Massachusetts Asian Pacific Islander Educator Pipeline Mentorship Program
PROGRAM OVERVIEW: This program will begin to address the barriers to persistence for all participants, such as financial burdens, limited or inaccessible emotional support impacting self-esteem and self-worth, limited and inaccessible academic support, and culturally limited or discriminatory curriculum and pedagogy. Program goals must include focusing on the needs of our local communities and addressing the lack of diverse teachers in our communities, thus, this program intends to meet the following goals. Student participants and mentors will be representative of the AAPI communities our partners represent. The program is a three-part approach to recruitment, engagement, and retention for AAPI Educators.
GOALS: For each of the goals provided, please tell us what specifically will be done throughout the year to achieve the goal and how it will be done in collaboration with your partners.
1. The first level of the program, Growing AAPI Future Educators, primarily identifies underrepresented AAPI undergraduate college students that are interested in careers in education and supports them in their journey to become an educator. These aspiring educators will participate as a cohort in monthly education and social justice themed workshops at their campus like University of Massachusetts Boston and/or University of Massachusetts Lowell with NEA/MTEA faculty member leaders, mentor educators, and community leaders. The goal of this program is that each participant will enter or continue in a credential program and in the second level of this program.
2. The second level of the program, AAPI Educators Mentoring Educators, will group AAPI aspiring educators with an AAPI early career educator. The program will utilize a flexible mentorship model by matching a mentee to a mentor and allow opportunities for the mentee to access other mentor educator classrooms. The aspiring educator will participate in school, union, and community activities with the early career educator at least once a month in order to diversity the experiences and expose the student/mentee to teacher activities outside of the classroom and develop leadership skills. The aspiring educator and early career educator group will have an end of program project with a community organization and prepare a 30 minute presentation to share their project the rest of the cohort during the monthly education and social justice workshop sessions. The goal of this program is that each mentee participant will complete their credential program, each mentor participate will continue in their education career, both participants gain a deeper understanding of how public education support racial and social justice activities in their community, and participate in the next level of the program.
3. The third level of the program, AAPI Educators Educating Educators, will group the undergraduate / teacher credential students and their early career educator mentor with an AAPI lead educator that may be from another state for further support, perspective, and coaching. These AAPI lead educators may also include retired educators but will have significant (more than 10 years) teaching, union, and community organizing experience but may be from across the country in order to provide a different but deeper perspective for the aspiring educators and early career educators. The lead educator will lead debriefing and coaching sessions at least once a month with aspiring educator and early career educator that will further discuss or debrief the month’s workshop or month’s activist activity and prepare for the end of program project.
Important Links:
NEA Asian & Pacific Islander Caucus 