By: Valeria Pulido, Latinx Teachers Fellowship Alum

In today’s classrooms, an education that goes beyond the textbook is critical to a student’s success. The diversity of our educator workforce is a key contributing factor. 

All students, especially students of color, benefit from having teachers from different cultures and racial backgrounds throughout their academic career. Latino students specifically, benefit from teachers who show up as their authentic selves and can affirm their rich cultural heritage to create educational impact.  

This representation matters greatly in spaces where a student might feel the need to assimilate to fit in, like I once did as an immigrant student in the U.S.   

When I think about my experience as a student, I remember how misunderstood I felt. I can vividly recall my first week as an 8th grade student and being asked by others where I was from. When I told them I was from Chihuahua, their response was, “Like the dog?”  

It immediately turned me off from sharing more about my culture because I knew then that it was not going to be understood. Emotionally, this moment drew me to assimilate and omit my culture, instead of celebrating it. This is an all-to-common scenario for Latino students nationwide even today.  

Even though Latino students make up 28% of K-12 public school students, only 9% of teachers and school principals are Latino. This lack of representation extends to higher education too where only 6% of college presidents identify as Latino. Clearly, there’s an urgent need to improve the recruitment and retention of Latino educators. 

Research shows that students thrive in environments that are truly representative of the real world we live in, leading to better test grades, higher attendance, lower discipline rates, and higher college-going rates, among other benefits. 

Latinos for Education’s Latino Action Agenda helps us get to a world in which we reduce the representation gap among students and educators. It provides bold policy recommendations for the Biden-Harris Administration as well as Congress. Among the provisions are: 

• Increased funding for minority-serving institutions that by and large prepare teachers of color at a higher rate than other institutions  

• Providing data that highlights how effective a program is in preparing future generations of educators  
• Dedicate funding for robust Early College pathway programs for future educators, with incentives for financial support through college and teacher preparation programs to diversify the teaching workforce.  
• Provide dedicated resources to support public school educators that could result in higher salaries, access to loan forgiveness programs, and signing bonuses.  

Educator diversity matters and I can only imagine what my experience as a student would have been like if, instead of minimizing my background, my educators had highlighted and related to the beauty of my culture and home.  

Latinos for Education believes in the power of education to shape the lives of our young people and that diversity is key to this transformation. Having teachers who reflect the cultural, racial and linguistic identities of their students means that Latino students are more likely to succeed.  

As an educator now, I strive to show my students the importance of keeping their native tongue and using it as a resource, and not seeing it as a liability.  

We know that confronting the educator diversity gap in this country is a challenge that we must overcome to ensure success for our Latino students and educators, and solving it requires the implementation of bold policy and investment into teacher preparation programs.  

The journey to creating an equitable educational system is long and ongoing, but the time to truly cultivate a culturally affirming and responsive learning environment that recognizes the value of Latino educators to the future of learners across the nation is now. As the Latino community continues to grow, our success as a country depends on it. I encourage you to read and share the Latino Action Agenda and lend your voice to supporting the policy recommendations included within it. 

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Valeria Pulido is a trailblazing 10th-grade IB English teacher from Houston, Texas, and an alum of the Latinos for Education Latinx Teachers Fellowship. She has been recognized for her innovative curriculum, including a fellowship with The New York Times Learning Network and a TeachPlus Fellowship in 2023. She’s a true champion of Latinidad and an advocate for education. Valeria holds a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies and an M.Ed. In Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M University.