By: Dr. Rudy Ruiz, Founder, Edifying Teachers
As a young Latino who went from a low-income neighborhood on Milwaukee’s South Side to graduating with honors from Stanford, I didn’t aim to ‘make it out’ of the community, but to improve it. I completed an alternative teaching certification program to help change the odds for young people from backgrounds like mine. Teaching math and computer science in the neighborhood public high school where I grew up, as a role model for my students, I expected to receive ample mentorship. Unfortunately, the system was not designed this way. I persisted, finding my way as a teacher for 8 years, then continued to school and district leadership roles. Knowing “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets” (per W. Edwards Deming), and seeing minimal progress in teacher support practices, I dedicated the rest of my career to redesigning the system to support better and retain teachers.
So, what do research and teachers have to say about what would help teachers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) stay and grow in the profession? When Educators for Excellence conducted their nationally representative Voices from the Classroom survey, they discovered teacher shortage headlines were overlooking the voices of BIPOC teachers, who are more likely to have inadequate educator preparation experiences and to work in schools serving more BIPOC students and students in poverty, often under resourced.
Rather than higher salaries, what BIPOC teachers consistently seek are more professional development and support, and more leadership opportunities while continuing to teach. A growing body of research and reports have made it clear that especially for BIPOC teachers, mentorship is a top priority. Quality mentorship has been shown to cut teacher attrition by more than half. While many states mandate mentorship, most programs narrowly focus on instructional coaching and lack the cultural awareness, career navigation, and holistic approach BIPOC teachers are calling for.
We built the Edifying Teachers approach on the evidence base for what works to keep teachers on track to feel and be successful, what researchers call self-efficacy. We believe evidence-based practices should be better communicated to those doing the work; we do our part by making it easier to remember effective strategies. We rebranded Bandura’s four pathways to self-efficacy as the 4 Ms: Modeling (Bandura’s vicarious experiences); Mentorship (building teachers’ capacity through meaningful feedback for progressive skill building, Bandura’s social persuasion); Mindset (fostering a growth mindset through the common challenges of teaching); and ensuring Mastery of effective teaching.
We have found our 3 Cs of Culturally Sustaining Mentorship to be our ‘secret sauce’ in delivering what BIPOC educators have been calling for.
- Culturally Sustaining Conversations: A proactive approach that uplifts the identities, experiences, languages, and perspectives of mentees for mentorship to truly serve as a protective factor for BIPOC teachers, who are generally underrepresented in school settings. Our co-created mentorship experience values the contributions of both the mentor and the mentee, affirming the value of strengths-based and culturally efficacious approaches.
- Collaboration: To counter the traditionally isolating nature of the profession—especially for teachers in under-resourced communities who face higher rates of burnout due to the added workload of searching for resources—we actively work to foster a sense of belonging. Productive connections serve to nurture proteges through humanistic mentoring, building trust through authentic care and collaboration in communities.
- Career Navigation: While support for building the skill sets needed to be effective instructors is central to our work and impact, to keep teachers growing in the profession, it is important for them to understand and navigate career ladders. Our model attends to and documents our work to help guide teachers and build their self-efficacy here as well.
Retaining BIPOC educators starts with belonging. We designed our model with BIPOC educators to address this, building a diverse network of mentors highlighted by Education Week as an effective solution to teacher retention. To date, our mentors, mentees, and district partners have affirmed the value of this personalized approach, with 100% of mentees agreeing or strongly agreeing the mentorship provides a safe space and helps them grow in the profession.
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Dr. Rudy Ruiz is the founder of Edifying Teachers, a mission-driven learning organization dedicated to ensuring personalized mentorship to better retain and develop teachers, with a particular focus on BIPOC teachers. Edifying Teachers is an organizational member of the Beyond100K national network.
