Project Inspire, a teaching residency program supported by the Public Education Foundation, received $84,000 in grant funding through the National Center for Teacher Residencies’ Black Educators Initiative to recruit and retain more Black teachers.
The 14-month-long program trains residents and pairs them with teachers in high-need Hamilton County schools. Residents, who come into the program with non-education bachelor’s degrees, earn master’s degrees and teacher licensure before committing to teaching in a high-need Hamilton County school for four years.
Project Inspire has partnered with Hamilton County Schools for years, said Marsha Drake, the school system’s chief equity officer. She told the Times Free Press Wednesday that the grant from the initiative aligns with the district’s goals of recruiting and retaining more teachers of color.
“We have a large percentage of our students who are students of color, and we have not moved the needle with teachers of color for close to 15-plus years. We’ve only been at about 8%, we haven’t moved that needle. Eight percent of our teachers are minority teachers, and so we would like to move that because of course we have more than 8% of our students that are students of color,” Drake said. “So the effectiveness of having a teacher of color in front of you, someone who looks like you, someone who has had some of the same lived experiences, that can really make those connections with our students and that’s really important because building that relationship is so important.”
While about 8% of teachers in the district are people of color, about 30.8% of Hamilton County Schools students are Black and 16.1% are Latino, Drake said.