Watch Live — 1 p.m. Wednesday: Education Experts Talk About the Urgent Need to Build a More Diverse Teacher Workforce After the Pandemic

Editor’s Note: This event is set to begin at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday. Please refresh this page then to view the stream 

Few would question the importance of diversifying America’s teacher corps and ensuring their makeup more closely resembles that of the students they teach. But how? What are the most successful tactics? And how do you attract a more diverse teaching workforce when so many teachers are giving up the profession because of the stresses and health concerns faced by so many educators during the pandemic?

These are some of the questions that will be on the table today at 1 p.m. Eastern, when The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute present a panel discussion: “Teacher Diversity in a Post-COVID World.” Experts will include Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality; Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development; Daniel Helena, English language development coordinator for Los Angeles’s Kory Hunter Middle School; and Brienne Bellavita, senior advocacy manager for the Walton Family Foundation and Walton Education Coalition. Curtis Valentine, deputy director of Reinventing America’s Schools at the Progressive Policy Institute, will moderate.

Click here to register and join the official Zoom, or watch the livestream by either following The 74 on Facebook, or refreshing this page at 1 p.m. ET when we’ll embed the stream in progress.

Go Deeper — Some important related articles to help shape the conversation:

• Analysis: Kate Walsh: New Study of 1,200 Teacher Preparation Programs Shows Academic Selectivity and Diversity Can Go Hand in Hand

• First person: Sharif El-Mekki: Just 2% of U.S. Teachers Are Black Males, but at National Convening We Come Together as a Powerful Force for Change

• State policy: Two Steps Forward, One Back: Teacher Diversity Bill May Push Hundreds of Minnesota Educators of Color from Classrooms

• Interview: ‘A Diverse Teaching Force Is a Quality Teaching Force’: Researcher Seth Gershenson Talks About His New Book and the Changing Demographics of American Schools

• Research: Why Diversity Matters: Five Things We Know About How Black Students Benefit From Having Black Teachers

• Explore the Data: The State of America’s Student-Teacher Racial Gap: Our Public School System Has Been Majority-Minority for Years, but 80 Percent of Teachers Are Still White

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