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“I want to be there for students in that way,” he said. Khalil, the Dyett High senior, for one, says he is not daunted. But the push to grow the ranks of these teachers face hurdles, including schools that put too much pressure on young Black and Latino educators to be role models and disciplinarians for boys of color. The pandemic and the country’s post-George Floyd racial reckoning have given new urgency to efforts to recruit and retain male teachers of color, with more buy-in from school districts, which have often let nonprofits take the lead. That compares with fewer than 2 percent for each group in Illinois districts overall, where students of color make up slightly more than half the enrollment. Yet fewer than 4 percent of the district’s teachers are Black men, and fewer than 5 percent are Latino men. In Chicago Public Schools, students of color make up about 90 percent of the student body, 16 percent are Black boys, and almost a quarter are Latino boys. Some advocates and experts believe that attacking a long-standing shortage of educators who look like these teens is a key solution, given evidence that exposure to male teachers of color increases boys’ odds of graduating and going to college. The pandemic exacted a heavy toll from boys and young men of color, widening racial and gender disparities in academic outcomes such as graduation and college enrollment. About 80 seniors are taking an Intro to Urban Education class and sorting through their career goals, with plans to offer more mentoring after graduation.
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With McCoy’s encouragement, Khalil, now a rising senior, joined a pilot program launched last fall at Dyett and two other Chicago high schools to cultivate a new generation of Black and Latino male teachers. A computer science teacher who cultivated a passion for coding in Khalil and became a “big brother,” that rare person in front of whom the teen allowed himself to cry. Khalil thought back to educators with whom he’d bonded in middle school: A math teacher who made the subject fun even for struggling students.
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Then, out of the blue, the school’s principal, Cortez McCoy, pulled him aside and asked: Would he consider becoming a teacher? He was in summer school, after falling behind at Dyett High School for the Arts during the upheaval of COVID and virtual learning his junior year. CHICAGO - The question came when Khalil Cotton least expected it.