Becoming a Bilingual Teacher in Texas

1. Becoming a Bilingual Teacher in Texas compiled from SBEC documents and further described by Dr. Rita Deyoe-Chiullán based on professional experiences September 2007

2. Basic State Requirements for Bilingual Teachers in Texas • A. Have a Bachelor’s Degree from an Accredited College or University and • B. Complete Teacher Preparation from an Approved Program • This typically includes training that may include a range of experiences from 1. Limited to extensive coursework or training modules which may be delivered live or by Internet, 2. Limited to extensive observation and/or participation in schools, 3. Limited to extensive supervision and mentoring during student teaching and/or an internship period ranging from 5 weeks to 9 months or more, and 4. Success on Texas State-Mandated Tests • TExES 101 + 102 or TExES 103 (Bilingual Generalist EC-4) and Spanish TOPT and TExES 100 PPR EC-4 or TExES 160 PPR EC-12 • TExES 111 + 112 or TExES 119 (Bilingual Generalist 4-8)* and Spanish TOPT and TExES 110 PPR 4-8 or TExES 160 PPR EC-12

3. Basic State Requirements for Bilingual Teachers in Texas • A. Have a Bachelor’s Degree from an Accredited College or University and • C. Be Certified in Another State or Country with Comparable Requirements • With Comparable Testing (certain states, certain tests, comparable scores) Comparable Texas passing score on selected tests: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma. Comparable tests in the Praxis II series. • With National Board Certification (U.S.A.) National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Assessments (NBPTS) are accepted to meet certification testing requirements in Texas. • With Success on Texas State-Mandated Tests (if no equivalent testing) • TExES 101 + 102 or TExES 103 (Bilingual Generalist EC-4) and Spanish TOPT and TExES 100 PPR EC-4 or TExES 160 PPR EC-12 • TExES 111 + 112 or TExES 119 (Bilingual Generalist 4-8)* and Spanish TOPT and TExES 110 PPR 4-8 or TExES 160 PPR EC-12

4. Basic State Requirements for Bilingual Teachers in Texas • A. Have a Bachelor’s Degree from an Accredited College or University and • D. Be Certified in Texas for Other Grade Levels/Subjects • With Success on Texas State-Mandated Tests • TExES 101 + 102 or TExES 103 (Bilingual Generalist EC-4) and Spanish TOPT and TExES 100 PPR EC-4 or TExES 160 PPR EC-12 • TExES 111 + 112 or TExES 119 (Bilingual Generalist 4-8)* and Spanish TOPT and TExES 110 PPR 4-8 or TExES 160 PPR EC-12

5. Basic State Requirements for Bilingual Teachers in Texas • This outline makes clear that the only common denominator for virtually all new bilingual teacher candidates in Texas at this time (pending revision of the Spanish language test) is the requirement for success on Texas State-Mandated Certification Examinations in the areas of • Subject Matter Content • Pedagogy and Professional Responsibility • Bilingual Instruction • Oral Spanish Proficiency

6. In an ideal Bilingual Instructional setting, one would hope to have teachers who possessed the following characteristics and experiences: • Bilingual, Biliterate, Bicultural Proficiency in Spanish at the level of a university-educated native speaker who learned the language as a child, with all the relevant childhood songs, rhymes, games, tongue-twisters, parables, proverbs, traditions and cultural referents, and who was taught the language for academic purposes by teachers competent in the language and the appropriate content areas through at least the secondary level (Preparatory/High School).

7. In an ideal Bilingual Instructional setting, one would hope to have teachers who possessed the following characteristics and experiences: • Bilingual, Biliterate, Bicultural Proficiency in English at the level of a university-educated native speaker who learned the language as a child, with all the relevant childhood songs, rhymes, games, tongue-twisters, parables, proverbs, traditions and cultural referents, and who was taught the language for academic purposes by teachers competent in the language and the appropriate content areas through at least the secondary level (Preparatory/High School).

8. Who would have those qualifications? • Graduates of Two-way Dual Language International Schools perhaps, or those whose parents took them back and forth between countries every two years or so from ages 5-18 and/or required them to speak, read and write a second language proficiently at home. We have hardly enough of those to staff even one school!

9. Who ELSE would have those qualifications? • Candidates with ONE of the above sets of characteristics and adult usage at an academically competent level in the second language for purposes of general communication through listening, speaking, reading and writing for all purposes, but perhaps not to serve as a model of usage for second language learners. AND…

10. AND… • Teaching/learning contexts in which each teacher gives instruction primarily through his or her most academically proficient language would be needed.

