New strategy: Teaching nonteachers to teach

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

Before answering questions , they fall silent for a moment, searching for the right words in a language that is still foreign to them.

But as the pace of the conversation picks up, the answers come faster, the silences are briefer and soon there is a steady chatter in heavily accented, grammatically precise English.

The group includes an attorney, mechanical engineers, a corporate executive and teachers. They come from Egypt, the Philippines, Mexico, Iran, Russia, Argentina, Romania and Vietnam. Each has at least a college degree. All hope to become public school teachers in Clark County.

What they don't have yet are the English-language skills necessary to become teachers.

Instead, they work as support employees in the Clark County School District, either in an office staff position or as a classroom aide. And that's how they ended up in a conference room at Nevada State College on a Monday night, practicing their English and preparing for a new career.

The diverse group represents the first class of the college's MITT program: Multilingual Individuals Training to become Teachers. The district has invested nearly $14,000 in tuition and fees to send its employees back to school.

The project was the brainchild of George Ann Rice, who retired last year as the district's associate superintendent of human resources.

Faced with an ever-present shortage of teachers, the district is constantly recruiting from within its ranks. So it made sense to look for promising candidates among its support staff, and offer incentives and training to those whose English-language skills were lacking.

The district sent letters to all its support staff encouraging them to apply for the program and explaining the requirements: They had to be legal permanent residents of the United States, hold at least a bachelor's degree and want to move to the front of the classroom.

It's not an easy leap. After completing classes at Nevada State College, the students move on to the Alternative Route to Licensure track at UNLV, an accelerated training program for would-be teachers who have earned college degrees.

There were 80 attendees at the first informational meeting last spring, said Lori Navarrete, associate dean of the college's School of Education in Henderson. The list was cut to about 30 after applicants were screened for the minimum requirements, interviewed one-on-one and tested for basic knowledge of English.

The college's challenge was to develop classes that simultaneously improve the prospects' English-language skills while teaching them to be teachers.

"We work on their English proficiency while talking about No Child Left Behind or how to write a lesson plan," said Navarrete, who coordinates the program. "All of the English training is embedded in the content."

The students are required to complete online language lessons, 45 minutes each session, five days a week. That proved too much for a few students, who dropped out. At the other end of the spectrum, five students who had the strongest English skills at the outset have already moved on to UNLV. The remaining students are preparing to take the English-language proficiency test that will grant them entrance into the university program.

When asked how the MITT program might be improved, several of the students said a separate class where students can practice everyday English is needed.

There's only so much students can work on individually, said Marina Paredes, who practiced law in Mexico for five years before moving to the United States.

"We have jobs, have families, have kids," Paredes said. "This program's been good . I can communicate more clearly. But we need more classes, especially for conversation."

As of Oct. 3 the district's foreign students represented 143 countries, speaking 105 languages. Eighty-seven percent of those students speak Spanish, and the rest represent a cross-section that rivals a U.N. roundtable.

Ironically, once these students are proficient enough in English to become teachers they may find work using their native tongue. One of the students, Daisy Claros, a native of El Salvador, has spent five years as a classroom aide at J. Marlan Walker International Elementary School, where students spend half their day learning Spanish. School administrators told Claros a teaching job probably will be waiting for her when she finishes her training.

Maria Perez, who is a teaching assistant with the district, was a speech pathologist in Cuba, and she hopes to one day do the same work in Las Vegas. She has a first grader and fourth grader in Clark County schools, and her son is impatient for his mother to finish training.

"He says, 'Mom, when are you going to be a teacher at my school?' " Perez says. "He's proud of me."