AJE Feature | “We Are Gonna Miss Too Many of Them”: Rurality, Race, & the History of Grow Your Own Teacher Programs by Scott Gelber.

The full-length American Journal of Education article by Gelber can be accessed here.

Founded by the National Education Association (NEA) in 1937, the Future Teachers of America (FTA) was a network of high school clubs that intended to attract teenagers to teaching careers. NEA leaders hoped that FTA clubs could recruit teachers during their adolescence, before they became discouraged by the profession’s pay, status, and working conditions. According to one proponent, the program was designed to accentuate “the service motive rather than the financial motive” (Future Teachers of America 1947, 330). To this end, FTA clubs sang songs, watched filmstrips, made presentations at assemblies, and tutored younger children. These clubs proliferated across the nation in the postwar era, when the nation suffered from a severe teacher shortage. By 1970, there were roughly 6,000 FTA chapters with 225,000 members, who would go on to comprise more than a fifth of all new teachers (FTA Program Description 1970).

The history of these clubs warrants our attention because they inspired the current array of Grow Your Own (GYO) initiatives, which are often seen as “the most promising solution” for teacher recruitment in rural areas or in urban schools seeking to hire more teachers of color (Parks 2021, 37). As far back as the 1930s, recruiters recognized that local teenagers were a crucial talent pool because most teachers preferred to work close to home and in schools where the majority of students shared their cultural backgrounds (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas, 2016). Since most teachers decided to enter the profession before they enrolled in college, it was logical to reach out to these students during their high school years (Recruiting for the Teaching Profession 1964). As one education professor put it, if recruiters waited until college, “we are gonna miss too many of them” (Stefflre 1963). 

Whereas FTA materials originally emphasized a conservative version of patriotic civic duty, the clubs’ recruitment pitch shifted in the 1970s to conform with the emergence of a more activist-oriented youth culture. According to FTA leaders, chapters would lose members unless they honored students’ desire for political “relevance” (Blueprints for Action 1971). Although the tone of FTA materials became less celebratory and more critical, these programs resembled the original versions because they still focused on non-material rewards. 

Both before and after this rhetorical shift, future teacher clubs were especially enticing to school administrators in rural America because those regions often faced the most acute shortages and because rural school leaders sensed that their own students would be more likely to remain in their districts over the long term (Morton 2021). The recruitment rhetoric of FTA clubs also resonated with a longstanding tradition of viewing rural teachers as community leaders (Theobald 1997). This focus on the satisfaction derived from a civically-active teacher identity is understandable, yet low salaries were a significant cause of teacher shortages during the postwar decades in rural regions as well as across the nation. Despite the hopes of recruiters, the American Council on Education (1944) noted that only a small number of exceptional candidates seemed to be motivated primarily by “the social importance of the schools and by an unusual spirit of self-sacrifice” (10).

Future teacher clubs were also intended to address the underrepresentation of people of color within the teaching profession. As has been well documented, this shortage intensified during the 1960s when states and districts excluded Black teachers and principals as they implemented desegregation initiatives (Carter et al. 2018). Black leaders and some white allies were well aware of what was being sacrificed and hoped to stem the exodus. Precollege recruitment has remained at the forefront of these efforts since the 1970s (Heubeck 2020). Schools started hundreds of future teacher programs during the 1970s and 1980s and almost three-quarters of them listed race-conscious recruitment as a primary goal (Lubman 1993).

Similar to their beliefs about rural students, these recruiters hoped that students of color would be especially motivated by connections between the teaching profession and broader campaigns for equity. Throughout the past half-century, researchers told recruiters that students of color would be attracted by the intrinsic reward of having a job that could combat structural inequality (Achinstein et al. 2010; Guarino, Santibañez, and Daley 2006). Yet similar to the story of rural recruitment, the historical supply of teachers of color reflects the significance of extrinsic compensation. Many high-achieving students of color eschewed teaching in favor of higher-paying professions. When combined with frequent experiences of in-school racism, financial pressure remains a significant explanation for the ongoing shortage of Black and Latinx teachers (Carver-Thomas 2018; Fraser and Lefty 2018). 

