educators need to do the same. 

The needs to complete this are to have teachers learn their biases towards their students and coworkers and to hire a more diverse set of educators. There are tests that can be taken at home, or it can be a school-wide training, but either way, we need to know what the implications of biases are and how they are affecting our learners. You can find samples of them here. 

The call to action is to have everyone more aware of their biases and to better understand why we see mainly white female teachers in our educational system. Is this what we want for our students? Some of you may not see a problem with this, but equity is important in all things not just in our lessons, but in our education of others. 

References
Census Bureau. (2019, Dec 03). From Reports Nearly 77 Million Students Enrolled in U.S. Schools: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/school-enrollment.html#:~:text=Among%20students%20in%20kindergarten%20through,and%209%25%20were%20Asian%20alone.
Harvard. (2022). Race- Project Implicit. From https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/user/agg/blindspot/indexrk.htm
USA Facts. (2022). From https://usafacts.org/articles/who-are-the-nations-4m-teachers  

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