teaching biology, physical science and world history this fall at Sacramento’ s John F. Kennedy High School, as one of the program ' s inaugural 11 candidates.
SCUSD officials know pipelines take years to develop a steady stream of teachers, which is why recruiting teachers from the Philippines became a solid short-term solution. But the 2016 Learning Policy Institute report A Coming Crisis in Teaching? notes that temporary tactics don’ t always work out.
“ Short-term solutions may temporarily curb the fear of empty classrooms, but, as we found, they can often exacerbate the problem over the long haul,” the authors wrote.“ For example, if teachers are hired without having been fully prepared, the much higher turnover rates that result are costly in terms of both dollars spent on the replacement process and decreases in student achievement in high-turnover schools.”
To prevent this from happening, SCUSD turned to Ligaya Avenida.
REPEATING HISTORY If all of this sounds familiar, that’ s because it is.
Back in the early 2000s, SCUSD was dealing with a teacher shortage and called on Avenida. She had been working in San Francisco, helping school districts fill vacancies with foreign recruits through a U. S. Department of State teacher-exchange
program. She aids recruits with the visa process and licensing, and finding housing. For three months, she helps them get acclimated to U. S. classrooms with accent reduction and classroom management workshops.
She made a name for herself, bringing in teachers to roughly 20 districts in need around the country. She helped SCUSD fill its math and science teacher vacancies back then, so the district reached out to her in San Mateo, where she now runs a recruitment firm called Avenida International Consultants.
In the Philippines, English is widely taught in schools, an official language, along with Tagalog. The country, which was governed by the U. S. before World War II, retains a similar school system, so teachers can easily transfer their credentials to the U. S., Avenida says. She also says Filipino teachers have a high work ethic and level of care that makes them ideal for students with special needs.
Not all districts go overseas. Over this past year, San Juan Unified has done major recruitment locally for special education teachers, attending job fairs at Chico State and Sac State, and hosting its own. The HR team hopes to increase recruitment efforts in the Bay Area, too. As of September, the district has about five vacancies for certified special education teachers, a moving target as positions are being filled on a daily basis, says Raj Rai, the district’ s communication
95 years of innovative
Greer Elementary School, Sacramento: Advancing collaborative design-build project delivery for K-12 schools in California. thoughtful design.
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