According to the State Department of Education, minority students are classified as those from Native Hawaiian, African-American, Pacific Islander, Asian-American and American Indian dissent (Bartolomé & Lilia 7). The students that belong to at least one of these groups are usually affected by the race of the teacher who teaches them. Studies have shown that students from minority groups learn better from minority groups’ teachers. This demonstrates that the racial dynamics in schools contribute to the ever-persistent gap in performance of students of different races (Coleman & Bobbie 20). This essay discusses how the race of a teacher can influence the academic success of minority students.
Education is an essential instrument that can help change a person of any race, spur growth and opportunity, and creativity in them. A teacher should, therefore, be determined to help students recognize their weaknesses and strengths and motivate them to perform well in school. Teachers are usually their students’ role models. Therefore, teachers have a significant impact on supporting and shaping their students. It is important therefore for the teachers to know how to influence positively all their students including those from minority groups.
The learning of minority students is impacted positively by the encouragement they get from their teachers. The teacher’s expectations and ideas for his minority students and their capabilities affect the students’ achievements and performance. When teachers believe in their student, they leverage a student’s level of self-confidence, esteem, and locus of control (Conchas & Gilberto 26). This is because all students accept what their teachers think about them and take it as part of who they are and what they are capable of doing. Minority students who are discriminated against by their teachers become unmotivated, tardy and disoriented. At other times, they might react coldly or violently to their teachers’ opinion, which affects their relationship with the teachers and hamper learning outcomes. Under such circumstances, educational success of the child is at stake.
According to the critical race theory, the race of child and that of the teachers play a significant role in affecting learning outcomes. Learners from minority groups may experience marginalization challenges and find learning institutions non-inclusive. The racial connections between students and educators influence the performance of students in many ways. Pupils, for example, may respect and trust a person with whom they share some characters. This could make learning easier (Conchas & Gilberto 36). Similarly, a teacher from minority race may act as a role model to students of the same race, making them more enthusiastic to learn and confident. This is because the teacher understands them better because they share language, cultural expectations and most likely norms, values, and mores. He/she understands better the economic status, cultural beliefs, and values of being a member of a racial minority group and the academic hardships involved. Such an understanding assists the teacher to deliver instructional and teaching methodologies that tie with the expectation of the students, as opposed to teachers from majority races who shares little or no cultural, social and economic experiences with the minority group students (Tomlinson & Sally 10).
Another aspect that might influence the way a minority student might respond to the race of their teacher and perform in school is shown in the stereotype threat theory (Batchelor & John 15). The theory proposes that stereotypes may influence learning outcomes for when teachers who do not belong to any minority group teach students. This theory argues that naturally, students from minority races have perpetual fear for stereotypes, and the experiences hampers their learning and interactions with teachers from majority races.
The teachers also might have racial biases even at the time when they do not intend to, therefore discouraging his/her students from performing well in class. In most cases, minority teachers tend to be generous to minority students (Tomlinson & Sally 8). They might devote more energy and time in teaching the minority students at the expense of other students who are not of color. They might also fall prey to making assumptions that are more favorable to the students about what they are capable of or not. During the designing of class materials, allocation of class time, and interaction with students, the teachers, might be more favoring towards the pupils of their ethnic or racial background (Conchas & Gilberto 16). On the contrary, teachers who do not belong to any minority race may give briefer, less coaching and positive feedback to minority students. Minority students with non-minority teachers are often not accorded positive reinforcements such as rewards . Instead, they are scolded and afforded less attention than their counterparts who are not from minority races.
Minority students are most likely risk failure or dwindling academic performance especially when their teacher emphasizes the negative status and identities of their race. The student might develop characteristics to reject authority and the education being offered (Gresson & Aaron 38). So when a student is judged because other members of his race have unhealthy behaviors and negative attitudes towards school, the chances are that they will most likely perform poorly. When minority students have sustained success and high-achievers, they reduce what connects them to their race. They in exchange get mainstream values and attitudes that are more associated with their academic identity. Similarly, stereotype threat theory indicates that students from minority races have academic underperformance because of the apprehensions and fears due to racial stereotypes about their intellectual ability (Bartolomé & Lilia 20). The threat and the experiences that students acquire in life and interaction with teachers influence their identity, learning processes and dedication to academics. These perspectives imply that pupils who get stigma and societal discrimination from their teachers who are of a different race about their ethnic group often disengage themselves with the process of learning. Even worse, minority student with a stronger attention to their identity as a race suffer greater ramifications in their academic performance (Conchas & Gilberto 19).
The race of a teacher and his/her perceptions negatively influence the student when the teacher focuses on racial slurs and stereotypic belief attached to minority race of the student (Batchelor & John 23). Many minority groups’ students, therefore, do not identify with academics and school because their races are viewed negatively in the academic domain. This is a strategy for coping that is theorized to protect students from adverse effects of seeing group-based devaluation and discrimination. Racial stereotypes destroy motivational behaviors and attitudes that make students perform better and eventually dampen their academic performance. Notably, research shows that minority teachers are less likely to find problems with minority students compared to non-minority teachers (Gresson & Aaron 48). Therefore, most minority students prefer attending learning institutions with dominant minority teachers.
