Edifying Teachers: Making the Profession Sustainable Again

As a Latina educator of 15 years in the high school classroom nestled in the cataclysmic confines of urban education, I was certainly part of the “pipeline” (the traditional view, which Elise Lenthe interrogated in last week’s guest contribution). From an anecdotal standpoint, I can authentically speak from different perspectives, places, and spaces that can unearth different stakeholder attempts, efforts, and failures to fixing the pipeline’s glaring holes to include the pipe bursts of retention and attrition.

My first 5 years of teaching were in gang-infested neighborhood charter schools. There was not an education issue that I did not see play out fully like a cinematic trailer in my classroom among communities of color. I witnessed the school-to-prison pipeline, young moms with no registered addresses, systemic racism choking the necks of my students - as well as my own - and at worst, student death and murders as a result of Chicago gang violence. My first 5 years were both critical and formative. At no point in time did I receive adequate training or mentorship that would’ve nurtured and safeguarded me from the blows of working in urban, high-needs settings as a woman of color.

Hence, I took on the “invisible tax,” secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue like whiplash and almost immediately. Once I started burying my students instead of graduating them, I knew I needed to become more than just a teacher. In addition, I had to find a solution to my temptation to leave the classroom due to all the traumatic experiences we all were carrying with what seemed like little to no support at the building and state levels. I stayed in education and in the classroom because I promised a grieving mother of a student of mine - in the parking lot of her son’s funeral - that I would do something about these issues with my hands and with this heart. I’m a promise keeper, and I don’t break my promises. Yet, I had to leave Chicago Public School Charters and move out of Chicago’s West Side to feel like I still stood a chance as a high school teacher for another school year. Moving to a Chicagoland urban-surburban area, I began teaching in a Title I school with predominantly Latino students who were first generation. Once more, I was continuing the uphill ascent to closing achievement gaps, secondary trauma recovery, and struggling to find my own upward mobility as a woman of color in education.

What many educators of color have to do is find like-minded affinity fellowship spaces outside the schoolhouse for healing, mentorship, nourishment, and the acknowledging of one’s identity as an asset instead of a deficit. One must go on their own mental health journey, as well in an effort to stop the bleeds of the myriads of issues aforementioned. As discussed in Elise Lenthe’s article, “Building supportive communities of educators will increase teachers’ sense of belonging, an essential component of efficacy.” This rings true and urgent for teachers of color, and if we can’t find it at the building level, we often seek it outside in order to survive…and eventually thrive.?

Here’s what could have made my journey thus far a LOT easier while securing a stronger pipeline, and how Edifying Teachers has organically done this for teachers through its programming and strategic efforts.

• Culturally responsive mentoring at the building level with ongoing support and resources:? Not only is this the respectable thing to do, but it’s essential to negate attrition. As teachers of color, we have to circumnavigate unique challenges that our white counterparts do not. Thus, we need safe spaces to address these difficulties with desired outcomes in mind.?Edifying Teachers accomplishes this through a secure framework of "Edifiers," teacher mentors that are trained and equipped to address the mentee’s needs in a culturally responsive manner.
• Confidence building and teacher agency: If we as teachers don’t feel safe, able to take risks, and be our authentic selves, then it will be difficult for us to advance in our craft and create those safe spaces for our students as a result.?Edifying Teachers is so intentional about establishing safe, warm, and inclusive spaces for teachers and mentors to convene and develop a trusting relationship. In turn, the mentor fuses in so much affirmation in the mind of the mentee, thus empowering him/her to sail the heights of their ideas, dreams, and aspirations for their students and their career.
• Emotional support: Many teachers do not have an official space to share overwhelming emotions that can become toxic if they are not addressed. This leads to burnout, quitting, teacher turnover, and a bigger hole in the pipeline. Why would teachers of color want to stay in a place they felt was harmful and dangerous to their mental health??Edifying Teachers provides emotional support to the mentees with intentionality, as this is epicenter to the work of retaining teachers of color in the classroom as a means to stop leaks in the pipeline. Holding space, selecting highly qualified mentors of color, and utilizing culturally responsive frameworks are all ways in which Edifying effectively desires to not only mentor the teacher, but ensure emotional security and calm while in the ever changing and tumultuous teaching profession.

As a teacher of color myself and Teacher Voice and Advocacy Lead for Edifying, I personally have felt the constant support, mentoring, and safe space that Edifying Teachers just has oozing from its pores. They can’t help it - if a teacher is in sight, Edifying wants to edify them...literally! I have never felt more seen, elevated, and supported while being on their leadership team. I am therefore confident that our mentees are receiving the same, if not similar type love as they engage our framework of support.?

It’s complicated, but it’s simple. If we agree we need to reprioritize how we want to approach the data, it’s vital that we continue to listen to the voices of TEACHERS to see what is TRULY needed to hire, recruit, and retain us in the profession. It will take us getting into more trouble, and as the late John Lewis puts it…"necessary trouble."

Teacher Voice & Advocacy Lead Sofia Gonzalez M.Ed., MA is an award-winning Chicago-area teacher, recently selected by the U.S. Department of Education as a School Ambassador Fellow for the 2023-2024 school year.