Rural schools have struggled to keep pace with diversifying populations. | Photo courtesy of John Reed at Unsplash
Rural schools have struggled to keep pace with diversifying populations. | Photo courtesy of John Reed at Unsplash
San Diego State University reports that rural California schools are suffering from an extreme shortage of bilingual educators as the number of English learners in the classroom continues to increase as a result of tightening immigration policies.
A collaborative project between San Diego State University's Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education (DLE), Feather River College and Butte County Office of Education, called Project Access, has been devised to address the issue by providing "emergency" educators with bilingual credentials in rapid yearlong online courses.
The hope is that the program will be able to effectively fill the needed positions as quickly as possible in order to provide proper instruction to English learners, who have begun shifting to rural areas in numbers not ever seen before.
This phenomenon has been attributed to the stringent immigration policies of the Trump administration, which has led to a larger number of immigrant workers opting to stay in the U.S. permanently instead of returning during the next working season.
“What we're doing here at DLE is growing our own teachers — particularly in the field of bilingual education,” Margarita Machado-Casas, professor and chair in DLE, said. “Project Access will provide teachers who are in the classroom on emergency credentials a pathway to come into our program. We hope to use this pilot project as a springboard to expand this further.”
Project Access will be supported by the California Community College Teacher Credentialing Partnership Pilot Program, which is slated to provide a $500,000 grant. The project is slated to support 20 educators in the Plumas County School District, an area where the number of English learners has markedly increased.
“A lot of rural communities are seeing a flux in their migrant populations, with lots of first-generation kids whose primary language is Spanish or Nahuatl or other native languages," Guillermo Castillo, senior director of future educator support for the Butte County Office of Education, said.
In many cases, the influx of English learners in rural areas leaves only one to two bilingual speakers when 40 to 50 qualified teachers are actually needed.
All program participants will receive a technology pack including a mobile WiFi hotspot, laptop and carrying case.
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