11. AND… • Efforts would still be needed to encourage all teachers to continue maintaining and perfecting their knowledge of their strongest academic language while progressing toward mastery in the second language. • However, the chances of reasonable success in that endeavor and of providing high-quality models of language usage in both languages to all the students would be much greater than expecting all potential bilingual teachers to be balanced, academically proficient users of both languages

12. Nevertheless, • Current certification requirements in Texas do not support these options nor do they support the goals of having truly competent academic language models available for more than a few of the many students who need that support in order to grow enough academic language skills to succeed in school and in the global marketplace.

13. Some might argue that… • To become certified as a bilingual teacher in Texas at this time, it is not necessary to have demonstrated the capacity to teach children in any significant way under close enough supervision to ensure appropriate uses of the teacher’s and the children’s time in school.

14. One might also consider… Nor is it necessary to be able to speak, understand, read and write the children’s first language with sufficient proficiency • to provide an adequate model of the language for emulation • nor to be able to correct children’s usage • nor to enhance it with more advanced concepts in the child’s own language.

15. But one certainly would note that… • It is necessary for the teacher to learn specific test-taking attitudes, aptitudes, and problem-solving skills relevant to the particular multiple-choice tests required. Whatever very questionable research exists indicating a small correlation between scores on multiple-choice written teacher examinations and the scores of those teachers’ pupils on similar high-stakes tests may have more to do with compliance, obedience and perseverance than achieving increased academic knowledge and skills.

16. Perhaps… • teachers who tend to do well on de-contextualized simulations in multiple-choice formats are likely to value that which they do relatively well and may infuse their instruction with both those values and with relevant cues and strategies which enable their students to do likewise on their once-a-year day high-stakes performances.

17. One could argue that … • this is a very impoverished concept of education. • One could similarly argue that a system that evaluates both teachers and pupils on one-time performances, built on many layers of pre-testing, and re-testing must, of necessity, greatly limit the content that can be discovered and studied.

18. Consider this… • Olympic athletes rarely train for more than one or two sports and their performances are not useful beyond the setting in which they occur, except to secure advertising roles. • To prepare all students to only succeed in one language and in two subject matter areas on one type of test is a bit like preparing the whole nation for the high-jump when no one really requires those skills as long as ladders are available and we know how to use them.

19. Furthermore… • Very few of the students who survive the arduous test-prep to succeed on state-mandated examinations can read the inserts with medications and use reasoning and memory to determine whether they are experiencing life-threatening drug interactions. • How useful are all the high-stakes reading tests if we literally cannot read to save our lives?

20. One could further conclude that… • the continuing shameful drop-out statistics that plague all levels of education from middle school through graduate school and selectively eliminate certain groups more than others from academic pursuits through schooling merely reflect accurately how little is actually being taught and learned and how easily an active mind becomes restless for more verdant intellectual pursuits.

21. Toward a Taxonomy of Bilingual Teacher Preparation in Texas • Perhaps this would be better approached as a flowchart; however, a flowchart implies arriving at a destination or following specified recursive paths until success is achieved. That might be difficult to demonstrate in this case.

22. Types of Preparation and Their Arbitrarily Predicted Likely Outcomes

23. Undergraduate teacher preparation as a college major, including a variety of experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, tutor, and practice-teacher or intern. Presumed Strengths: • Direct observation of teachers, students and other school personnel interacting in real school contexts during the regular academic year. • Opportunities to “try-out” instructional plans, ideas, strategies, with corrective support and assistance. • Extended opportunities to form personal and professional relationships with professional educators. • Time to learn about different content areas and grade level curriculum and instruction issues. • Opportunities to improve knowledge and skills in language and literacy in both languages and in other content areas such as mathematics through multi-level and developmental courses.

24. Undergraduate teacher preparation as a college major, including a variety of experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, tutor, and practice-teacher or intern. Posited Weaknesses: • Limited work experience outside of education may limit opportunities to develop a broader understanding of other career paths one’s students may want to pursue. • The protective cocoon of the professional school can both nurture and limit the teacher in preparation. • The numerous required education courses may limit the depth to which academic content areas such as mathematics, science, history, language, literature and other areas are studied and learned. • There is a constant trade-off between making education courses relevant to the real world, sensitive to individual needs/differences, and academically rigorous without being arbitrary and excessive.

