Chapter 13 Reflection

In reading Chapter 13 I learned that there will be a strong demand for teachers in our future. With the increase in student enrollment, comes the need for teachers. Before student enrollment was twenty-one  per class size now that number has been increasing to almost twenty-five per teacher in public secondary schools. As that number continues to creep up, our schools need more teachers to meet the demands of student enrollment. The chapter tells that an estimated two million new teachers will be needed in our country in the next ten years. Fortunately it is the returning teachers who will fill the anticipated shortages.

One of the greatest shortages is the Minority teachers. As the enrollment of minority groups increases which they represent forty-three percent,  the minority teachers decrease. The chapter explains that minority students deserve to have positive minority role models who can help steer them in the right direction , especially in our world that is still one that continues to have racism.

The chapter reflects on Jaime Escalante. As a teacher, he set high standards and made hard demands on his students. They were not allowed into his class unless they had done the homework assigned to them. He taught his students, who came from minority groups that no matter what race, they could accomplish anything. He motivated his students and in turn they learned “self pride” that came along with such accomplishments.
I strongly believe that we need more minority teachers for the fact that students from such groups can have a true model that exhibits the “I did it, you can too” attitude. This is what stood out mostly for me in this chapter. Most of our teachers our white, not that it is a bad thing. But for those of us who come from a minority background such as myself, we need that positive role model throughout our education.