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Home > The View from Here
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The View from Here
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by Debra Ambush, Ph.D.
Watkins Mill High School
Maryland
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| | The following is part one in a series of three articles devoted to the need for professional development for minority teachers and the state of education in the United States for minority school children. To read parts two and three, follow the links in "More" below.
A Point of View Informed by Heritage
For generations, education has been not only the career of choice, but a passionate and motivating force for many members of my family. Family lore informs us that my grandfather was instrumental in teaching neighboring African-American farmers to read so they could protect their contractual rights in their small farming community. The grade books of my great aunt from Farmville, Virginia, in the latter part of the nineteenth century document that she taught many of her sister's children in a one-room school as early as the 1920s. Her 40-year career as an educator spanning from segregated normal school to graduate school in New York, and her 35-year pursuit of educational training for teachers, is an enduring message to my son's generation about perseverance of one's goals and dreams.
In the 1950s, when the first Advanced Placement Exams were administered, schools in Virginia closed in resistance to desegregation laws. In response to the closings, my ancestors delivered educational curriculum in church basements to students denied access to public education. The frontline issue of education became the charge of African-American teachers who simultaneously balanced the interests of pervasively segregated school systems and the urgent and persistent desire of the African-American community to receive the best education possible. Family history affords me the opportunity to see the tremendous value placed on education for my mother and her siblings even under the staunchest open opposition to education for African-Americans. My uncle, who is named as one of the plaintiffs in the Brown decision, was sent to Washington to continue his schooling. He later graduated from Howard University and is now capstoning a 45-year career as a pharmacist in Washington, D.C.
As the parent of a 16-year-old preparing to pursue a college degree while simultaneously in the midst of my twenty-second year of teaching, I see what I believe are the salient issues of equity and access for African-American children in advanced placement classes. Equity and access to academic rigor for African-American children is a complex issue inseparable from the limited presence of teachers of color on the front lines of educational leadership and policymaking.
Taking Initiative
My participation in the professional development opportunities that College Board programs provide reflects my personal drive and determination. The door to professional development programs was not open for me the way it was open for other colleagues in my school system. Requests for financial support to fund my training were unanswered, and so -- seeing clearly that this kind of training was a valuable tool to achieve my goals -- I paid for the training. Soon after, I found myself sitting in a Summer Institute classroom next to a colleague from my own school district who had been fully funded by his school principals. Many issues became clear to me from that experience regarding the persistence of class and race as a filter to accessing professional development. Two researchers, Michael B. Webb and Mark S. Lewis, have determined that the denial of access to such opportunities may ultimately be a major contributor to the decrease in academically talented minority teachers who have more career choices.
Further research supports their conclusions: - Georgia State University Professor and multicultural education scholar Lisa Delpit (1995) asserts that the voices of minority teachers have been silenced. She is also critical of a certain paternalism on the part of liberal colleagues.
- Similarly, Michelle Foster (1997) suggests the sharp decline in minority teachers is a by-product of racism in segregated and desegregated schools, the repeated cycles of attempted and aborted educational reform efforts, and the different perceptions of black and white teachers about the ability and needs of black students, parents, and communities (p.L).
- Even as our nation's classrooms experience a dramatic 40 percent increase of non-white children in classrooms (Delpit 1995), significant disparities between the numbers of teachers of color and those of students of color continue to grow.
Research about 2001 participation rates in the AP Program is also illuminating: - Nationally, one percent of AP teachers were African-American.
- The majority of AP classes, 95 percent, are taught by white teachers.
- The AP teacher survey reveals that an added benefit of increasing the number of minority teachers may be an increase of minority students, as minority teachers tend to teach a greater proportion of minority students. These teachers may have as many as 33 percent African-American students in comparison to white AP teachers, who may have fewer than nine percent African-American students.
Signs of Improvement
The professional development system in our school district has evolved to some degree in encouraging professional opportunities. Since I attended that first training, our school system has adopted a plan that on the surface makes professional development opportunities accessible to greater numbers of teachers. But the question of its attractiveness to teachers of color remains. For people of color, stepping into the orbit of professional development may be hindered by a reluctance to accept the extra time and emotional commitment that educational leadership, curriculum committee participation, and advanced course preparation requires, particularly when race can be a determining factor for career advancement.
Debra Ambush has taught art for 22 years and AP Studio Art for six years. This summer she participated in her first AP Studio Art Reading. She has received many awards, including the Montgomery County Education Association Jaworkski Civil Rights Grant, the Maryland Art Association Educator of the Year Award, the Montgomery County Public Schools Women in the Arts Award, and the Getty Fellowship in Art Education. She has published several articles about teaching art, including "African American Aesthetics" in the National Art Education Association published proceedings of the 1998 USSEA conference, "Art Education in Ghana" in the Committee on Multiethnic Concerns' National Art Education Association Newsletter in 1995, and "Points of Intersection: The Convergence of Aesthetics and Race as a Phenomenon of Experience in the Lives of African-American Children" in the 1993 Visual Arts Research Journal.
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