Exciting News from #HICE2025
december 2024
The Cal Poly SOE's Educational Leadership & Administration Program (ELAP)'s faculty, Dr. Andrea Somoza-Norton and Dr. Natasha Neumann, proudly presented their session, "Boosting Latinx/e Teacher Recruitment: University-County Office of Education Partnership," at the 2025 Hawaii International Conference on Education!
Their research underscores the importance of creating supportive pathways for BIPOC and Latinx/e teacher candidates. By emphasizing identity, retention, and long-term local hiring, their strategies aim to foster a more diverse and equitable education workforce in California.
Recruitment and Retention of Latinx Teachers Is Top Priority: So Why Are New Teachers Saying ¡Adiós!?
Natasha Neumann, Andrea Somoza-Norton, & Lorraine Lopez
october 2024
"Coupled with the changing student demographic and linguistic landscape across many school districts, there is a need to mirror the demographic and linguistic teaching and leadership teams. The importance of students seeing themselves in their teachers and administrators impacts their educational success (Carver-Thomas, 2017). Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) make up 50% of children from birth to age 18 in the United States and approximately 37% of the adult population. In contrast, public school BIPOC teachers comprise just 19% of our teaching force (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). The literature describes the significance of student achievement by having teachers of color in front of students of color."
Read the article here ›
Cal Poly School of Education awarded two federal grants to address local teacher challenges
october 2024
Cal Poly’s School of Education is combating teacher challenges in the classroom thanks to two new federal grants from the Department of Education.
Read the report on KSBY's website ›
