Colorado Department of Education working to diversify workforce in effort to better reflect student body
When the pandemic slowed sales at her job as a district manager for a cell phone company, Alycia Harper felt a calling to a new profession. She's now a model for how Colorado would like to diversify its teaching workforce.
"It kind of was a calling. I was kind of working with young people in sales but there was something missing," Harper said who is in her first-year teaching language arts to 6th and 7th graders at Hill Campus of Arts and Science. "I feel like what I'm doing now benefits others in a way that is so much more."
Harper's mom is also a teacher, but after having a degree and a profession in something else, she struggled at first to figure out how to become a teacher. She eventually found TEACH Colorado, which has helped her with a scholarship to get licensed.
"Right now, first year, I'm really enjoying myself and learning a lot. Diversity is very, very important to me I wanted to be at a school where there were all sorts of kids. Every day we are working to make sure everybody is included, everybody is welcome. So, you can feel it 100 percent," she said.
The Colorado Department of Education and the Department of Higher Education jointly released a report saying the state needs to do better at diversifying the teaching workforce because the benefits to students are too great.
"We're really focusing on what we can do better in Colorado recruit diverse teachers and keep them in our workforce," said Colleen O'Neil, associate commissioner of educator talent at the Colorado Department of Education. "We found that financial supports, not at the end of their programs, but at the beginning of their programs."
There's also an effort to work with districts in their hiring process.
Colorado's student population has been rapidly diversifying over the past 10 years -- part of the reason the state is focusing on getting more teachers of color.
"It's the profession upon which all others are built, and we need to be our own best advocates for that. Some of what we're doing is starting to work, and we need to keep doing it," said O'Neil.
Though it's still early in the school year, Harper says she's seen how having a teacher of color is impacting her students.
"For some of these kids, I talk to them like their mom talks to them. I talk to them like their dad talks to them, their aunts, and uncles. They feel that and they know that, and a lot of kids respond better," Harper said. "It's extremely, extremely rewarding.