Diversity and Effectiveness

A fellow educator and I recently had a conversation about diversity and effectiveness.  Needless to say, we agreed to disagree due to the demographics of our perspective schools.  Although my views on diversity and effectiveness have changed through my teaching career, I have always maintained to do what I think is best for the students for them to succeed.  I previously worked for a rural school system with a demographic make-up of 70% white, 25% black and 5% Hispanic.  While there, I believed diversity was more important than effectiveness due to the lack of minority representation with the staff.  Being one of only four black educators at the school, I felt the lack of minorities had an adverse effect on some of the minority students. As a minority growing up in a school with the same demographics, I did not have my first Black teacher until the 9th grade.  Therefore, I believed my education was marginalized through being taught from the perspective of someone who does not represent my culture.   However, now teaching at a school that is Title I and with a demographic of 95%, I now feel that effective teachers are more important to reach inner-city school students.  In comparison with the rural district I taught, I realized that inner-city, minority school students gravitate to structure and quality teaching regardless of the teacher’s race.