Throughout my semester in Urban Education and creating this website I learned a lot about the potential held in urban schools and communities and ways of accessing that potential. As a woman of color who plans to go into urban education creating this website was a very hopeful process.

The grassroots organizations I selected for the website showed a wide breadth of possibility, from helping individual teachers of color improve their practice through differentiated professional development, culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy suggestions, and ideas for social justice oriented classrooms to organizing around school wide curriculum changes and organizing for social change in school and the surrounding community. Many of these organization also focused on having meetings , hosting conferences, and generating online networks. This seems especially important considering the contiual mention of isolation teachers of color experienced in the literature I read. These grassroots organizations allowed teachers to connect to support one another, genre new ideas, and generate dialogue.

I came across many grassroots organizations during my research that focus on teachers in general as activists and organizers. While these sites were not focused on teachers of color, these organizations were working to achieve similar goals: educational equity, racial justice, social justice, and demographic parity between teachers and students, not only for students and schools, but the wider communities that house these schools. These grassroots organizations, while not specific to teachers of color still were supportive increasing these teachers and working toward similar goals as the other organizations. These thoughtful and active allies are essential in urban schools reaching their full potential.

As a part of creating this website I came across a great deal of peer-reviewed research about teachers of color in general. This research emphasized the importance of teachers of color for the sake of students of color but there was also mention of the importance of white students seeing teachers of color. In addition to acting as role models the presence of teachers of color serves to disrupt biases that don’t see people of color as effective, capable professionals. The presence of teachers of color seemed to have a profound impact on students but as I was reading the research I felt something was missing. It is not enough that teachers of color are “of color” but the they actively work to reject and discard legacies of white supremacy within themselves and for their students. Teachers of color who do not consider and work against the role of race and racism in the classroom risk harming their students and increasing internalized-white supremacy.

While their were huge amounts of peer-reviewed research and general population articles on teachers of color, why we need them, how to retain them, and ways they can act as change agents in school and communities, there was much less practitioner-oriented research about teachers of color and teachers of color as activist. The lack of practitioner-oriented information about teachers of color is concerning for two reasons. First is that teachers of color who seek to improve their practice and learn about stories and programs relating to teachers of color have a gap in where they can seek out knowledge. The second reason is that principals and districts are likely not making a lot of headway in increasing teachers of color and are only being provided with academic research and not necessarily practical recommendations and models on improving the pipeline of teachers of color. Additionally the almost non-existence of practitioner-oriented articles about teachers of color as activist erases the work that teachers of color are doing. There were many articles that discussed white teachers as activist, particularly around the standardized testing opt-out movement. But if those in the education field aren’t being exposed to the importance of teacher of colors being activists, being organizers, and networking many of the barriers the teacher are facing will continue to remain in place.

One final notable reflection of this process was the number of non-grassroots organizations I found. While there were a few astroturf organizations, a large amount of the movement around increasing teachers of color I found were at the institutional level. I found many activist supports for teachers of color that were based out of local and national sectors of teachers unions. There were also several college and teacher preparation programs recruiting to increase teacher so color and implementing programs to support these teachers.

Many people use deficit thinking when considering urban education. However, through the organizations, research, and resources I have explored and provided here, it becomes easy to see the value and potential held within urban schools and communities that primarily serve people of color. Instead of pitying and trying to save schools, teachers of colors can act as change agents and advocates for their students, school, community, and public education.