Marwa Elmasry | Teaching Arabic in high school
My mother is a teacher. She is a wholehearted teacher. I grew up seeing her face light up with joy every time her students came up to her on the street: ‘Oh, hi, Miss, do you remember me? I was…
Does teaching run in families?
Research suggests that teaching can run in families. Studies show that children of teachers are more likely to become teachers themselves. For example, research by Jacinto and Gershenson found that children whose mothers were teachers were nine percentage points more likely to enter the profession compared to those whose mothers were not. This effect was particularly strong among daughters and Latinx families, but was present across various demographic groups. The influence also extends to fathers, with some evidence suggesting an even greater effect among sons when the father is a teacher.
This intergenerational transmission of teaching appears to be more pronounced than in related fields like counseling or social work, indicating a strong familial influence in the teaching profession. These findings may help explain demographic trends in the teaching workforce, such as the underrepresentation of Black males, and open up avenues for further research on how family background shapes career choices in education.
Sources:
MDPI study on teacher recruitment
Research on familial influence in teaching from Kappan Online
“Teaching runs in my family.”
Explore the blog posts below to read and watch interviews where teachers talk about a family member, such as a parent or grandparent, who was a teacher.
Khalid Birdsong | “You can leave education and come back into it”
At first, I didn't want to be a teacher. I come from teachers. My mother's a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher — on my mother's side, there are teachers all the way back to slavery. I grew up in…
Brown Deer High School | 3 art teachers share their stories
Three art teachers from Brown Deer High School in Brown Deer, Wisconsin share their perspectives on teaching and learning.
Kritika Srinivasan | Behavior and bearded dragons
My mom came to the U.S. from India. She got a scholarship to do her PhD in French at UCLA, and then she adopted me from India when I was six months old. It was a huge family occasion —…
Sean Bui | “I left law and became a teacher”
For the majority of my life, I was convinced that my road ended with me becoming an attorney. My family set the value that attorney was the route to go, and I thought I was pretty good at public speaking…
Lupe Ramirez | “I am, beyond words, grateful to be a teacher right now”
It's hard to view my career in stories. Maybe it's not even my story. Maybe it’s the story of my dad. I grew up in South Chicago. My dad was a preschool teacher. And everywhere we went, it was like, ‘El maestro, el maestro!’ And so that made me a celebrity by extension: la hija del maestro.
Pam Gresser | Love, logic, and finding your marigold
Teaching runs in my family. The bell was my grandma’s. She was the last teacher at a one room schoolhouse in Cold Spring, Wisconsin. Because she was the last teacher, they gave that bell to her. She wrote on that card that both her mother and her aunt also taught in that school.
Elliott Hile | “Teachers are in the business of people”
I was the kid who was under the table with a fireman's helmet on, covering his ears because he didn't understand what people were saying. I would get frustrated all the time because I didn't understand multiple syllable words. So in elementary school, I was diagnosed with dyslexia.
Ja’Rahn Leveston | Transforming students through the arts
My mom taught for 30 years. And after I went to grad school she said, ‘Why don't you get some experience in the city schools?’ I did it, and I haven't left. You get really attached to the work and the students, especially once you see them meet the standards that you help them set for themselves.