An organization in Charlottesville and Albemarle County is breaking barriers in the classroom.
The African American Teaching Fellows program is on a mission to bring more minority teachers into area schools. Executive director Scott Googenheimer says within the last two years, all nine of the job seeking fellows have landed positions in Charlottesville or Albemarle schools.
Whitney Bullock spent Monday morning getting her kindergarten classroom ready at Stony Point Elementary. She is the only African American teacher there for the 2012-2013 school year. Bullock is a prime example for what the program strives to do. The organization says 2,000 teachers are employed in Charlottesville and Albemarle County school systems, but fewer than 150 are black.
"So this disparity, fewer than one in ten, means that a student may go through kindergarten or middle school or even high school without seeing an African American teacher," explained Googenheimer.
The fellowship has been in place since 2004. The program also focuses on retention. The director says it's important to give the fellows a network of veteran teachers to work with, so they are motivated to remain in the field.
