Resume Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1: The Issues and Research

• Crisis in Urban Schools

According to Education Secretary Riley, he said "The need for more teachers will pressure school districts to hire individuals who are not certified. Twenty-seven percent of newly hired teachers failed to meet state licensing requirements and nearly one-third of all teachers are teaching in a field they did not study as either a major or a minor subject in college. If hiring patterns remain as they are now, one-half to two-thirds of the millions of teachers hired in the next ten years will be first-time teachers.  Clearly, the shortage of teachers for urban youth verges on a national crisis. Although colleges of education continue to produce capable teachers, few of them are able or willing to work with the diversity demanded in urban school districts, regardless of their own ethnicity." (Gordon, page 1)

• The Need for Competent and Caring Teacher

One of the major educational concerns of our lifetime is the search for qualified and caring teachers for low-income immigrant and minority children who have become the majority population in American urban schools. Although the need for teachers of color is embedded in a context of school desegregation, higher education elitism, racism, poverty, and urban decay, these societal and structural impediments cannot account fully for the resistance, hesitancy, or inability among students of color to pursue teaching as a career.

• The Image of Teaching  
• The language of color  
• The Research Process  
• Three urban school districts and their teachers of color 
• The sites  
• The researcher 
• Communities of Color and the Teaching Profession 
• The Historical Context