25. Graduate or Post-Baccalaureate teacher preparation as part of a Master of Arts in Teaching program, including some experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, tutor, and intern or practice-teacher. • Presumed Strengths: • Direct observation of teachers, students and other school personnel interacting in real school contexts during the regular academic year. • Opportunities to “try-out” instructional plans, ideas, strategies, with corrective support and assistance. • Extended opportunities to form personal and professional relationships with professional educators. • More time to learn about different content areas and grade level curriculum and instruction issues than some other routes, but less time in many cases than an undergraduate program due to expectations for development of graduate-level research interests, activities and skills. • Work experience outside of education may provide opportunities to develop a broader understanding of other career paths one’s students may want to pursue.

26. Graduate or Post-Baccalaureate teacher preparation as part of a Master of Arts in Teaching program, including some experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, tutor, and intern or practice-teacher. Posited Weaknesses: • The protective cocoon of the professional school can both nurture and limit the teacher in preparation, but this is less likely to be a concern at the graduate level. • The required education courses may limit the depth to which academic content in areas such as mathematics, science, history, language, literature and other areas are studied and learned. • A graduate education degree may include no further preparation in academic content areas to be taught beyond what may be contained in practice lessons and projects for methodology classes and may not require that those areas have been covered in the student’s previous studies. • There is a constant trade-off between making education courses relevant to the real world, sensitive to individual needs/differences, and academically rigorous without being arbitrary and excessive. • At the graduate level, the student is often presumed to possess oral proficiency and biliteracy in the languages of instruction and limited direct teaching of language and literacy usually occurs in graduate courses. • Supportive or remedial coursework in language, literacy and mathematics is rarely required for graduate students pursuing education degrees and while their grades may reflect deficiencies, particularly in writing skills in English, little is done to effectively increase basic knowledge and skills needed to serve as a good model of language usage and literacy in two languages and multiple content areas.

27. Post-Baccalaureate teacher preparation as a non-degree-seeking student in a College or University setting, very limited experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record intern, or rarely, a practice-teacher. Presumed Strengths: • Work experience outside of education may provide opportunities to develop a broader understanding of other career paths one’s students may want to pursue. • Social maturity gained while working in other professions may provide benefits in terms of understanding expectations of the workplace with regard to punctuality, reliability and responsibility.

28. Post-Baccalaureate teacher preparation as a non-degree-seeking student in a College or University setting, very limited experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record intern, or rarely, a practice-teacher. Posited Weaknesses: • Typically, only a hasty coverage of basic standards and expectations regarding classroom management, required duties of teachers, professional ethics, and a superficial explanation of lesson planning are provided. Even in College and University settings, the content is greatly reduced and far less is required in terms of student practice activities and projects than in degree-oriented courses. • Often the students in these training programs feel that they should not be required to do anything beyond attending required lectures to receive credit for training and some programs require little more than presence in the room for a majority of training sessions or courses. • There is little or no direct observation of teachers, students and other school personnel interacting beyond what is seen in one’s own classroom and that of one’s school-based mentor. • Most opportunities to “try-out” instructional plans, ideas, strategies, occur in one’s own classroom without corrective support and assistance from a more experienced or expert guide. • There are few opportunities to form personal and professional relationships with professional educators other than those who are members of one’s subject/grade-level team at a particular school campus. Sometimes supportive relationships with peers in the training cohort do develop. • Because most professional training and development regarding curriculum and instruction occurs within the one school campus and one school district where the intern-teacher is employed, teachers may have little opportunity to learn a variety of approaches and strategies that may be valid and useful for particular students and classes. • There is typically no expectation that one will increase one’s knowledge and skills in basic subject matter content, nor is there usually any attempt to discern if any deficiencies exist, unless they impact success on state-mandated certification tests.

29. Post-Baccalaureate Alternative Certification teacher preparation, including very limited experiences in public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record intern. Presumed Strengths: • Work experience outside of education may provide opportunities to develop a broader understanding of other career paths one’s students may want to pursue. • Social maturity gained while working in other professions may provide benefits in terms of understanding expectations of the workplace with regard to punctuality, reliability and responsibility.

