Education
Christopher Fields is rare in the teaching profession. He’s an African-American man, and he teaches sixth-grade English at East Lower School. According to the U.S. Department of Education, you'd have to stop by more than 50 classrooms in this country before you found one black male teacher. “We have a lot of African-American male students who – they need that interaction with a male,” Fields said. “Because they may not live in a two-parent home. So sometimes they just need that interaction. You know, they live at home with Mom, most of their teachers are female, and it’s just a refresher for them to see an African-American male.” The Albert Shanker Institute recently issued a report on the gap between teaching and student diversity in nine large American cities. The city with the largest gap was Philadelphia, with 86 percent students of color, and 31 percent teachers of color. That’s a gap of 55 percentage points. Had Rochester been included in the study, it would have ranked first,