CAMERA
The Ohio Human Capital Resource Center interviewed Shon Smith, former board chair of CAMERA (the Cleveland Area Minority Educators Recruitment Association). Members include 32 Northeast Ohio educational organizations actively working to “hire teachers who are sensitive and responsive to student needs in a culturally diverse school environment. The districts provide a range of teaching opportunities for large and small schools with diverse student bodies fostering strong community support.”
Their success story features lessons related to the recruitment and retention of a diverse educator workforce over a history of 30 years. Leaders of the organization include:
Dr. JaTina Threat, Bedford City Schools, Chairperson
Paula Elder, East Cleveland City Schools, Chairperson Elect
Dr. Paul Lombardo, Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools, Treasurer
Gretchen Lawn, ESC of Northeast Ohio, Secretary
Shon Smith, Ed.D
Director of Educational Services, Past Board Chair
Nordonia Hills City School District
1. How did CAMERA begin? Share the origin story for this big idea.
Back in the early 1990s, 20 member districts got things started with job fairs and mentoring for diverse candidates.
CAMERA was established with the mission of addressing the underrepresentation of multicultural educators across the Cleveland-Akron area. We founded CAMERA in response to the growing recognition of the importance of having diversity and education. If students can experience someone who looks like them, they're more apt to be engaged, and they're more apt to emulate and model the things that they are seeing.
CAMERA aims to recruit, retain, and support multicultural educators, to better reflect the demographics of our student populations, and to enhance educational outcomes through diverse perspectives and experiences. We also support human resource professionals and provide professional development seminars and networking opportunities to help us collaborate area-wide.
I am actually a product of CAMERA’s early work. They held job fairs in the area at the time I was a pre-service teacher looking for a job in my yellow blazer and my blue cheerleader-like skirt. Someone from CAMERA met me at the job fair and gave me some tips about how to interview and what I needed to wear.
“That meeting at a job fair with CAMERA led to my career. Within a month. I had a job teaching, and I also had a lifelong mentor and friend. That is what CAMERA does. That’s why I want to give back today. Because without that person tapping me on the shoulder, pulling me aside, and supporting me along the way, I would not be where I am today. Her name was Oralee Walters, and she was from Cleveland.”
2. What are you most proud of, looking back at the program development and implementation?
I am most proud of the fact that CAMERA continues serving to this day! We've developed and nuanced our efforts to reach into high schools and get pre-service teachers, encouraging them to pursue scholarships that we offer every year.
This year. I believe we're going to have six or seven pre-service teachers or classified or paraprofessional staff who desire to go into the teaching profession. We want to see all of them finish their studies and pursue the licensures that they need.
CAMERA has a strong track record of scholarship recipients for multicultural candidates among member organization students and staff. Current scholarship amounts are $500– $1,500. The requirements include acceptance into a college or university and pursuit of a teaching license. A committee of CAMERA member reviews applications for both students and staff.
For students, CAMERA offers funding to graduating seniors.
For staff, the organization offers funding to current employees.
I'm also proud of the fact that we've grown from the original 20 school districts, and we now boast 32 school districts partnering and collaborating together. I'm most proud of that because it’s easy to be selfish and keep the talent in one place. But the philosophy has grown through CAMERA: If we can't employ you as an educator, we want you to be an educator. So we desire to give you the skills, tools, and resources you need to be the best educator you can be—wherever you want to work.
3. What are the conditions for success when framing up a program like yours?
The number of member districts has grown because of the expertise of human resource professionals and better resources, such as the Ohio Human Capital Resource Center. This gives us tools and a support base, as well as networking options that we can use to share our information across Ohio.
Three things I would suggest are as follows:
Stay informed
Continuously learn
Build strong relationships
Take advantage of professional development opportunities, including webinars and conferences. For example, CAMERA is offering our annual conference in October. We want to stay informed about current best practices, and we want to keep our people informed. Innovative strategies grow your own programs. And we also want to engage with colleges, universities, and high schools, so that we can better connect other people to our education profession.
The third thing I think it would do is cultivating relationships. And that goes along with the networking. I am the now the past chairperson for CAMERA and the current chairperson, Dr. JaTina Threat, is going to continue the strong relationships that have been built over the past 30 some years. We have to look to the long term. Fostering those relationships will develop supportive learning environments and help students—the most important people in this venture—to be motivated to succeed.
4. Looking back, is there anything that you would do differently?
One of our greatest things we didn’t do a great job of earlier is paying attention to data. We knew we wanted to hire people to better match the representation of our students. We’re doing the work to attract them, so why aren’t they coming?
New teachers like social media. We had to learn how to develop websites and share stories on our social media. We're still learning, and we're growing in that space. We also needed to listen more when we heard job seekers say, “This is what I need support with before I get a job. When I get the job, and after I get the job I need ongoing support from somebody outside my school district, because I might not feel that I can speak comfortably to people in my school district, because they're evaluating me.”
So we had to listen to what teachers need. The Human Capital Resource Center is a big help for that because it is organized and structured based on what we need and how we work.
5. What are the steps that other districts or groups of organizations could follow to create programs such as CAMERA?
I’d sum it up with these five priorities:
Conduct a needs assessment, and you can use the tools on this website to help.
Do a district-wide audit. What demographics are touching your educational needs? Form collaborative teams that are consistent, so that we can develop teams at the district level.
Talk to families, talk to students, and talk to community members to see exactly what type of teacher is a need in your district. Bring together key stakeholders in your community who are passionate about the profession, so that we can continue to develop and implement recruiting initiatives at the district level and bring them to our state.
Set clear objectives. Make sure that whatever your goals are, they're tied to your need, so that it's going to be something that is ongoing and changes and develops as time goes. But it's something that everyone is focused on with one vision.
Develop recruitment strategies. Maybe you don't have enough candidates to have a Grow Your Own program. Perhaps you can reach out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We have two HBCUs in Ohio, and we can tap the resources of their educational programs to make things happen. Let’s also work together collaboratively to make sure that if there's a need we can connect people.
Training is also important. When we offer students the support, we need to make sure that the professional development, mentorship, and evaluation are all there in a non-graded type of way. We need to support people without them having that fear of making a mistake and not getting the help they need to improve.
“Once we’ve heard from potential educators, we want to make sure that we give them the support and resources they need. So the only way we’re going to know that is if we ask them. And the ask is a little bit different than a singular discussion. It’s going to be surveys. It’s going to be data-driven. It’s going to be when you’re at the event to get immediate feedback.
Just like Marzano has suggested for students, we need to do the same with our potential educators because we want them to have the lifelong, wonderful experience that we have had in education.”
6. Any last thoughts to bring it all together?
All our efforts are driven towards making sure that we grow potential educators. So if there's something that people need, they have venues now to go to and ask for help. It’s our job to listen.
If you don't ask, we don't know, and that's the one suggestion I have. We're open and we're available, and we want you to be teachers.
