You Are Because I Am: Toward New Covenants of Equity and Diversity in Teacher Education

Racial disparities in the demographic composition of K-12 students and teachers has led university teacher education programs and school districts to endeavor to prepare all teachers, especially White teachers, to work with diverse students. However, often sidelined in these initiatives are the challenging tasks of preparing, recruiting, and retaining teachers of color as well as the challenging truths about the experiences of aspiring and practicing teachers and teacher educators of African American, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Native American, Middle Eastern, and mixed race heritages. This paper was delivered as a talk at the National Symposium on Teacher Diversity held at Northern Kentucky University in 2017. Dillard posits that in order to address the inequities within schooling and teacher education, we must examine the covenants that lie at the center of educational and public discussions about education in the U.S. through (re)membering narratives of Black and Brown lives and experiences with/in schooling, Dillard marshals the notion of beloved community put forth by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a promising framework for ushering in new covenants in teaching and learning for schools and schools of education that might enhance and support the experiences of aspiring and practicing teachers of color.