30. Post-Baccalaureate Alternative Certification teacher preparation, including very limited experiences, if any, in public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record intern. Posited Weaknesses: • Typically, only a hasty coverage of basic standards and expectations regarding classroom management, required duties of teachers, professional ethics, and a superficial explanation of lesson planning are provided. • Often the students in these training programs feel that they should not be required to do anything beyond attending required lectures to receive credit for training and some programs require little more than presence in the room for a majority of training sessions. Some provide all training online and it is unclear whether there is any certainty all the online training modules were completed by the person seeking certification. • There is little or no direct observation of teachers, students and other school personnel interacting beyond what is seen in one’s own classroom and that of one’s school-based mentor after one begins teaching. • Most opportunities to “try-out” instructional plans, ideas, strategies, occur in one’s own classroom without corrective support and assistance from a more experienced or expert guide. • There are few opportunities to form personal and professional relationships with professional educators other than those who are members of one’s subject/grade-level team at a particular school campus after one begins teaching. Sometimes supportive relationships with peers in the training cohort do develop in programs where a large proportion of the training occurs in live group sessions. • Because most professional training and development regarding curriculum and instruction occurs within the one school campus and one school district where the intern-teacher is employed, teachers may have little opportunity to learn a variety of approaches and strategies that may be valid and useful for particular students and classes. • There is typically no expectation that one will increase one’s knowledge and skills in basic subject matter content, nor is there usually any attempt to discern if any deficiencies exist, unless they impact success on state-mandated certification tests. • Typically all training is conducted in English; no effort is made to assess/support language/literacy skills in the bilingual teacher’s other language beyond a brief orientation to the format of the TOPT test.

31. Out-of-State/Out-of-Country teacher certification, requires no experiences in local public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record, with a one-year probationary opportunity to meet full certification requirements. Presumed Strengths: • Previous teaching experience usually provides some basic notions of classroom management, instructional planning, and general duties of teachers, but the differences in student and parent expectations and attitudes can overwhelm even experienced teachers initially, especially if they previously taught a different grade level or subject matter content. • Social maturity gained while working as a teacher elsewhere may provide benefits in terms of understanding expectations of the workplace with regard to punctuality, reliability and responsibility; but they may also fail to prepare teachers for some local expectations that differ.

32. Out-of-State/Out-of-Country teacher certification, requires no experiences in local public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record, with a one-year probationary opportunity to meet full certification requirements. Posited Weaknesses: • Even veteran teachers usually are required to attend some district-mandated training for new teachers and teachers-new-to-the-district. However, experienced educators may be so offended at being sent to the same training as those who have never taught that they may take little benefit from induction sessions. • There is little or no direct observation of teachers, students and other school personnel interacting beyond what is seen in one’s own classroom and that of one’s school-based mentor after one begins teaching. Often the only opportunity for coaching or support occurs if one is perceived as sufficiently unsuccessful to merit being placed on a “growth plan” and provided non-voluntary support and supervision. • Most opportunities to “try-out” instructional plans, ideas, strategies, occur in one’s own classroom without corrective support and assistance from a more experienced or expert guide. • There are few opportunities to form personal and professional relationships with professional educators other than those who are members of one’s subject/grade-level team at a particular school campus after one begins teaching. • Because most professional training and development regarding curriculum and instruction occurs within the one school campus and one school district where the intern-teacher is employed, teachers may have little opportunity to learn a variety of approaches and strategies that may be valid and useful for particular students and classes. • There is typically no expectation that one will increase one’s knowledge and skills in basic subject matter content, nor is there usually any attempt to discern if any deficiencies exist, unless they impact success on state-mandated certification tests. • Typically all training is conducted in English and no effort is made to assess or support language and literacy development in the bilingual teacher’s other language. CONTINUED….

33. Out-of-State/Out-of-Country teacher certification, requires no experiences in local public and/or private schools as an observer, before becoming a teacher-of-record, with a one-year probationary opportunity to meet full certification requirements. Posited Weaknesses continued… • No coaching or test preparation assistance is typically provided unless one is part of a College or University-based certification program to add an endorsement as a bilingual teacher.* • Such programs were common routes to certification when coursework was required for all certificates and endorsements. Now certification solely on the basis of testing has become the dominant route for adding bilingual teaching endorsement to a teaching credential. • Post-baccalaureate bilingual endorsement programs have largely disappeared unless full tuition funding is provided by federal grants. When funding is available, they remain attractive options for certified teachers from other countries or states for whom the one-year limit on the time allowed to achieve success on all required testing as an out-of-country/out-of-state probationary teacher does not give sufficient time to achieve success on all the tests required. • Others who seek bilingual endorsement as an add-on to current generic certification are often those who lack full proficiency in the second language of instruction and even the most thorough and well-funded of 4 to 6 course endorsement options often experience difficulty in increasing proficiency to a level commensurate with the ability to teach effectively in the second language. The major benefit of such programs is sometimes that of involving teachers in graduate study with peers from other schools and districts and thus exposing them to a wider view of the world of teaching.

