WSU Minority Recruiting Makes A Difference Five Years After Inception, First Group Of Graduates Ready To Start Teaching

Washington State University senior Damien Pattenaude remembers calling his mother from a campus pay phone during a high school recruiting visit. No way was he enrolling, he told her.

WSU’s mostly white campus was a different world compared with where he came from: racially diverse Renton High School in Seattle.

“We were just looking around like, `Where are the people who look like us?”’ Pattenaude and his friends jokingly called each other chocolate chips because they stuck out in the sea of white students in Pullman.

Now, four years later, Pattenaude, 22, is leaving WSU for good - with a degree in education, certification to teach high school English and his sights on a job in his hometown school district.

Although coming to WSU wasn’t easy, it was the right decision in the long run, he said.

“Coming here opens your eyes to that feeling of being the only minority student in the class - and that no matter where you go, you can be successful.”

Five years after the inception of WSU’s Future Teachers of Color program, the College of Education’s first batch of five graduates are ready to start teaching.

With WSU officials insisting Initiative 200 doesn’t apply to outreach programs, the measure banning racial or gender considerations in state hiring, contracting and school admissions hasn’t hampered recruitment efforts for Future Teachers of Color. Prior to the November election, college administrators warned otherwise.

WSU now has about 50 minority students studying to become teachers.

More than a hundred high school students from across Washington are in Pullman this weekend for an intensive introduction to WSU and the program.

The waiting list to get in has doubled to 150 in the last year. School districts are calling to identify graduates for future jobs, and other universities are looking to duplicate the program, said program director Milton Lang, a recruiter WSU hired five years ago.

Although Future Teachers of Color is Lang’s brainchild, the program has been buoyed by support from new College of Education Dean Judy Nichols Mitchell and nearly $500,000 from Seattle philanthropist and WSU Regent Ken Alhadeff.

Last year, while speaking to students at a semiannual recruiting event, Alhadeff spontaneously offered scholarships of up to $5,000 over four years to every person there who entered the program. Eleven students took him up on the offer.

That’s a far cry from the program’s infancy, when Lang carted a dozen students across the Cascades in a borrowed van. This year, school districts are bringing students to him in buses - 80 percent of them from the Seattle-Tacoma area.

It’s the second time Kennewick High School teacher Nancy Kerr has driven a dozen students to Pullman. The first year, many of her mostly Hispanic students had never been on a college campus. A few cried the first night, because they wanted to enroll so badly.

“They were so thrilled to see what college life was like,” Kerr said.

Getting students on campus to “smell, touch and feel the Cougar spirit” is half the success, Lang said. Nurturing them once they’re at WSU is the other half.

Society is not doing enough to promote the great things teachers do, Lang said.

He tells prospective students the truth: Teachers don’t make as much money as doctors or lawyers, “but you have to look beyond the money at quality of life and having an impact.”

Many students can relate, since most remember at least one teacher who made a difference in their lives, he said.

In Washington, however, 95 percent of K-12 teachers are white, state records show.

“For people of color, it’s really hard,” said Bernadette Buchanan, who attended University High School in the Spokane Valley and entered the FTOC program after transferring to WSU from Eastern Washington University.

“There’s not enough (minority students), and the history books are outdated,” she said.

Minority teachers aren’t just important role models for students of color, they can also help dispel racial stereotypes held by white students. “I think it will improve race relations for young people - regardless of what race they are - to be taught by a diverse group of teachers,” Lang said.

“Our kids in the public schools are being cheated by the lack diversity. It’s a tragedy that all kids can go through their entire K-12 experience and not be taught by a person of color.”

The only minority teachers Pattenaude had were also the school’s athletic coaches. Of his five best friends, only two graduated from high school.

Pattenaude believes it’s because they had low expectations that teachers didn’t encourage them to overcome.

“They get sort of tracked, and it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Pattenaude said. While some students who attend the recruiting event come to WSU and study something else, most stay in the program because of the supportive environment. Students are assigned mentors and have access to scholarships and a close network of support groups for minority students.

That personal touch made a difference for junior Luzviminda Carpenter of Spokane when she was torn between attending the University of Washington, Western Washington University and WSU.

When the Ferris High School graduate left urgent voice mail with Lang, he called back within an hour. That level of attention continued once on campus, she said.

Carpenter hopes to return to teach in Spokane, she said, because there aren’t many teachers of color despite a student body that is increasingly diverse.

“There’s a lot of people that are of mixed heritage or are moving there from a lot of different countries and having this culture shock …,” said Carpenter, who is half African American and half Filipino.

“I want to be there for them, so they realize you can have a dual culture, be part of two different backgrounds and succeed.”