Despite the best efforts of the NEA and dedicated advisors in high schools across the nation, the FTA and other future educator programs struggled to alleviate the postwar teacher shortage. In the 1960s, the NEA acknowledged that its own considerable investment in FTA chapters was based on “common sense” or “some face validity” rather than data about their effectiveness (Stefflre 1963, 23). Without a way of accounting for self-selection, we cannot be certain if these programs made a significant difference. 

It is understandable and perhaps wise for teacher recruitment to focus on compelling elements of the job rather than on its harder-to-change financial dimensions. Yet the similarities with older versions of this message also provide a cautionary reminder of a widespread tendency to underemphasize the significance of material wellbeing for teachers and students alike. Indeed, the postwar teacher shortage only began to subside after the rise of unionization and the decline of the baby boom coincided to improve compensation and working conditions. Future teacher programs have not been sufficient to addressing staffing shortages in rural school districts, nor is there strong reason to believe that GYO programs have been able to overcome the impediments that stand in the way of attracting and retaining substantially higher numbers of teachers of color.

Nevertheless, the concept of future teacher programs has remained appealing. Given the relative difficulty of realizing the reforms desired by most teachers (such as higher pay, more autonomy, closer collaboration, and smaller classes), it is sensible for recruiters to gravitate toward programs that define “incentives and rewards” as the emotional payoff of working with young people and contributing to the creation of a more just world (Carter 1989, 49). However, this language can elide important structural aspects of the job.

This critique is not intended to minimize the dedication and good will of those who create, support, and staff GYO organizations. Future teacher programs are worthy initiatives, though the historical record suggests that they are limited to focusing on intrinsic forms of satisfaction without being funded or empowered to reckon fully with the material conditions and other barriers that also shape the new teacher recruitment and retention. Programs designed to expand teacher pipelines by inspiring young people likely have a role to play, but we should temper our expectations of the extent to which they can counteract the forces that impede efforts to staff rural schools and diversify the profession.

References

Achinstein, Betty, Rodney T. Ogawa, Dena Sexton, and Casia Freitas. 2010. “Retaining
Teachers of Color.” Review of Educational Research 80 (March): 71-107.

American Council on Education. 1944. Teachers for Our Times. Washington, DC: ACE.
Blueprints for Action. 1971. NEA Records, George Washington University Archives, Series 22,
Box 1671, Folder 15.

Carter Andrews, Dorinda J., Eliana Castro, Christine L. Cho, Emery Petchauer, Gail Richmond,
and Robert Floden. 2018. “Changing the Narrative on Diversifying the Teaching Workforce.” Journal of Teacher Education 70 (1): 6-12.

Carter, Susan B. 1989. “Incentives and Rewards to Teaching.” In American Teachers, ed.
Donald Warren, 49-62. New York: Macmillan.

Carver-Thomas, Desiree. 2018. Diversifying the Teaching Profession. Palo Alto: Learning Policy
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Fraser, James W., and Lauren Lefty. 2018. Teaching Teachers: Changing Paths and Enduring
Debates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

FTA Program Description. 1970. NEA Records, George Washington University Archives, Series
22, Box 1673, Folder 4.

“Future Teachers of America.” 1947. The Phi Delta Kappan 28 (April): 330.

Guarino, Cassandra M., Lucrecia Santibañez, and Glenn A. Daley. 2006. “Teacher Recruitment
and Retention.” Review of Educational Research 76 (Summer): 173-208.

Heubeck, Elizabeth. 2020. “How Districts Can Show They Are Committed to Building a More
Racially Diverse Workforce.” Education Week (July 16).

Lubman, Sarah. 1993. “Efforts to Hire Minority Educators Aim to Narrow Student-Teacher
Ethnic Gap.” Wall Street Journal (September 7): B1.

Morton, Neal. 2021. “Rural Schools Have a Teacher Shortage” The Hechinger Report, April 13.

Parks, Casey. 2021. “The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools.” The New York Times Magazine
(September 12): 30-41.

Recruiting for the Teaching Profession. 1964. NEA Records, George Washington University
Archives, Series 31, Box 1782, Folder 5.

Stefflre, Buford. 1963. Developmental Theories. NEA Records, George Washington University
Archives, Series 31, Box 1783, Folder 1.

Sutcher, Leib, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Desiree Carver-Thomas. 2016. A Coming Crisis in
Teaching? Palo Alto: Learning Policy Institute.

Theobald, Paul. 1997. Teaching the Commons: Place, Pride, and the Renewal of Community.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.