When you’re implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in your school, hopefully you’ve begun by doing research, possibly hiring a professional consultant, and preparing your school staff with professional development for the changes underway.
Next, you’ll want to put that preparation to work in your teacher recruitment efforts. How does the lens of DEI change what you do to attract candidates for your open positions? DEI practices aim to promote educational equity in the recruitment process, ensuring that each child receives what they need to develop their full academic and social potential.
Table of Contents:
- Before the mission statement
- School leaders: Be transparent about your efforts and targets
- Prepare to overhaul all policies and communications
- What do your bathrooms say about your learning environment?
- How to initiate solid DEI practices in your school
Before the mission statement
Zoë David-Delves, a Toronto-based DEI specialist with a focus on Black and queer issues, suggests that before even having a mission statement, school leadership ask themselves why they want or need one. “That’s more important than the mission statement itself,” she says.
Some reasons for a mission statement include that it’s the right thing to do, it will attract teacher candidates to your school, and it will contribute to your positive reputation. But what are the reasons behind those reasons?
Well, you likely want to teach kids to be anti-racist. You want the students and teachers to value, live, and work with others of different backgrounds, whether they are from marginalized groups or not. You want your contribution in education to be part of the solution, not the problem. You want to help make the world a better—more equitable—place. Clarity about “whys” of your mission statement can guide you in your actions to back it up and promote effective educational leadership.
Educational leaders play a crucial role in implementing the mission statement and fostering an inclusive environment. Their decision-making influence, vision, and commitment to equity are essential in creating a positive impact within educational communities.
School leaders: Be transparent about your efforts and targets
Anyone can put a statement on their website saying they believe in diversity and inclusion and that they’re committed to equity and representation of marginalized groups. When communicating to potential applicants through your website or other mediums, take the opportunity to clearly state the actions you’ve taken, and those you plan to take. Transparency in DEI efforts is crucial for attracting education professionals committed to diversity and inclusion.
Clearly communicate if you’ve done any of the following or plan to:
- Employ a professional DEI consultant
- Have specific DEI goals
- Use data to measure your progress toward those goals
- Provide professional development in DEI for teachers and other school staff
Educational institutions can lead by example in promoting DEI through transparent communication. Highlighting the influence of leaders in higher education on curricular decisions, faculty members, students, and the broader community can further demonstrate your commitment.
Prepare to overhaul all policies and communications
To see if your school would be a hospitable place for them to work, the potential applicants you wish to attract will be examining your paper trail. You should be, too. Implicit bias, glaring omissions, or other aspects of your written policies and communications can turn off candidates. Overhauling these policies is essential for creating an inclusive educational system.
What’s implicit bias? It’s a form of bias that, although it happens automatically and unintentionally, can affect judgments, decisions, and behaviors, according to the National Institutes of Health. Effective school leaders can identify and address implicit biases in policies and communications, ensuring a more welcoming environment for all.
Get intentional with your teacher recruiting practices
Employment postings are one example of where implicit bias can lurk. In addition to filling out a lot of forms, postings for a job may require a certain degree or a particular type of job history for a minimum amount of time. Modernizing teacher recruiting practices can help attract diverse candidates by removing unnecessary barriers and utilizing technology for online recruitment.
David-Delves suggests examining your school’s job postings with the help of your DEI consultant. In doing that with clients, she’s gone “point by point, asking, is this absolutely necessary to do the job?”
She emphasized that “longstanding ideas about what is ‘professional’ don’t necessarily match up to what is needed to do the job.”
Sometimes just turning a “mandatory” qualification into one that’s preferred or optional is all it takes to make sure you’re encouraging to applicants of different backgrounds. As David-Delves says, “there are other ways to measure qualified candidates besides the strict thinking of, ‘you must have this piece of paper.’”
On a related note, look at where you are posting your jobs—and in what languages. If your community speaks anything besides English, your job ads should appear in those languages. Do your research to find out where and how your target applicants will be looking for a job. And make sure your postings are SEO optimized to better reach them.
School districts can benefit from inclusive job postings to attract a diverse pool of applicants. “If you want to hire outside your immediate population, you have to ensure that people outside the immediate population see it,” says David-Delves.
Make sure your dress code promotes educational equity
If your school has a dress code for students or staff, examine it closely with your DEI consultant to root out any bias or unfairness. Guidelines should be minimal, fair, and sensitive to everyone they affect, considering any social or cultural factor. Some rules can unfairly restrict or punish people of certain races, ethnic groups, or religions who wear clothing or hairstyles according to the custom of their culture or faith.
Similarly, gendered dress codes can cause friction and havoc as well. If you have uniforms for students, they should allow for gender-neutral options. Teachers bound by dress codes should likewise not be made to feel they have to—or can’t—wear something on the basis of their gender identity.
What do your bathrooms say about your learning environment?
Are they clean? That's great. But they should also be welcoming and safe to all who use them. Some schools are now creating gender-neutral bathrooms, with California public schools leading the way.
Surveys show that non-binary and trans youth are prevented or discouraged from using school bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity, and that this has a starkly negative effect on their mental health. 
This can apply to teachers and other staff as well, for whom gendered bathroom options may be stressful and inhospitable. They'll certainly be noticing that when they come for an in-person interview at the school. If your school has not thoughtfully considered and remedied this, it could send a message that you do not care for their safety, comfort, or peace of mind.
