Former South River teacher reflects on race and education

Dr. Christina Berchini, an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire credits her first experiences as a middle school English teacher in South River as a springboard for her success and professionalism.

Having served there for two years (2006-2008), Berchini fondly recalled her days in South River and credits her recent receipt of the Association of Teacher Educators’ (ATE) Distinguished Dissertation in Teacher Education Award as a tribute to the community and those students, families and parents whose lives she touched.

“I still keep in touch with some of the families and teachers there," the Brooklyn native said, "It was my first and only teaching gig and I could not have been luckier.”

“I loved the administration, teachers, families and kids,” added Berchini, who had earned a bachelor's degree in communications from Pace University before her tenure in South River. “It was a really nice, nurturing place to be.”

After learning in June of 2008 that the South River Board of Education recognized Berchini for selection to the Governor’s Teacher Recognition program for the 2007-2008 school year, representing the district’s middle school, she opted to attend Michigan State University (MSU) where she pursued her graduate studies.

“I knew how hard I worked,” she said. “Especially the first year of teaching is unique because you are pulling hours that you didn’t know existed. The second year got a little bit easier but I also had the headspace that year to pursue some things that I was really interested in such as the Holocaust curriculum and I able to get involved in things that positioned me to be a good teacher.”

Getting noticed for the Governor’s recognition program was “a really nice way to recognize a new teacher,” Berchini said. “I felt like I was doing something right by receiving that award."

At MSU, Berchini earned her doctoral degree in curriculum, instruction and teacher education with an emphasis in English education. Her areas of interest and specialization are secondary English education/English teacher education, critical race studies, critical pedagogy, social justice, and issues in urban education.

It was Berchini’s dissertation, entitled “Teachers Constructing and Being Constructed by Prevailing Discourses and Practices of Whiteness in Their Curriculum, Classroom, and School Community: A Critical Inquiry of Three First-Year English Teachers," that caught the attention and admiration of officials at the Association of Teacher Educators.

“For most students, a dissertation could be anything from five to 10 years in the making,” she explained. “For me, it was six years.”

“After lots of time studying at MSU and getting a better handle on more of the education issues that interested me, I chose to study issues about race and education,” Berchini added.

“At MSU, I taught teacher education courses where I met pre-service teachers working to get their teaching licenses and four of them agreed to be in my study. Writing it (the dissertation) was hard and it took a long time, but that paid off too,” she explained.

“I think I actually learned how to be a better teacher of writing by writing the dissertation itself,” added Berchini, who wrote the piece (about 330 pages long) in about a year’s time. “I studied very new teachers and the issues that they confront in schools and a lot of those issues are about race, as schools are very diverse."

Becoming keenly aware of the fact that the vast majority of teachers are white reflected against such a diverse mix of students from varied backgrounds, Berchini realized that she was faced with a complex issue.

She cited 2013 statistics from the National Center for Education which indicate that approximately 82.7 percent of teachers in the country are white.

“Schools play a serious role in a teacher’s capacity to teach their students well so these are some of the things I struggled with – making better sense of what it means to be a white teacher in context of things that are very diverse,” she said.

“It would be irresponsible of me to suggest that my one study of four white teachers would change the game,” Berchini said. “But, I think as a result of my work so far, my goal is to get smarter about how I can personally work with the teachers who enroll in my courses. You have to confront these issues about race, diversity, and whiteness as they impact the educational environment.”

“Statistically, teaching is a predominantly white, middle-class profession,” she said, when asked about the response she penned. Instead of asking where the teachers of color are in the education workforce, it is important to ask why the workforce remains predominantly white, she stressed.

“I think everyone in education can benefit from a more diverse workforce,” Berchini added. “The world is not predominantly white and education does not look like reality when you consider the white teacher versus diverse student scenario.”

“Students deserve role models with which they can personally identify,” she said.

“But it’s not enough to talk about recruitment or how we are getting teachers of color interested in the profession," she said. "For me, that is many, many decades too late. I’m curious about what sort of started this mess. This is not just a recruitment issue, but an institutional issue. It’s something a lot deeper.”

To read Berchini’s article, “Fellow Teacher-Educators: Question Everything” which was published in an October 2015 edition of Education Week.

Michelle H. Daino, Correspondent