34. Bilingual Teachers Certified in Texas 2001/2-2005/6 Statewide by Certification Routes Over the past five years, of new bilingual teachers certified in Texas • 34% have come through standard University programs, • 55% have come through Alternative programs, • 4% have been certified by Examination and • 7% have come through Post-Baccalaureate programs. • If one presumes Post-Baccalaureate programs to have more similarities to University preparation than to Alternative programs, at most 40% of new bilingual teachers may have had academic professional preparation.

35. Questions that need to be asked… • What is the impact of these routes to bilingual teaching on the development of leadership among bilingual teachers in Texas? • What are some of the observed realities of our profession? • How are these realities related to the Posited Weaknesses of the most common routes to bilingual teacher certification?

36. PERCEIVED OUTCOMESBilingual teachers are placed in leadership roles much earlier in their careers than is usual for other teachers and they have fewer viable options to increase their expertise. Possible Causes: • Need for mentors for new AC bilingual teachers and cooperating teachers for student teachers. • Need for LPAC chairs to implement State mandates. • Need for Lead Teachers in grades where half or more of classrooms are bilingual. • Need for SILT/CILT committee members to represent the diverse types of classrooms represented on the school campus. • Need for SBDM committee members who can conduct meetings bilingually or interpret so bilingual parents can participate. • Need for other leadership roles to involve parents and community effectively in the school’s activities.

37. Issues: • More than half of the new bilingual teachers certified in the past four years have come through AC programs, thus their preparation as educators consists of their own seat-of-the-pants survival skills, augmented by school district staff development and, typically, very limited mentoring during their first year of teaching. • By their second or third year of teaching, novice bilingual teachers have often become mentors of first year AC bilingual teachers. They are chosen for this role in part because of a lack of other mentors with bilingual teaching experience and, at times, because their recent experience with AC program expectations is helpful in providing timely guidance to other new teachers.

38. Other Issues: • Limited opportunities are currently available to continue their professional preparation as specialized Bilingual Educators due to the diminishing number of graduate Bilingual Masters’ and Doctoral degree programs which receive federal tuition funding for bilingual teacher training/bilingual faculty development and the diminishing role taken by school districts in reimbursing teachers for graduate coursework directly relevant to their teaching assignments. • In some cases, bilingual teachers who pursue a higher level of professional preparation have no viable degree options other than to seek administrative certification and/or seek advanced degrees in Reading or specialties such as Counseling, Special Education or in generic Curriculum and Instruction programs where the bilingual graduate student becomes the expert on bilingual education rather than benefiting from the opportunity to learn from someone with genuine expertise in teaching bilingual students.

39. What changes need to occur to ameliorate the current situation of newly hatched teachers imprinting on the limited vision of those who hatched late yesterday afternoon and becoming similarly… • obsessed with parroting this year’s “best practice” words that are current in the particular school or district while • assiduously narrowing the focus of all instruction to point-by-point alignment with test-prep in TAKS format for this year’s high-stakes tests • and deliberately distilling instruction to meet the needs of the “bubble” students who have the potential to succeed with sufficient extra help while • largely neglecting the most able students other than giving them disciplinary referrals when their boredom-induced behavior impedes dedication to the golden mean of minimum test performance • over-referring special education students with mild learning difficulties • simply allowing inclusion students who are unlikely to be tested to exist in the classroom without a conscientious effort to teach them content or integrate them socially with their peers • placing responsibility for maintaining the child’s first language on the home and • generally electing to teach the least amount of content that is necessary for the tests?

40. Important Changes that Would Alter the Content and Context of the Education of Bilingual Pupils (and others) in Texas. • Replace reliance on the TAKS and newly minted End of Year exams with a variety of measures of student academic growth—a Value-Added Approach to the assessment of student and teacher success. This has been attempted before (in DISD about eight years ago, and currently to some degree) and in spite of some issues about which students to include as “counting”, it was a good way to see the extent to which a teacher was successful in causing ALL students to make measurable progress on both minimum competency mastery tests and normative measures with national norming samples. • Replace the Principal and Central Administration of Curriculum and Instruction as the sole authorities and sources of all direction with required teacher participation in all major curriculum and instruction decisions, and rotate service on such decision-making entities to ensure “buy-in” from all teachers and avoid the development of cliques and feudal mini-states.