A well-rounded approach to attracting diversity in your teaching applicants
If you’re serious about DEI in your recruitment efforts, being hasty or haphazard about it will not do. It’s better to take a “no stone left unturned” approach with the help of a qualified DEI consultant to examine everything you’re doing—or not doing—so your recruitment can meet your goals. Education administration plays a crucial role in implementing DEI practices, ensuring that leadership promotes change across diverse instructional and organizational settings.
This encompasses scouring your policies, communications, and job postings to make sure they’re free of implicit bias and exclusionary language or practices. It’s also about making sure your facilities and day-to-day life at school isn’t in some way inhospitable to any particular group of people. DEI practices in recruitment help prepare students for a diverse and inclusive learning environment. Then, when you craft and publicize your mission statement, you’ll know you’ve done the footwork to back up your ideals with action.
Better representation is not just beneficial to students of color, but it can be valuable for white students too.” Attracting great teachers to work in schools and addressing diversity gaps in the teacher workforce is essential for creating a compelling and inclusive educational environment.
It is also good for teachers of color and educators of any marginalized groups, who deserve a thoughtfully and respectfully staffed workplace that gives them a welcome and grounded sense of belonging. Diversifying and increasing the racial diversity of the teaching workforce can help achieve this goal.
How to initiate solid DEI practices in your school
But there’s important groundwork to do before you can put a DEI statement on your website or target your recruitment efforts to specific groups of candidates. Effective recruitment strategies, such as offering incentives and support programs, are essential for attracting and retaining diverse educators.
If necessary, consider hiring a professional DEI consultant for recruitment strategies
Many companies these days have full-time DEI specialists on staff. Unfortunately, that’s far from the norm at schools, at least not yet. But no school should try to implement DEI practices all on their own.
A consultant can work with you to get to the root of the specific issues facing your school that you need to address. It’s important that this person is someone outside the school who does this work professionally. They can help set goals for your recruiting and hiring process, track progress, and gather hiring data to refine your approach.
Zoë David-Delves, warns against schools expecting their staff members from marginalized communities to fix DEI problems.
“If you’re a teacher, you’re an expert in teaching,” David-Delves explains. “An expert in math, or history, maybe—not in how to dismantle systemic marginalization.”
There are a growing number of DEI consultants who can get schools started with the knowledge and tools they need, like roadmaps, surveys, charts, data measurement tools, and the like. They can also provide support, training, and mentoring to teachers of color through initiatives such as mentorship, professional learning, and equity institutes.
Your DEI consultant should be someone local to your community, whether that’s a state, county, or metropolitan region. They will best know the local demographics when it comes time to sharpen your recruitment focus.
Research and study the data
Data is crucial when it comes to both setting DEI goals and measuring their success. Before implementing DEI initiatives, schools should have a clear picture of the demographics of their local community. This includes not just the representative makeup of races, ethnicities, queer people, and other groups. It also encompasses economic trends, dropout rates, test scores across different sectors of students, and the composition of the applicant pool. Analyzing new hire data and diversification efforts within teacher preparation programs can help build a strong and diverse applicant pool.
The reason it’s such an important tool, says David-Delves, “is that you can’t debate data when it’s presented in front of you.”
Arguments based just on goodness-of-the-heart sentiment can change along with the current news cycle. But, she notes, “hard data is always very convincing.”
Data can also clarify what languages are spoken in your community. If your region has a Vietnamese population but your website can’t be read in that language, that’s a problem. Many school systems incorporate Google Translate into their websites, which allows the content to be read in the languages spoken in their regions and by the candidates they hope to attract. Additionally, targeted outreach and tailored hiring practices are essential to attract potential candidates of color.
Use professional development to prepare for DEI initiatives
When making important DEI changes to your school's curriculum, recruitment, hiring, and retention, you need to make sure your entire staff is educated and prepared. Professional development (PD) can close the gaps to train educators and administrators alike in the wide range of issues connected to successful implementation of DEI initiatives.
The best PD will offer practical solutions to discrimination and exclusion by covering varying learning styles, ways to address trauma, and more inclusive perspectives on all traits with histories of marginalization, including race, culture, neurodivergence, gender identity, and physical abilities.
As Zoë David-Delves says, there needs to be “humility and willingness to learn among teachers in charge of educating people who are not like them.”
Even teachers from marginalized groups, she adds, “aren't going to represent all marginalized groups, and they too need to be educated on how to communicate with very impressionable students of different marginalizations.”
The proper groundwork will be your DEI foundation
Because your DEI initiatives are important, you may feel spurred to rush into advertising your good faith position and getting on with recruitment and hiring. Utilizing job boards to promote open teaching roles can significantly enhance your reach. It can’t be stressed enough that steadfast research and preparation will be worth it in the end. Hiring qualified help, studying the applicable data, and preparing your staff through professional development will be the valuable foundation that serves you in your next steps. Reaching and attracting qualified job seekers through online recruitment strategies is crucial for success.
Innovative recruitment strategies, such as offering signing bonuses, helping with student loans, and developing co-curricular career pathways, are essential for attracting and retaining new teachers. Financial supports, like service scholarships and loan forgiveness programs, play a vital role in creating a more diverse and representative generation of educators.
