The research is clear – teachers of color have a powerful impact on all students. Students of color who have at least one teacher of color during their school years are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. All students experience reduced prejudice if they are taught by professionals from diverse backgrounds. Despite this evidence, teachers of color remain the minority in the profession; most students do not experience even one teacher of color during their P-12 education.
The C.U.R.E. Program aims to reverse this trend by providing scholarship support ($4,000 per year for up to 4 years) and programming to qualified students interested in becoming teachers.
Students who participate in the C.U.R.E. Program will:
- Demonstrate awareness of the complex systems that shape education and the ways that marginalization and oppression (particularly in the form of racism, classism, and ableism) impact issues such as school funding, curriculum, assessment and accountability, and school discipline.
- Analyze their own intersectional identities in order to become aware of bias and to successfully serve students from marginalized and oppressed backgrounds
- Develop perspectives that position the teacher as an agent of change in society and develop skills and strategies for advocacy on behalf of students, families, colleagues and communities.
Since 1998, more than 250 students have been admitted to this highly competitive scholarship program. Eighty-five percent of C.U.R.E. graduates have taught for at least two years in high-need schools throughout the state, and a majority have continued their tenure as teacher leaders or administrators.
Our graduates are making an impact where it is needed the most. Tameka Stephenson, a 2007 C.U.R.E. graduate, is teaching in a high-poverty school in New York City. Tameka recently remarked during a follow-up visit, “I love what I’m doing, even though it can be stressful at times. It’s the little things that make it so worthwhile. I teach at the school I went to, around the corner from where my grandmother still lives.”
