Rosa Ramirez, far left, teaches a preschool class at Gates Street Early Education Center in Los Angeles. Student Kevin Sanchez takes notes and Sonya Bertini, a bilingual special education teacher, works with a student at Vineland High School in New Jersey.
— MARIA COADY, associate professor, University of Florida
community and a swell of migrants from Central America in recent years. Many of those new arrivals are teens who came without their parents and have no recent history of attending school. Some of the parents work in the surrounding eggplant and cauliflower fields during the day. Some are highly transient, migrating with the seasons to wherever the work is. Like many districts in New Jersey, Vineland hosts a transitional bilingual program for students who arrive with limited English skills. This year, about 800 students were enrolled. They learn
their core academics in Spanish — often right next door to classes where the same content is taught in English — but they have time built into the day for speaking, reading and writing in English. Vineland’s program has been bolstered by JoAnne Negrin, supervisor of bilingual education. Since she was hired eight years ago, she made sure that all new textbook purchases were available in both Spanish and English, so students in the bilingual program could learn at the same pace as their English-speaking peers. Vineland’s English learners show some of the district’s highest academic improvement scores, Negrin says. Last year, the students met all of the targets outlined on state report cards. “People sometimes question, ‘How are students going to learn English if they spend the whole day learning in Spanish?’” Negrin says. “Well, our data shows that proficiency in literacy in the child’s first language is a very good indicator of how well that child is going to eventually learn English.” Other small victories are happening. Kevin Sanchez, 17, who arrived from the Dominican Republic last year with limited English, won first place in a regional science fair after investigating how windmills worked and building a model of one. Sanchez almost removed his entry from the fair when he learned that participants would be required to make an oral presentation to the judges. Encouraged by his bilingual science teacher, Sanchez enlisted a friend to
translate for him. “It felt really good that a student like me could win in a fair like that,” Sanchez says in Spanish.
BILINGUAL TEACHERS IN DEMAND Another major barrier to starting or expanding dual-language programs is the critical nationwide shortage of teachers who can speak and teach in Spanish and English. More than 30 states reported similar shortages in English as a Second Language teachers and world language teachers. As a result, more districts groom their bilingual teachers, either by helping staff achieve the necessary certifications or by encouraging former bilingual students to come back and teach. In Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, close to the U.S.-Mexico border, one district and a nearby university tried to bolster the pipeline of bilingual students becoming bilingual educators. The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District serves a nearly all-Latino population of 32,000 students. The district has long supported a dual-language, SpanishEnglish program in all of its elementary schools. Students can choose to continue in the bilingual program in high school. After students graduate, they can continue their bilingual studies in Spanish and English at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. The university added a minor in bilingual secondary education, says Janine Schall, chair of the bilingual and literacy studies department. The university can’t expand fast enough, Schall says. Would-be bilingual teachers often face daunting challenges such as affording the cost of their education and the paying for tests they are required to take to become certified. “We know that there’s a greater need for bilingual education teachers than we can meet right now,” Schall says. l — Jared Weber contributed to this story.
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