Thread: Of great import: bilingual teachers

Feb. 21, 2007, 1:17AM

Texas schools increasingly recruit in Mexico, other nations to meet language demands

MONTERREY, MEXICO — At the onset, there's a mad rush to be the first in line to talk to the school recruiters. Within seconds, the candidates, looking more like bankers in their suits than elementary educators, anxiously await their turn.

Tables with pencils and stress balls from school districts across Texas flank the walls of the hotel ballroom in Monterrey, and maps show where the districts are located.

Location doesn't matter much to the 225 lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects and teachers who have been preparing online and in classrooms throughout Mexico to become bilingual teachers in Texas. Most say they'll work for whichever district north of the Rio Grande hires them.

With the number of Texas students requiring bilingual education at an all-time high, school districts in the state are increasingly attending job fairs like this one in Monterrey to recruit from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.

Liliana Gonzalez is confident as she works the room. She's fluent in English, having studied in the United States and Canada, and she has passed the required Texas certification exam, perhaps the hurdle consuming most of these candidates.

During her minute-long chat with each recruiter, Gonzalez talks about how her marketing degree and experience working for the automotive industry in her hometown of Saltillo will translate to a Texas classroom. The Bastrop, Giddings and Conroe school districts invite her to a full interview the next day.

"I'm taking advantage of the fact that I'm bilingual and the opportunity in the United States is to grow in your quality of life but also contribute to the quality of life of the Hispanics that are there," says Gonzalez, who accepts an offer to teach in Conroe next fall.

She's just one of 162 applicants hired by the 20-plus Texas school districts and charter schools at the fair.

The scene in Monterrey is a far cry from what Texas public school recruiters face at state job fairs.

Despite offers of stipends, signing bonuses and tuition reimbursement to recruits from the U.S., districts struggle to fill bilingual teacher vacancies largely because of too few qualified applicants, they say.

During the 2005-06 school year, 711,237 students in Texas were classified as having limited English-speaking skills.

"We are finding ourselves having to go beyond our walls and come internationally," said Brenda Lozano, the Cypress-Fairbanks school district's assistant director of professional staffing. She hired 10 bilingual teachers at the Monterrey job fair this month.

Lozano said her district only recruits internationally from this program, run by the Region IV Education Service Center, which serves 54 school districts in the greater Houston area. Lozano said 86 percent of the 43 teachers hired in recent years are still there.

"It's hard when I go to El Paso or down to the Valley because (certified bilingual teachers) want to stay there," said Henry Espinosa, a recruiter for the Galena Park school district. "When we can go to Monterrey, our chances for hiring have increased because they're wanting to come here."

Once hired, the candidates apply for a temporary work visa for professionals. Many later apply for residency, a process that can take years. Some districts, including Alief, entice recruits by offering to sponsor their residency application.

The transition can be tough as they must assimilate to a new country and education system quickly, Espinosa said. Moving expenses are high, and then there's the $4,600 the candidates pay for their alternative certification training and visa preparation.

But recruiting internationally gives districts another option for hiring bilingual teachers — and helps get the best teachers, recruiters said.

"We all know that in the United States the Hispanic population is increasing, so the critical shortage for bilingual teachers will be there," said Arnold Zuazua, head of bilingual teacher recruitment for the Houston Independent School District — which has recruited 47 teachers from the Mexico program in the past decade.


'Very high pay increase'
It was a year ago that 27-year-old Carlos Antonio Sanchez first heard a radio ad in Puebla, Mexico, announcing that Texas public schools were looking for professionals willing to become bilingual teachers.

Sanchez, an architect with a wife and a toddler, had never considered moving to the United States, but he liked the idea of helping children from his country by teaching them in U.S. schools, he said. Money was also a factor.

It's "a very high pay increase, because as you know, here in Mexico economic conditions are hard," said Sanchez, who landed a job with Spring Branch.

The Mexico recruiting initiative started in 1992 as a small program with a handful of candidates in Guadalajara, but over the last decade interest has spread throughout Mexico and Texas, simultaneously. Preparation classes are available in at least 15 cities in Mexico, including Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Puebla, Tampico, Morelia, Tijuana and Veracruz. There are plans to expand next year.

Ads for the program appear throughout Mexico in newspapers and are broadcast on television and radio.

The certification requirements are the same as for anyone who goes through a U.S.-based teacher certification program.

Cecilia Cerdan, the 2006 national Bilingual Teacher of the Year who was hired by Alief through the Region IV program in 1998, said having a common culture — and connection — with the students they're teaching can have a major impact on student performance.

"As a bilingual teacher you welcome them to the new language and to the new country because you share the same culture, the same language and you need to address first their physical and emotional needs in order for them to be prepared for the academics," said Cerdan, who is a reading interventionist at Youens Elementary in Alief.


What the law says
State law mandates that Texas public schools with 20 or more non-English-speaking students at the same grade level across the district must offer bilingual education.

There are 16,322 certified bilingual educators in the state, but Texas Education Agency officials have no data to show how many teachers in bilingual classrooms lack certification.

Some districts, including Cypress-Fairbanks and Alief, only recruit internationally through Mexico's program, while others cast a wider net.

The Houston ISD has recruited about 330 teachers during the last nine years from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, China and the Philippines, among others, to fill vacancies in the bilingual program and in other areas where there are critical shortages, such as science, math and special education.

Bilingual teachers hired by HISD get a $3,000 stipend, and in the past, certified bilingual hires received $6,000 sign-on bonuses.

Houston ISD has recruited 47 teachers from Region IV's Mexico program during the past six years but did not attend this year's fair. Thirty-three are still with the district.

HISD's payroll has 2,110 bilingual certified teachers.

Recruiting abroad has its own challenges. In the mid-1990s, HISD's alternative certification program for bilingual teachers came under fire when a report found that several teachers recruited from Mexico had fraudulent transcripts, with some speaking little or no English.

That program has since undergone a leadership and policy overhaul. Prospective teachers are interviewed "strictly in English," Zuazua said.

"We want to hear what their English skills are like," Zuazua said. "If their proficiency is not there, our principals are not going to hire them."

cynthia.garza@chron.com

http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4568586.html

Like we don't have enough spanish speaking LEGAL citizens here in Texas, we have to import them??? Or is this another example of jobs Americans won't do?

Location doesn't matter much to the 225 lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects and teachers who have been preparing online and in classrooms throughout Mexico to become bilingual teachers in Texas. Most say they'll work for whichever district north of the Rio Grande hires them.

They must be making them quite an offer to go from a doctor to a teacher .
I don't know of too many lawyers who would care to become a teacher .

I guess they teach for a couple of weeks and then become citizens and natuarally the goverment will help them get their business started with all the other perks ofcourse