A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Model Strategies in Bilingual Education: Professional Development - 1995

Latino Teacher Project

University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California

Goals and Context

South Central Los Angeles has the highest concentration of students with limited English proficiency in the United States. Until recently, its population consisted mostly of African Americans. However, as an area with powerful appeal to newcomers to Los Angeles, South Central has experienced many demographic changes, and the latest brought an influx of families whose primary language was Spanish. Schools prepared to teach native-born, English-speaking students began to enroll increasing numbers of students with limited English proficiency. Paraprofessionals originally hired from the community to provide a bridge between home and school discovered they were unable to serve that purpose because of language barriers. Capitalizing on the varied resources such children brought to school and adding English to their language repertoire demanded pedagogical competencies different from those of existing professional and paraprofessional staff. Tenured staff began to transfer to neighborhoods with more familiar school situations, which added organizational instability to the challenges posed by demographic change. In response to these changes, the University of Southern California (USC) collaborated with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and local teacher education institutions to launch the Latino Teacher Project (LTP), a coordinated campaign to recruit and train new teachers with the skills and experience required to promote student success in South Central.

The goal of the project is to increase the number of bilingual teachers by creating a career track for Latino teaching assistants (TAs).¹ By providing financial, social, and academic support to aspiring teachers, LTP ensures that they will complete their professional preparation programs successfully and secure employment as teachers. LAUSD employs about 17,000 paraprofessionals, and those who work closely with them estimate that a significant proportion would be effective teachers if they completed their training.

Almost 40 percent of LA's students have limited English proficiency (LEP), and most of these are Hispanic, although more than 80 languages are represented in the group.

¹LAUSD employs paraprofessionals in two tracks: "TA" slots provide three hours of work daily for students who are concurrently enrolled in at least nine quarter hours or 12 semester hours of college courses leading to a degree. Full-time teacher aides receive full benefits and are not expected to be in degree programs.

Project Description

Advisory board. A widely representative advisory board shares in project decisionmaking and provides substantial support for participants. Organizations that sit on the board include central and regional offices of LAUSD; Los Angeles County Office of Education; USC; California State University (CSU) campuses at Dominguez Hills and Los Angeles; the Tom?s Rivera Center; United Teachers Los Angeles; and the Los Angeles City and County Employees Union, Local 99 (representing the TAs). The universities are the primary bilingual teacher educators in the region, and all three have Title VII programs that extend the potential reach of LTP's influence. At monthly meetings, this board offers guidance to the project director, plans activities that respond to new developments in the school system, and makes ad hoc arrangements that support individual participants. Because the economic and political situation in the district has been so fragile, this group maintains the coherence of participants' experience by providing hands-on assistance.

Participants. The project targets bilingual Latino teaching assistants in their sophomore, junior, senior, or postbaccalaureate years of teacher preparation programs. To maintain eligibility in the project and meet California certification requirements, participants must have a GPA that places them in the top half of their college cohort (usually, about 2.7 on a four-point scale) and make steady progress toward program completion. Applicants who live and work in the South Central area and who are fluently bilingual receive priority.

Recruitment activities. Initial recruiting activities included inviting all bilingual TAs working in South Central schools to an informational meeting. About 500 attended this meeting, and more than 200 applied for the 50 slots available in the first year. Several factors weighed in the selection of candidates. Among them were recommendations from principals and others in their schools, academic records, and the availability of suitable mentor teachers. The goal of recruitment was to identify applicants who were already fluently bilingual and most likely to achieve their ambition to become bilingual teachers in LA if they had the resources offered by the project.

Co-curricular events. Participants are formally enrolled in teacher preparation programs outside the project, at USC or one of the CSU campuses. These programs are similar in that all of them specifically address state certification requirements, but they operate outside the domain of the project. The project itself focuses on creating a professional climate and network of resources that enable candidates to complete their training and earn certification as soon as possible, meeting high standards of professional achievement. The project provides four kinds of help, based on initial research about the obstacles to completion that prospective teachers face. First, it gives each participant a $500 stipend twice a year to help offset the costs of school enrollment. They may use the stipend to pay tuition, books, transportation, childcare, or any other expenses incurred because they both work and attend school.

Second, LTP builds social support by creating participant cohorts and sponsoring social gatherings for participants' families. Because participants are often the first in their families to attend college and many are women whose families expected them to make homemaking a career, LTP sponsors ceremonies and gatherings that show family and friends the value of the participants' work to the community. Participant cohorts study and complete projects together, and they often work in the same school. Such activities teach participants and their families how to work together to meet the rigorous demands of professional preparation.

