In Highline Public Schools, the district has set an ambitious goal of graduating all students as bilingual by 2026.  The district is pursuing the ‘grow your own’ idea by helping instructional aids become teachers and guiding current students towards teaching careers, according to Neal Morton. Their primary purpose for this is to make it easier to find enough bilingual educators to teach students in multiple languages.  According to Morton, currently recruiters for such educators have to travel to job fairs across the country, sometimes even to Puerto Rico to find Spanish-and Vietnamese-speaking teachers to fill the classrooms in the districts growing dual language programs. Not only is this district determined to find educators, they are also willing to help bilingual instructional aids in completing their bachelors degree in order to become teachers because of the high demand for bilingual teachers within the district.

The district is also looking at other ways to help with their expanding bilingual program such as competing for a new state grant aimed to help them with recruitment, prepare and mentor bilingual high-school students to become future bilingual teachers and counselors.  The Washington Legislature also approved a bill for the district to help design and start the “grow-your-own” teacher academics for bilingual positions. The main focus for this program is to strengthen the school system within the community by educating those already within the system.  With the increase of English learners, about 45 percent of those teaching English learners were instructional aids which the district believes is setting kids up to fail because the instructional aids have not received proper training which further reinforces the need to help fund bachelor degrees for these aids.

The districts further stressed that it will still be difficult to receive more funding and that they will try and partner with other districts to apply for grants to help them in their ‘grow-you-own’ programs. Regardless, the district will continue to keep moving forward with different ways to help its growing English learner population.

See full article: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/as-schools-expand-dual-language-programs-districts-hope-bilingual-students-become-bilingual-teachers/