DENVER — A partnership between Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Call Me MISTER – Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models – program is dedicated to getting more male teachers of color teaching kindergarten through 12th-grade students.
The teacher leadership program helps recruit, train and place Black male teachers in schools across Colorado to addresses the critical need for greater diversity in classrooms.
“Research is coming out about the benefits of having diverse teachers in the classroom,” said MSU Denver associate professor Dr. Rashad Anderson. “Our country is diverse, and we are stronger when we are diverse in our classrooms, and our teacher workforce should look like the America that we live in.”
The Call Me MISTER program is new to MSU Denver but was started in 2000 in South Carolina at Clemson University along with Morris College, Claflin University and Benedict College – three Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Students receive financial support, housing and professional development with school-based mentoring programs on their way to becoming a licensed teacher.
Anderson brought the program and three of his undergraduate students to the MSU Denver campus. It’s the only Call Me MISTER program in Colorado and is the farthest west the program reaches.
“There was work to be done in Colorado, specifically in Denver, and I had the skills and assets in order to make a change,” Anderson said. “We’re changing biases and stereotypes of what Black men, roles that we can play, and I think it’s a beautiful thing, so I’m excited about the work that we have here ahead of us.”
Currently, fewer than 2% of teachers in the state identify as Black, while 87% of Colorado public school teachers are white and about 74% are women, according to Colorado Department of Education (CDE) data. Anderson said they wanted to start the program in Denver after serving on a discussion panel in April.
“I think I was driving down the highway and saw a billboard that said ‘MSU Denver: The Changemakers’,” Anderson said. “And I said, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.'”
MSU Denver senior Jordan Puch is one of the students who made the journey from South Carolina, where he was a senior majoring in elementary education at South Carolina State University. He serves as the president of the Call Me MISTER cohort in Denver and said they knew there was work to be done here.
“When I was presented with the idea to come out here with Dr. Anderson, it was a no-brainer,” Puch said. “A lot of people called me crazy for leaving my senior year so close to graduation, but when you have a vision that’s bigger what your situation is now, it’s easy to do.”
Puch said he grew up displaced from his original home and had to live with his aunt and uncle. He said that experience helps him connect with some of the students he teaches in the classroom.
“You cannot teach a student until you reach a student, and there’s a lot of students that aren’t being reached,” Puch said. “A lot of the situations that the students go through, I’ve been through a lot of those situations myself.”
MSU seniors Joshua Barringer and Christopher Livingston also transferred to MSU Denver from South Carolina because of the program. They agreed that the Call Me MISTER program puts them ahead of most of their colleagues.
“I’ve been in the classroom since my freshman year. I’ve taught classes, I’ve done lesson plans,” Barringer said. “It gives me a real assessment of what I’m going to be bringing to the classroom and who I want to be in the classroom.”
“This program has put me lightyears ahead of where I think I would have been than if I was just a regular education major,” Livingston said. “We feel like we can go to any environment and make a change.”
The group started the Mile High MISTERs as their hub in Colorado and hopes other colleges and universities across the state adopt the program.
Anderson said the program’s focus is on providing more teaching opportunities for men of color in the state, and they hope to expand nationwide. It’s a mission that Anderson said is their calling.
“We’re producing, recruiting and retaining Black male educators for the entire state, and MSU Denver will lead that charge,” Anderson said. “It’s just not Deion [Sanders] in Colorado being a change-maker. We’re a change-maker to just in education.”
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