41. Important Changes that Would Alter the Content and Context of the Education of Bilingual Pupils (and others) in Texas. • Require all teachers to observe their campus peers and peers in another school annually and to reflect on their learning from these observations in a public manner, via presentations, blogs, online school-wide discussion boards or similar means. In short, make an ongoing conversation about how to teach effectively accessible and necessary for all teachers, both veterans and newcomers. Structure released time to permit full day observations. • Reward effective mentoring both informally and with structured recognition but without tedious documentation that is never read but only stored. Make mentoring new teachers “from each according to his/her capacity to each according to his/her need” a contractual expectation, comparable to serving on school committees and implementing school improvement plans.

42. What changes should we be concerned about… which might diminish the relative successes we have achieved by continuing to expand access to bilingual teachers and bilingual developmental and dual-language instruction to more students in more schools in more districts in Texas? We cannot sleep at the wheel! • Remember California! Remember Arizona! Remember Massachusetts! • Study the resistance to English Only in Colorado and be vigilant!

43. Both strengthening teacher preparation requirements and lessening them have the potential to alter who is allowed or chosen to teach and what they will be prepared to do. • If a higher level of Spanish proficiency is required (as is needed for competent instruction through Spanish) so that newly certified bilingual teachers must demonstrate Spanish literacy skills, there is a strong potential for a backlash from teachers trying to learn Spanish as a second language and feeling shut out of employment opportunities. That is a small but significant group who need to be welcomed for having the right attitude and rewarded in some way for being better choices as ESL team members in dual language settings than those who demand to be stamped on the forehead by one test as competent to teach English language learners, with no expectation for further study or for any attempt to learn the languages of their pupils.

44. Both strengthening teacher preparation requirements and lessening them have the potential to alter who is allowed or chosen to teach and what they will be prepared to do. • If destructive legislation and/or rule-making further dilutes the requirements for bilingual certification or does not create two levels of bilingual teacher competency (one for those who can adequately use the language to communicate orally with students and parents in informal contexts and another for those who can effectively deliver instruction through Spanish in all content areas while developing academic language in their pupils’ native language), • paper qualifications will lead to placing officially certified bilingual teachers with minimal Spanish literacy in classrooms where they will fail to use Spanish for academic instruction in spite of the intended model of content delivery due to their inadequate command of academic content language. Others will teach in Spanish but will confuse the students with inconsistent language usage that does not clarify meaning nor build comprehension.

45. Both strengthening teacher preparation requirements and lessening them have the potential to alter who is allowed or chosen to teach and what they will be prepared to do. • Similarly, if we fail to use teachers’ linguistic strengths in dual language teaching teams which reward both teachers for continuing efforts to develop their academic and professional skills, it will lead to situations in which competent instructors in the students’ native languages will be castigated as “incompetent” due to their continuing struggles to master English usage and literacy at the level of a college-educated native speaker. • Envy and fear of job loss will propel this negative dynamic to an even greater degree than xenophobia, racism and ethnocentrism, which are also factors that may lead somebilingual teachers to assimilate to English-focused teaching or abandon the classroom for other professions or other roles, less because they are unfulfilled as teachers than because the school’s • work environment may become hostile toward them and their pupils.

46. Both strengthening teacher preparation requirements and lessening them have the potential to alter who is allowed or chosen to teach and what they will be prepared to do. • The current movement toward two-way dual language bilingual instruction has some additional political merit in that it offers “benefits” to non-bilingual parents and students for “allowing” bilingual learners to participate in the setting that has the most potential to support their total academic growth and success. • Properly organized and administered, two-way dual language instruction Allows English-speaking teachers who seek serious preparation as truly qualified ESL teachers and who make an effort to learn enough of the students’ language(s) to make parents more welcome in the schools to become sincere and effective partners with Academically competent native language teachers, who can provide the native language instruction needed to support optimal intellectual growth. In this context, great potential exists to improve schooling for all who receive it, all who deliver it and all who pay for it and benefit from our nation’s enhanced capacity to compete and contribute in a global society!