Colorado Educator Group Seeks to Diversify Workforce

The Colorado-based, educator founded Inclusive Design Group has been working in partnership with educators at Westminster High School to support minority students in their journey to becoming teachers in a sector where they are frequently underrepresented. In the COVID-years, schools have seen a significant loss in their teacher workforce since 2019 and teachers have recently became targets of unfounded conservative moral panic.

In addition to the lack of teachers, there is also a clear lack of diversity among those who make up the teacher demographic. According to statistics by the Colorado Department of Education, there was a 64% increase in the 2021-2022 school year of unfilled teaching positions. On top of that, during the 2020-2021 school year, 69.4% of individuals enrolled in the teaching preparation program were white. Latino individuals made up 14.8% of the program and a mere 3.2% of individuals enrolled were Black.

But the Colorado educator group Inclusive Design Group hopes to make teaching positions more accessible to people of color by providing individuals with the opportunity to begin teaching preparation programs as early as their sophomore year of high school. The accelerated program is designed to provide an affordable path for high school students to begin paving the way for their future careers by taking teaching-centered courses and running their own classrooms to gain experience.

The program especially focuses on those with a passion for teaching, such as 17-year old Westminster High School student Gabe Ballesteros. Ballesteros says in an interview with Denver’s 9NEWS that his experience in the program gave him a sense of “It’s coming and this is how I’m going to get there.” In addition to the Westminster school district, the program is also being tested within three other Colorado school districts in Morgan, Callahan, and Englewood.

Inclusive Design Group founder and CEO Kelly Mitchell hopes to expand the program to not only diverse racial and ethnic identities, but to those in rural areas as well who may not have previously had the time or money to pursue their passion for teaching due to socioeconomic circumstances. Mitchell, in an interview conducted with Denver’s 9NEWS, says “A lot of the impetus behind this program is if students are having access to people who look like them as their own teachers, we know and data shows that that’s good for every student,” in relation to the motivation behind her creation of Inclusive Design Group. 

Mitchell hopes to grow the program’s reach beyond its current four school districts and expand the program to a statewide level in the upcoming years.

Photo courtesy of Colorado Educator Group