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Schools Feel Brunt of Immigration; Bilingual Teachers Needed in Santa Fe

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By GABRIELA C. GUZMAN Journal Staff Writer

As the immigrant population grows in Santa Fe County, the public school system feels the brunt of that growth. Last year, the district ended the year with 2,706 students with limited English. This year, the number is closer to 3,639 -- a little less than 30 percent of the entire district population, according to district officials.

As the number of Spanish speaking students grows in Santa Fe, so does the need for bilingual teachers. Finding enough English- Spanish bilingual teachers at the opening of the school year has been a perennial problem.

As recently as last year, to meet the needs of Spanishspeaking students, the district

was pairing Spanish-speaking instructional aides with monolingual, English-speaking teachers. An explosion of Spanish- speaking kindergarteners last year at Csar Chavez Elementary School required such a pairing, for example.

But with the reemergence of an international program that brings teachers from Spain to New Mexico, as well as a similar program for teachers from Mexico, much of the district's need for English/ Spanish bilingual teachers is being met, at least for now.

Since 1997, teachers from Spain have been teaching in Santa Fe under the agreement between the United States, New Mexico and Spain. A total of 161 Spaniards have taught in New Mexico; this year, 15 Spanish citizens are teaching in New Mexico, with seven working in Santa Fe's south-side schools.

Last year, a similar agreement with Mexico paved the way for 13 Mexican teachers to work in New Mexico, including six in Santa Fe.

The state has about 3,200 teachers with bilingual qualifications, but only half percent of them were working in bilingual classrooms, according to the state's Public Education Department. This year, teachers from Spain are filling the gap, said Csar Chavez principal Therese Moulton.

In the long term, the district's plan is to grow its own bilingual instructors with district funds available for teachers to earn bilingual or ESL teaching licenses, say district officials.

Schools are also struggling to meet other needs of students and their families.

For as long as she's worked as a counselor at Csar Chavez Elizabeth Bunker says, a large number of families at the school have struggled to make ends meet financially.

But this year is like no other, she says -- rarely does a week pass without a mother approaching Bunker about not having enough food to feed her family over the weekend.

Feeding kids

While about half of the students at Csar Chavez are learning English, every student qualifies for a free breakfast and lunch, which is an indicator for poverty levels in the school's area. "It's not just this school, but we are hit hard," Bunker said. Families need food and other basic necessities. In the first week of school, all the supplies Bunker had stockpiled were handed out to students who lacked pencils, scissors and paper. Bunker just distributed 55 sweatshirts. "Soon we'll need coats," she said. Last year, the district's homeless program provided a free meal, art classes for students and workshops for parents as part of their Juntos los Jueves, or "Together on Thursdays" program at Csar Chavez. This year, the program expanded to Pion Elementary School, largely because of an increase of hungry families, says Gaile Herling, the director of the homeless program. A majority of the program's participants are immigrant families. "They are trading off paying bills for food," Herling says. "Students are not getting quite enough to eat." Another addition this year to the program is the offering of English-as-a-Second-Language for adults at Pion. Other schools are using their large Spanish speaking population to create innovative educational programs.

Native speakers

The 20 students in Carrie Ballester's first grade class at Agua Fria Elementary School are working on filling in sentences as a group.

"En la escuela aprendemos.."-- or Spanish for "In school we learn ..." -- is written on the projector.

Shantae, a petite girl with long blonde hair, suggests "hablar espaol" to complete the sentence. Ballester writes "espanol" on the projector and asks her students if the phrase

is correct. No, they reply -- she forgot the tilde in "espaol." Half of Ballester's students are native English speakers, like Shantae, and the other half of the class speaks Spanish. At Agua Fria last year more than 60 percent of students were learning English. Three years ago, a group of Agua Fria teachers began talking about a dual-language program, but initially, not enough parents were interested. Last year, however, the school began its program with kindergarteners, who are now first graders with Ballester. "It is a very exciting program. It's been successful in so many areas," said Ballester, who left a teaching position in California to be part of the dual-language program at Agua Fria. Not only is the program designed to make students eventually bilingual and bi-literate, it also promotes cultural awareness among Spanishspeaking students, native Hispanics and Anglo students, she said. Following the shortage of bilingual teachers, the district's other quandary is educating older students with limited English. Many have attended school only sporadically in their native countries, said recently retired district superintendent Gloria Rendn. "That is the biggest challenge. It's not just an issue of language, but of academics," Rendn said. But English-as-a-second- language teacher Virginia Gonzales Moench would not describe her students at Santa Fe High School as a lost cause. "It is possible to be a late starter and still have great opportunity," said Gonzales Moench. She recalled teaching students English in the late 1990s at Santa Fe High when all of them, regardless of level, were taught in the same class. When the students were placed in English-only classes, some of the teachers did not understand why the students struggled with completing their assignments. Many of her students eventually dropped out, Gonzales Moench said. But the school's effort at accommodating Spanish-speaking students has much improved - - this year her ESL classes were expanded to include three separate levels and more classes were offered to meet demand. Gonzales Moench uses a mixture of nursery rhymes, songs and worksheets to get her students to start speaking English. "Now we are making more accommodations, which is good. It's important we give them a chance," she said.

Source: Albuquerque Journal

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