A student, who has a strong positive sense of identity of their race, is protected from the negative academic and psychological impacts of going through the kind of discrimination that is interpersonal or of perceiving barriers of their ethnic group barriers (Blackburn & Gilmer, 17). When a student has an identity that has strong feelings of group pride and the connection, he/she has a positive psychological well-being when under racial discrimination and stereotypic attacks. Such students’ academic performance may not be heavily affected by racial stereotypes or the race of the teacher.
Evidence-based research shows that schools for minority students always tend to retain and attract minority teachers (Batchelor & John 25). There is a reason for educators to worry that the race of a teacher among other factors influences students’ performance.
According to Batchelor & John, minority students are not as like as their nonminority counterparts who get into gifted and talents classrooms (Batchelor & John 39). Most nonminority children test high and enter into these programs. Besides, the children are typically from low-income families and have uneducated parents and fewer books at home for personal studies. They may also have less access to high-quality preschool programs compared to nonminority learners. Notably, minority learners have other activities to do after classes such as supporting their families with chores (Batchelor & John, 29). It is, therefore, important that minority learners have teachers who understand their social and cultural upbringing. During the placements for the gifted and talented students, the teacher often has a significant role to play in picking the students who should take the test. Certainly, minority teachers must be involved in recognizing talents, brilliance, and recommend students testing and giftedness.
The ethnic identity of a minority student might affect their customs, languages, experiences, and cultural values. However, the school setting can affect the students’ racial relationships even more. In the high school context, teachers always influence heightened racial salience in class and more awareness of the differences a minority student has when compared to the rest of the class. This is because the high school curriculum makes the teachers emphasize on the comparison of social differences more than in the elementary grades (Batchelor & John, 75). This leads to the student and the class giving more attention to the differences they have in academic performance and achievement.
Ethnic minority students are more likely to experience learning difficulties with nonminority teachers who come from middle-class backgrounds. These teachers, in most cases usually lack comprehensive training on multicultural education (Blackburn & Gilmer 35). Because of this, ethnic students always are racially treated in class. Besides, a school can also contribute to the development of a minority student’s ethnic identity and his perceptions of his racial identity and the relationship to academic performance (Coleman & Bobbie 72). Practices for training teachers are usually not designed to help teachers teach in a multicultural class and especially to handle minority students. Most teachers have adopted the colorblind ideology where they pretend not to notice any racial differences in their students. However, such perspective do not help improve the performance of their students. It instead leads to miscommunication and increased cultural tensions among classmates and the teachers too. This is because that approach does not help the teachers to understand the needs of minority students. This might instead lead to the students not being acknowledged to achieve more in education. Therefore, teachers of all races should get training about how to handle minority students and other confounding expectations of minority groups (Batchelor & John 65).
When a teacher faces a challenging behavior in class, he/she should try to change how he/she responds to it. Instead of reacting in a jerky manner and treating it like it has been driven by racial prejudice, he should pause and realize that maybe the action was a way to reach him and that the student did not mean any harm (Bartolomé & Lilia, 19). The teacher can also reach out and know their students better through closer interpersonal relationships. This will make it easier for both the teacher and the student to see each other as interactive-agents in the process of learning as opposed to commandeering engagement. The teacher can also reflect on their behavior and attitude toward the minority students in his class. This way, he will help them succeed in their studies (Gresson & Aaron 41).
In conclusion, hiring minority teachers can improve the performance of the minority students in class. However, this comes with a cost because nonminority students will be negatively affected and perform poorly. Teachers teaching minority students should change their attitudes to be able to help them. In particular, educators need to focus on training teachers about multicultural instructional methods and classroom interactions to remove cultural shocks and barriers to teacher-student interactions. More importantly, policy makers must come to the realization that race and learners outcomes are interrelated concepts that cannot be swept under the carpet rather pragmatic strategies need to be put in place to counter the challenge.
Works cited
Bartolomé, Lilia I. “Ideologies in Education: Unmasking the Trap of Teacher Neutrality”. New York: P. Lang, 2007. Print.
Batchelor, John E. “Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation”. New York: Cengage, 2015. Print.
Blackburn, Gilmer W. “Education in the Third Reich”. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Web.
Coleman, Bobbie. “Successful White Teachers of Black Students: Teaching Across Racial Lines in Urban Middle School Science Classrooms.” Washington, DC. Elsevier, 2007. Print.
Conchas, Gilberto Q. “The Color of Success: Race and High-Achieving Urban Youth.” New York: Teachers College Press, 2006. Print.
Gresson, Aaron D. “Race and Education Primer”. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Print.
Museus, Samuel D, Robert T. Palmer, Ryan J. Davis, Dina C. Maramba, Kelly Ward, and Lisa Wolf-Wendel. “Racial and Ethnic Minority Students' Success in Stem Education.” San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass Inc, 2011. Print.
Tomlinson, Sally. “Race and Education: Policy and Politics in Britain.” Maidenhead, England: McGraw Hill/Open University Press, 2008. Print.
