by Lacey Anderson, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
March 25, 2025
“I have something important to say, but don’t really know who to talk to.”
(Getty Images)
This email message from Kendra, my usually light-hearted, life-of-the-party high school student, was unusual. She showed me her phone, the reason why she was so upset. On it was an AI-generated racist political text. Kendra, who is African American, told me she knew of at least four other students at our school who received the same message.
Even if they were generated by AI, how were they only sent to African-American students? Who would do this? Why Kendra? Why any of our students?
The gravity of the text and its impact on Kendra brought tears to my eyes. I met with each student who received the message and reported the situation to school leaders. Even though this was a text sent out to people across the country, an email was sent home to our school’s families letting them know, and the school diversity club, a group I advise, held an emergency meeting.
I cried because I was angry I could not protect my students. Kendra told me it wasn’t the first time she has experienced racism and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. While I realized I would never truly understand what it is like to be in her shoes because I am a white teacher in a predominantly white high school in York County, she knew from then on how much I cared.
Research shows that students need to see themselves reflected in their teachers, and all students benefit from being taught by teachers of color. Yet in Pennsylvania, where 38.1% of students are African American, only 6.6% of teachers identify as African American. The number of students of color in my South Central Pennsylvania district continues to grow exponentially; there is only one teacher of color in the South Western School District in in Hanover that serves almost 5,000 students.
In all likelihood, students in my diversity club will never have a teacher that looks like them in 12 years of school. If schools are to fully support students like Kendra, the commonwealth must prioritize ways to infuse the teaching profession with more diversity.
To start, Pennsylvania could fully fund student teacher stipends, reducing the cost of becoming a teacher so that the educator pipeline is larger and more diverse. In the 2023-24 budget, Governor Shapiro began the difficult work of funding student teacher stipends by investing $10 million, but the funds were quickly depleted. In 2024-25, he increased funding to $20 million. More than 4,000 student teaching candidates applied for the stipend, with only 2,000 able to receive it before the money disappeared; just one was from my district. It’s estimated that funding will need to increase to $50 million, but the governor has only proposed $40 million in his current budget.
Pennsylvania also could provide needed funding for Grow Your Own Programs in order to recruit high school students, traditional teacher candidates, and people who already have bachelor’s degrees to become teachers in their own communities. On top of a lack of diversity in the profession, 97% of counties in the commonwealth have a teacher supply of “low” or worse. In my own well-funded district, while there are opportunities for aspiring elementary educators, there is no Grow Your Own Program available to students interested in secondary education.
Lastly, our state could invest in TEACH.org, an organization founded by the U.S. Department of Education, collaborating with state education agencies to develop and deploy statewide initiatives to create a diverse, sustainable teacher talent pipeline. To provide a single resource for potential candidates, the 2023 school code requires the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) to create a public job posting database to centralize information but the agency has yet to launch it.
My district, for example, typically gets four or fewer applicants for high school science positions, barely enough to find a qualified candidate, let alone someone who reflects the changing demographics of our community.
Kendra’s animated personality has since returned, and the diversity club has moved forward since the hateful texts. Her older brother, also in the club, shared that he will be attending a local college to become an English teacher. I can only hope he might consider coming back to his home district to teach.
Pennsylvania has an obligation to expand and diversify the teacher pipeline in order to do better for students like Kendra.
Lacey Anderson (Submitted)
Lacey Anderson is a social studies educator at South Western High School in Hanover, York County. She is a 2024-2025 Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow.
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