When Adriana Cervantes Gonzalez started attending California schools as a child, it was a state policy that required all English-learning students to become proficient within one year. It was time. That meant bilingual education was abolished in favor of English immersion.
As a kindergarten student who only spoke Spanish, Cervantes Gonzalez had a part-time bilingual assistant in his English-only classroom.
“She was only there two days a week.” prop 227 era“But on other days I always had a stomach ache,” Cervantes González recalls. “Because I knew that was the day Ms. Alcantara wouldn’t be in her classroom.”
Cervantes-Gonzalez currently serves as a program manager for the California Education Career Center. The center is a public agency tasked with increasing the pool of qualified teacher candidates in the Golden State. This includes bilingual teachers who are in high demand nationwide.
The need for bilingual education teachers is especially acute in seven states. According to the report, Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wisconsin are reporting shortages of bilingual teachers for the 2023-24 school year. federal data. Eighteen other states and the District of Columbia are struggling to find enough people to teach English as a second language.
Experts say the bilingual education teacher shortage in the United States is due to a lack of role models, the lack of access and affordability of higher education teacher training programs, and poor academic language proficiency among aspiring educators. Says. Learn how leaders at the California Teaching Career Center are taking steps to overcome these hurdles. This measure may also be effective in other states.
Where is growth occurring?
California and Texas have the largest numbers of English learners in public schools (perhaps unsurprising given their proximity to Mexico), but the states with the largest increases in school-age English learners are Primarily in states outside the Southwest. From 2000 to 2020, Delaware had the largest increase in the percentage of English learners, followed by Maryland and Virginia.
In 20 years, the number of states reporting a shortage of bilingual teachers has increased from seven to 11 states. The number of states reporting a shortage of second language teachers increased from 12 states to 28 states.
Among the top eight states with the highest growth rate of English language learners, Delaware, Maryland, Texas, Illinois, and Rhode Island will increase bilingual education teachers and English as a second language during the 2023-24 school year. Continued to report a shortage of teachers, or both.
What barriers remain?
With the number of English language learners and the need for bilingual teachers steadily increasing, what’s stopping us from having enough qualified teachers in bilingual classrooms?
Marvin Lopez is executive director of the California Education Career Center, which plans to launch a regional bilingual teacher training program in 2025. He says the challenges in increasing the pipeline of bilingual teachers are multifaceted.
In California, 56 percent López said public school students, many of whom are Latino, simply lacked role models. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the Golden State is home to more than 1 million English learners.
“For me, as an EL learner, having someone in the classroom who not only looks like me, but can empathize with and understand some of the barriers I’m experiencing, certainly has an impact on me. It gave me the courage to keep learning,” Lopez says of her experience growing up as an English language learner in California. [someone] It was easy to get close. ”
For bilingual Californians who are products of their “English-only” school days, a career path in bilingual education is an opportunity to reframe their dual language abilities as an advantage, Cervantes-Gonzalez says.
“We have many bilingual students who never imagined themselves becoming bilingual teachers. Bilingual education has the opportunity to expand the knowledge and assets that students have.” says Cervantes Gonzalez. as an opportunity rather than a barrier to apply their language in the school environment. ”
Professor Lopez said that while a traditional four-year degree may not be an economically viable path to a teaching career for some, the state’s history of focusing on English-only education makes it possible for Californians who are fluent in Spanish to He added that the population of the country is decreasing.Immersion in English was not compulsory. abolished It was located in California until 2016.
Geography is also challenging for potential bilingual educators. The center’s upcoming teacher training will be based in Tulare County, which makes up the southern portion of the state’s Central Valley region.According to the U.S. Census, about half of the 473,000 residents speak a language other than English at home. data, 67 percent are Hispanic. Cervantes-Gonzalez said the closest universities in the region are about 60 and 110 miles away, putting traditional four-year teaching degrees out of reach for people who can’t relocate.
“One of the challenges is access to those venues, so we [the residency] to the Central Valley,” Lopez said. “We developed these programs so that we can continue to grow that pipeline.”
The California Center on Teaching Careers’ bilingual training program combines career training classes and hands-on experience, with student-teachers participating in the year-long training course co-teaching with a mentor and gradually increasing their classroom responsibilities. Masu.
In addition to noble initiatives like bilingual teacher training programs, increasing the pipeline includes increasing support for potential teacher candidates, Cervantes Gonzalez said. That might mean helping potential residency students understand the application process or talking to high school students about becoming a teacher during career day.
“In the state of California we serve, there are still challenges in terms of educational attainment, so sharing how you can prepare to become a bilingual teacher is an important part of that.” I think there’s definitely an opportunity to alleviate this,” Cervantes-Gonzalez said. “The support that the Center offers candidates may not yet know it exists, so we reach out to them early on to do that. Toma en Pueblo; It takes a village. ”
