WTHR |Teach for America program

Teach for America program

The United States faces a shortage of African American male teachers in the nation's classrooms.

The statistics are staggering: Black men make up only two percent of teachers nationwide, but minorities make up 44 percent of American students. Further, women make up 77 percent of teachers, a job men generally avoid due to stereotypes and low pay.

Adamah Cole teaches fourth grade. He became a teacher being trained through Teach For America, a non-profit that recruits recent college graduates to teach in schools in under-resourced communities.

"I feel that with all of my students it was making that personal connection. I feel that with my black male students, I feel that that connection was also there," said Cole.

Teach for America

More about the program (from Teach for America's website):

Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort.

We recruit outstanding recent college graduates from all backgrounds and career interests to commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools. We provide the training and ongoing support necessary to ensure their success as teachers in low-income communities.

Our teachers, also called corps members, go above and beyond traditional expectations to lead their students to significant academic achievement, despite the challenges of poverty and the limited capacity of the school system. In succeeding with their students, corps members show that students in low-income communities can achieve at high levels, offering further evidence that educational inequity is a solvable problem.

Yet we know that enlisting additional high-quality teachers is not the ultimate solution. We believe that the best hope for ending educational inequity is to build a massive force of leaders in all fields who have the perspective and conviction that come from teaching successfully in low-income communities.

During their two-year commitments, Teach For America corps members see firsthand that educational inequity is solvable and gain a grounded understanding of how to solve it.

Beyond these two years, Teach For America alumni bring strong leadership to all levels

of the school system and every professional sector, addressing the extra challenges facing children growing up in low-income communities, building the capacity of schools and districts, and changing the prevailing ideology through their examples and advocacy.