Damn!!! You guys bring up some good points. I’m on both sides of the coin. I agree with ‘B’, it is a calling. In undergrad I was in law. After graduating I got an opportunity to teach college and realized my true interest. 4 and a half years after graduating with my bachelors I am in the final stages of finishing my PhD. in Education. All the classes I’ve taken from my Masters and Doctorate I’ve been the only or one of few black men in the class. In the grad classes I’ve been in I have seen a majority of white women, a few black women, and a few white men, Asians and Latinos of both genders. Shit…and all these graduate classes have been in Philadelphia which has a huge school district that on the average has 95% minority students (80-85% of African decent).

Your right, who is going to teach our children? Two sayings come to mind when I think why I got into education, “EACH ONE TEACH ONE” & “EDUCATE YOUR OWN BLACK CHILDREN”. I think it’s interesting to live in a society that puts a high regard on education but doesn’t balance it out with $$$. All you hear is do well in school, go to college,… How do we believe the concept of school is going to work if we are not putting proper systems in place to support this idea. When I say support I’m talking about $$, good teachers, better administrators, building community partnerships, better school environments, parent involvement, etc. Don’t get me wrong, these positive changes are taking place in small pockets but it needs to occur on a larger scale. When I say this I’m mainly talking about inner city schools because schools in the suburbs have problems too but not as many. Also as they say, “THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE”. Teachers can make quite a nice salary in the suburbs than in the inner city, usually more than double.

Going back to “EDUCATE YOUR OWN BLACK CHILDREN”, my parents were and still are very active in my sister’s and my education. They might not have had all the answers but they bust their butts to find out. They knew we weren’t learning all that we should (for example, African American history) so they made us go to the library and get tapes, books etc. and they developed lessons plans for us to do on top of our own work. **Props to my parents**

The only thing I can saw is not everyone is going to go into this profession because they can’t stand the low pay, can only tolerate children in small increments, environment, etc. However, the selected few that do go in the field need to try to make the impact that they know they can make…that is probably the reason why you went into the field in the first place.

***Thanks for letting me ramble on and vent on this topic***

paz
junior
http://members.blackplanet.com/dbcjr/