‘Who you are is how you teach’
Program aims to encourage diverse students to be teachers
As a kid, Angie Tovar created worksheets to help her mom learn English. Her mom always told her she’d become a teacher, but Tovar shrugged it off.
At Danbury High School, however, Tovar — who immigrated from Colombia with her family at age 5 — was encouraged to join a program that aims to inspire and prepare minority students to become teachers.
The program — a partnership between the state, Danbury schools and Western Connecticut State University — required her to give lessons to an elementary class.
“The teacher that was doing the class at the time — she looks at me and she was like ‘You’re loving this,’ ”
““That’s the success — the heart of the matter — that it’s from Danbury, for Danbury and back to Danbury.”
—Catherine O’Callaghan, professor at WestConn
Tovar said.
That’s when Tovar knew she’d be a teacher.
“My mother was right after all,” she said.
Tovar started her first year as an educator this fall, teaching third grade at Pembroke Elementary School. She is the first Danbury student to participate in that program and return to Danbury schools as a teacher. But two more former Danbury students could be hired next school year.
“That’s the success — the heart of the matter — that it’s from Danbury, for Danbury and back to Danbury,” said Catherine O’Callaghan, professor and chair of the
education and education psychology department at WestConn.
This Minority and Bilingual Teaching Pipeline program started in 2015 with state funding and aims to address the dire need for educators from diverse backgrounds to better represent the student body. This is a problem locally and across the state and country.
“Quite frankly, I don’t think anyone in the state has done what we’ve done,” Assistant Superintendent Kevin Walston said of the program.
But he said he recognizes the school district needs to further diversify its staff. Just under half of the student body was Hispanic or Latino in 2019-20, but only 7.6 percent of staff identified as that, according to state data.
In Danbury, 86.2 percent of staff were white in 2019-20, 4 percent were Black, 2 percent were Asian, and 0.2 percent were two or more races. Of students, 34 percent were white, 7.2 percent were Black, 6.3 percent were Asian, and 2.2 percent were two or more races
Sharon Epple, principal at Pembroke, praised the program for its efforts to attract minority and bilingual teachers, who can be “bridges” to students and parents who are new to the country.
She said there are four bilingual teachers, including Tovar, at Pembroke, where 48 percent of students were Hispanic or Latino in 2019-20.
When Epple has popped into Tovar’s virtual classroom, the principal has seen how much the new teacher “adores” children. In some cases, it’s a bonus that Tovar can speak to parents in Spanish, the principal said.
“The commitment and dedication is apparent,” Epple said. “I’ve gotten wonderful feedback on her from parents about her accessibility and communication.”
Making teaching attractive
The program for juniors and seniors is one of four pre-collegiate partnerships between the schools and WestConn. Participants must have a 3.0 GPA or higher. The first cohort had five students, but last year grew to 13 participants.
The goal is to grow to 30 or even 45 students with more funding, said Robert Pote, director of the pre-collegiate and access programs.
Many participants are firstgeneration students who may have been encouraged to become doctors or lawyers, he said.
“One thing we’ve really worked hard on, all of us, is trying to make teaching attractive again,” he said. “It’s a civil service position and it’s something that, a lot of times, you’ll find students get into teaching because their parents were teachers. You don’t find that in the first generation category.”
The program recruits by going into child development, psychology and multi-cultural classes and is planning a March 30 panel with participants who have become teachers.
The majority of participants attend WestConn, but some go to other colleges or opt not to study education, said Jessica Coronel, assistant director for the precollegiate and access programs. Twenty percent of participants now in college are education majors.
“We have noticed that a lot of them pursue other majors that are serving majors, like social work, psychology or nursing,” Coronel said. “And maybe later on for their master’s, they may consider teaching.”
After Danbury’s program, the legislature required the other residential colleges in the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities to create similar programs.
“Now, it’s just grown by leaps and bounds, both at the private institutions and also at the four CSCUs,” O'Callaghan said.
The state is working on a similar initiative to bring more resources toward teacher recruitment, she said. These efforts are needed more than ever as the state could face a teacher shortage due to COVID, she said.
“We’re facing a tsunami,” O'Callaghan said. “We have so many teachers retiring because of COVID and then we have not enough coming into teaching through all of our different preparation programs.”
‘Who you are is how you teach’
Tovar was born in a poor part of Colombia and, after her dad lost his job, her family decided to move to the United States in 2003.
She was in bilingual classes in kindergarten through second grade at Great Plain Elementary School and then attended classes at South Street Elementary School, Rogers Park Middle School and Danbury High School.
Other than the teachers in the bilingual classes, she does not remember having any teachers who spoke Spanish.
Tovar participated in two other Danbury and WestConn programs — Excel and Upward Bound — that build academic and leadership skills among middle and high school students, respectively.
She was then encouraged to join the pipeline program, which was then its first year. As high schoolers, students earn three college credits and gain experience teaching in a classroom.
“I felt like I was so ahead of the game once I started college,” said Tovar, who graduated from Danbury High School in 2016.
Hector Huertas, the professor who now teaches the classes, described the coursework as rigorous.
“They will feel like if they do this kind of work, then what else can they do as well?” he said. “It’s solidifying self-concept. It’s solidifying who they are professionally, who they are academically, who they are culturally.”
“Because who you are is how you teach,” he added.
The program emphasized multicultural education and how important it is for students to have teachers who look like them or have a similar story to them, Tovar said.
That’s something she has kept in mind. She has shown her students a map of the world and traced how her family moved to the United States, she said.
“I’m very open with my students about my experience and who I am because they were amazed the first time they heard me speak Spanish,” Tovar said.
Two of her 18 students immigrated to the United States over the past year, while about seven others are English learners.
But her ability to speak Spanish is key for parents, too.
“I know what it was like for my parents to come and just be so lost by a system that’s so different,” Tovar said.
A diverse workforce benefits the entire school, Walston said.
“Teachers of color are positive role models for all students, particularly in breaking down negative stereotypes and preparing students to live and work in a multi-racial, ethnic community,” he said.
Tovar graduated from WestConn in May 2020 with her bachelor of science in elementary education, and the program connected her to Danbury schools, where she always knew she wanted to teach.
“The kids in Danbury are so kind and so generous,” Tovar
said. “They want to work hard. They really do.”
What else can be done?
U.S. Rep Jahana Hayes, DConn., recently reintroduced a bill to expand and invest in the country’s diverse teacher workforce.
The bill would, in part, provide funding for teacher training programs at colleges, universities and institutions that have historically served people from Black, Hispanic and minority communities.
Danbury officials go to job fairs that target candidates of color and studies best practices from other schools on how to hire a diverse staff, Walston said.
Last academic year, the district partnered with New York University to try to recruit adults in careers like science and engineering to become teachers, incentivizing them with a potential scholarship, as well as student
and substitute teaching in Danbury, Walston said.
Around 100 people from diverse backgrounds and genders attended the event, but the program lost momentum due to COVID, he said. The district plans to reassess the program after the pandemic, he said.
“We will continue to be aggressive in our search for the best candidates and recognize and acknowledge the benefits of having staff of color in our district,” Walston said.
Tovar said providing more opportunities for students to get teaching experience in high school would help.
“That’s the time where it’s a big moment for a lot of teenagers to make a decision of: What am I going to do with my life?” she said “If we gave them opportunities to be around kids and encourage them...you see what affect you can have on them.”