Third, LTP arranges workshops to help participants prepare for benchmark tests and systems of advising to ensure smooth, efficient progress through the teacher education program. At workshops, students boost skills in Spanish and English literacy or math, practice test taking, and review procedures and timelines for certification. Each university offers workshops on different topics, according to availability of staff and other instructional support. Participants can also receive individual tutoring, sometimes provided by LTP colleagues who are paid for their work from project funds. Designated advisors, often members of the project's governing board, meet with students still enrolled in community colleges to make sure they take the right courses for speedy articulation to CSU or USC and with upper-class students or fifth-year certification candidates to make sure they stay on track. For instance, when budget cutbacks reduced course offerings and thereby restricted access to enrollment, the advisors helped students get into the necessary courses. If students enroll in a course before they have mastered prerequisites and their early work is inadequate to meet course demands, the advisors counsel them to withdraw before their failure affects their GPA. LTP students must reach the same standards of achievement as those required of all other teacher candidates--and for bilingual teachers, that standard includes demonstrating high levels of literacy in two languages--but through the project they are given assistance that underpins attainment of such standards.

Fourth, LTP creates a network of professional support that nurtures a well-developed sense of professional responsibility and ambition. Each participant has a mentor trained by the LA County Office of Education in the skills of mentoring, reimbursed $250 per semester for the work, and accorded the status of adjunct professor at USC with full faculty privileges. Mentors are carefully screened and monitored; if they fail to provide the agreed-upon supervision, they are speedily replaced. Mentors, participants, and principals attend special meetings and conferences together at LTP's expense, often either making presentations on project-related topics or listening to presentations by prominent Latino educators or community leaders. LTP has supported their attendance at local, state, and regional bilingual education conferences. Each school and participating organization makes its resources available to LTP candidates, which further emphasizes the importance of being successful in their training. Participants are encouraged to use computers, copying equipment, and telephones at their schools and at the USC project office to facilitate their work.

Funding. The Ford Foundation awarded LTP a three-year grant for $1.5 million, one of seven grants made to teacher recruiting projects around the country. In its first year, LTP opened 50 slots and in its second year an additional 50. Plans for the third year are to expand to new communities in LAUSD and perhaps to other districts. For the most part, the project does not offer direct support for tuition, but relies instead on the informal efforts of member institutions. At USC, for example, the Mexican American Alumni Association matches contributions made by others to a special scholarship fund. At the CSU campuses, LTP participants are encouraged to apply for Title VII grants, and LTP advisors make sure that qualified candidates receive funding whenever circumstances permit.

Project Outcomes

At the end of year two, virtually all participants in the initial phase of the project had made the expected progress toward completion of preparation programs. About 20 percent earned certificates. More than half of those in community colleges matriculated to four-year colleges. (More were eligible to transfer, but accepted advice from LTP mentors to pick up more courses at the cheaper community college rate.) Feedback from participants indicates that, as a result of LTP activities, they receive more support from their families, better guidance on course-taking, more respect on the job, and more stimulating professional experiences. One administrator suggested one indicator of success is that other districts are raiding the project for new hires. The long-term project evaluation plan calls for measuring the rates of retention in the program, passing the certification qualifying examinations, graduation, professional employment, and principals' approval of graduates in their first years of teaching. LTP personnel have completed a survey of 15,000 Los Angeles-area TAs to create a data base to facilitate comparison of LTP participants with others.

Lessons from Experience

The Ford Foundation made the grant to USC, but it soon became apparent that the project's goal would be better served by involving more players from the teacher education community. Representatives of two CSU campuses and other organizations that are sometimes at odds with one another over labor relations or other turf issues "leave their swords at the door"--as one board member put it--and collaborate productively to keep the project running smoothly. Although policies made at the district or institutional level do affect practice, providing timely responses to dilemmas that face individual students cannot be ensured only by policy. The advisory board representatives use their influence to find suitable placements for participants, work with principals, supervise mentor teachers, and in dozens of other ways insulate participants from the most disruptive aspects of the district's current instability.

Project planners originally targeted sophomores, junior, seniors, and postbaccalaureate certification students already enrolled in community college or university programs for the project. However, a review of the applicants' credentials persuaded them to lower the entry point because they discovered that some promising applicants had not yet attained sophomore status.

Finding and keeping mentor teachers has turned out to be a complex enterprise. First, the shortage of bilingual teachers in South Central is severe--there are not many to choose from. Second, LTP teacher education institutions try to select only those teachers who model approaches consistent with those advocated in the preparation programs. This again limits the pool. Third, recognizing the influence the school context will have over candidates' professional development, LTP tries to involve schools that are already engaged in creating stimulating professional climates. It is difficult to find TA placements that have all three conditions. Once mentors are identified, trainers from LA County provide them, their TAs, and their principals with "Developing a Partnership" workshops to create a solid foundation for collaboration. Despite LTP's careful screening and training, some mentors drop out, formally or informally, leaving candidates without adequate supervision. The LTP advisory board takes the mentoring component seriously; if mentors fail to improve their performance after further coaching by principals and university staff, they are replaced, and the recruiting cycle begins anew. Such conditions are tests of cooperativeness that advisory board members have learned to pass: they use their collective knowledge to solve each problem, relying less on formal agreements than on accepting each other's good faith--a reliance that has proved so far to be well placed.
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[Funds of Knowledge for Teaching]

[Project Adelante]