The Diversity Hiring Committee set up an open house event regarding teacher diversity, hoping to display the high school to potential educators of color on Tuesday, April 5 in the MLK room. This was a follow-up meeting at the high school campus to two previous meetings in December and March.

The goal of the meeting was to invite a variety of educators and have them familiarize themselves with the environment; they spoke with other teachers, department heads and followed students on a tour of the school.

Dr. Christopher Vick, African-American Latino Scholars Program director, said that the Diversity Hiring Committee aimed to give educators of color a look into the high school.

“It’s our continued efforts to hire and recruit and retain exceptional teachers of color. So we’re realizing again that folks can’t come to BHS if they don’t know how awesome it is and the best way to figure out how awesome a school is to bring them in,” Vick said.

According to English teacher Jenee Ramos, there was incredible time and effort that went into planning this event. The networking night at the Golden Temple in December began the process. The Diversity Hiring Committee decided to move their contacts to the high school with the hope that seeing the school and hearing what it has to offer from students would further encourage educators of color to seek out positions at the high school.

“We invited all of those same folks who came to the Golden Temple. We invited even more folks throughout the state and also throughout the country to come to the school,” Ramos said.

The Diversity and Hiring committee wanted to make the environment appealing and inviting so they had students lead tours around the school and give their perspective on the lack of teachers of color.

“One of the draws and appeals to prospective candidates is hearing from students and students want to say stuff. We couldn’t have students come to Golden Temple because there were other things happening, but this is your school,” Ramos said.

The main takeaways that the Diversity Hiring Committee, especially Ramos, wanted the guests to have are that the high school is a great environment to work in and that there is a need to diversify staff.

Headmaster Deborah Holman emphasized the effect of a diverse staff as she created this committee with Dr. Vick to make sure that the staff members can racially reflect the students.

“As BHS gets bigger, our staff has to match the demographic of our students,” Holman said. “There are absolutely outrageously talented educators of color in the Boston area and I want them to consider Brookline High School an awesome place to work with students.”

According to Ramos, there is something special about representing a number of different perspectives in our high school community.

“There’s something really beautiful and powerful about an education where you get to hear from all sides. The richness from the background that we bring to the content matter and to just our social interactions is very important,” Ramos said.