Recruit where? MTC

Q: Should MTC focus more on recruiting in Mississippi, in the South, or nationwide?
A: Nationwide.

Reason one: You will draw better applicants from a bigger pool.
If you want the best possible applicants, you need the biggest pool to choose from. Pretty self explanatory.

Reason two: Teachers coming from the south or Mississippi will bring inherently different perspectives to the classroom than teachers coming from the north, midwest, westcoast, southwest, alaska, anywhere. Of course, it depends on how you interpret the goal of MTC, but I feel that a fresh perspective, from the outside, can only be a benefit. When my students run through all the places that start with M where I might go home for Christmas - Manhattan, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut... I realize just how limited their perspectives of the wider world are.

When I was in high school, all of my teachers were from the northeast, except maybe Aase. At least, as far as I know. But I think I would have benefited from having teachers from other areas of the country. I know I did in college. Diversity is touted as being exceptionally important in education, and geography can be a good proxy for establishing a diversity of perspectives and past experiences.

Teachers from increasingly local levels (the south, Mississippi, the Delta) having the correspondingly increasing benefit of familiarity and cultural understanding. But the kids already have lots of teachers with that familiarity and background.

Reason Three: (The one that will get me in trouble)

MTC should recruit heavily outside of the south and Mississippi because it is important for MTC to recruit students from the best colleges and universities in the country, from those institutions that represent the very pinnacle of learning. Going to a good school does not make you a better teacher, but it certainly does not make you a worse one. I have realized that some of my ideas about education are more elitist than I ever thought, and this really disturbs me, in a lot of ways. I want some of my students to go to Harvard (or MIT, Yale, Stanford, Bowdoin, Middlebury, etc.). I've almost deleted this section three or four times now, because I worry that I'll offend someone. I have a very north-east-centric view of things, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had been taught be a more goegraphically diverse faculty during high school. But I think that MTC should continue to recruit from the very best colleges and universities in the country, where ever they are. Any recruiting policy that limited recruiting to the south would certainly eliminate many students from the institutions that are considered the flagbearers of higher education in this country, despite what the incensed regular viewers of ESPN's College Gameday might argue.

The cons:
1) A national recruiting policy is more expensive.
2) This is entirely speculative, but I imagine that the likelihood of an MTC teacher staying for a few extra years or for the long haul is inversely proportionate to the distance between Mississippi and that person's home. Ben has data on who is still here and who left and where they were from, and could probably actually tell me if this is true or not. But as my second year is moving along, I am already starting to feel incredibly guilty about leaving these kids. There is no way to do enough for these kids, and to walk away from them after just two years seems cruel. At the same time, there are the parts of me that urge me to leave in May - my sanity, my family, my memories of foliage and snow and the daydreams about the good life teaching somewhere where I don't have to deal with so many discipline issues, so many disorganizational issues. It's so important for teachers to stay more than two years. Maybe that's easier for teachers whose homes are a little closer to Misssissippi. If it is, this might outweigh all the reasons for recruiting nationwide.