Leslie M. Gauna was warned early in her nearly 30-year career that bilingual education was not a viable long-term career option.
But today, the need for Spanish-speaking teachers in the United States is as strong as ever and varies by school district. in various places have a hard time hiring them fast enough.
The shortage of bilingual teachers is particularly counterintuitive in Texas. Gauna was her professor there and conducted a qualitative research study on what she called the “leaky Spanish bilingual education teacher pipeline.”inside paper, Gauna and his fellow researchers identified key life experiences that bilingual Latinx teachers said made their path to becoming an educator more difficult. Gauna is an associate professor of bilingual/ESL and multicultural education at the University of Houston-Clear Lake School of Education.
“The typical situation is that you speak Spanish at home and English at school, and that can sometimes be seen as de facto,” Gauna said. “[It’s] The unfortunate thing is that Spanish at home is not nurtured or improved, and by the time candidates want to take back the language and demonstrate proficiency in the language as required by the state, they Because it has been taken away. Really, the opportunity to continue developing the language is gone. ”
According to Spanish data, there are approximately 41.8 million Spanish speakers in the United States, making it the fifth largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. Instituto Cervantes.in texaswhere about 40 percent of its residents are Hispanic and nearly 1 million students in public schools learn English and speak Spanish at home.
Bilingual students in the Lone Star State could be considered a potential pool of future bilingual teachers, according to a research paper. So why is there a shortage of these educators? Through interviews with three bilingual teachers in training, Gauna discovered a series of potential obstacles that begin much earlier in life than when students declare their majors in college.
The two languages are not equally valued.
One of the “leakages” in the pipeline of bilingual students who could become bilingual teachers begins with how they are treated in elementary school, the paper said.
Interviewee “Esmeralda” immigrated with her family from Mexico and entered third grade in the United States, but was not placed in a program for English language learners. She recalls her first American teacher, who thought Esmeralda was pretending not to know English.
“When she called me and I answered in Spanish, she got so angry that she stopped everything and just screamed at me…speak in English!” Esmeralda told the researchers. “I don’t know how to say it in English.” [I thought]. Eventually she stopped contacting me. ”
The interviewee, “Oscar,” had the opposite problem. Despite growing up with his Spanish-speaking parents, Oscar eventually lost his proficiency in the language and decided to take Spanish classes in high school.
“During class, Oscar was the subject of derogatory comments from his teacher, citing his limited Spanish language proficiency despite his Spanish last name,” the researchers wrote. “He recalled how Oscar had given up on learning Spanish to deal with the embarrassment he had experienced so many times, telling himself, ‘From now on, it’s just English,’ and as a result, he barely passed the class. ”
Although Esmeralda and Oscar eventually mastered English and Spanish, their experience shows how both languages are not equally valued in school.
Educators who teach Spanish to children obviously need to be fluent in Spanish, which is a hurdle to increasing the number of bilingual teachers, she says.
However, Spanish reading, writing, and conversational literacy skills are not developed through K-12 schooling like English skills, even if children speak both languages when they begin school. . Instead, speaking Spanish is treated as a barrier to overcome, Gauna said, with schools trying to place students in all-English classes by third grade, when standardized tests begin.
This means that bilingual teacher candidates have the added burden of becoming fluent in Spanish on top of doing the same work as their colleagues.
To combat this, researchers recommend teaching students to read, write, and speak fluently in both English and Spanish, rather than transitioning them to English-only classes as soon as possible. That’s because “becoming proficient in English at the cost of losing Spanish would create a major drain on the bilingual teacher pipeline,” the paper said.
Gauna says the education system also needs to affirm bilingualism, as students often feel like neither language is good enough for them. Students may say things like, “My Spanish isn’t good enough for my parents, and when I speak English, I have an accent.”
Gauna says she wants her students to feel that they have assets, that they have something to be proud of, and that they have nothing to hide.
Other cracks in the pipeline
All three interviewees reported hearing negative messages about the university from their families. Esmeralda’s entrepreneurial family couldn’t understand why she would pursue what seemed like a low-paying college major like her education. Meanwhile, Oscar’s family encouraged him to pursue a career instead of university. Interviewee “Marlene” was unusual among her American-born cousins for her dedication to her schoolwork, which they considered a waste of time.
Those surveyed in the report said they felt they did not receive adequate support in pursuing bilingual qualifications after attending a teacher preparation program. Esmeralda said she felt pressured to teach in English in order to get good grades from the director, even though her students could not understand the lessons.
“because [the supervisor] I don’t speak Spanish. . .she [didn’t] “Pay as much attention as you would when observing someone in English,” she told researchers. “Then my [cooperating] My teacher said to me, “When the administrator comes to visit, please try to understand the main points in English.”had to choose [to speak Spanish to] Because the people most affected are the students. ”
Bilingual teacher candidates in Texas must take an intensive five-hour exam to demonstrate competency not only in the language but also in the pedagogy of teaching English language learners, Gauna said.
“In Texas, and throughout the United States, they are the only teacher candidates. They have to create lessons on the spot, on the fly, to demonstrate their proficiency in Spanish,” Gauna said. he says. A Texas law passed in 2023 will change the exam to focus on language acquisition over the next two years. “I think it responds to the cries of teacher educators like us who believe it is an unfair burden on candidates and also contributes to the shortage.” [bilingual] Educators. ”
a need that won’t go away
Even if universities don’t necessarily provide enough support for bilingual teacher candidates, there will still be interest in the qualification even if support isn’t provided, Gauna said.
Between graduating with a master’s degree and then returning to earn a Ph.D., she wondered how many bilingual, tenure-track faculty members were in the teaching program at her alma mater, the University of Houston Main Campus. I am reminiscing about how I got to zero.
Gauna said it was the students who kept the program alive.
“That’s because my students at the University of Maine came knocking on our door to get certified even though they weren’t tenure-track. [bilingual education] There are no more teachers,” Gauna says. “‘I want to help people like me’ was the most common phrase I heard and I must have said it over 100 times.”
It was these students, along with the data, that proved the naysayers of Gauna’s early career wrong, those who said bilingual education was a dangerous path.
“I wanted to make it clear that there is no such thing as an end to bilingual education,” Gauna says. “Even 200 years ago, we had bilingual education in this same state. We had German. We had Spanish. Bilingual education was important because it was necessary and because it was part of the language that we have. It will exist because it is.”
