Lack of Latino teachers felt in Sonoma County
Plucky and high-spirited, Alma Chavez traveled a rocky passage through school. From Bellevue Elementary School to Lawrence Cook Middle School, through Elsie Allen, Nueva Vista and Ridgway high schools, she struggled. She graduated, proud and relieved, from the Santa Rosa alternative Youth Connections high school in November.
For most of that time, Chavez was out of sync, she said, with most of her teachers. She felt many did not get her - a Latina who lived in a tough neighborhood with parents who spoke little English.
The U.S.-born daughter of Mexican immigrants said the “handful” of Latino teachers she did have, better understood her, illustrating how she might have benefited if she’d had more
“They understood my reasons to why I didn’t go to school that day, or why I didn’t have the motivation, because my parents were too concerned about the bills getting paid or what we were going to eat,” said Chavez, 20, now an aide in a home for developmentally disabled people.
“Latino teachers took the time to call my parents,” said Chavez, estimating she had no more than five. “To ask what was going on and honestly understand, due to their own experience.”
Of Sonoma County’s 71,096 public school students, 45 percent are Latino. But in a disparity that educators and students say can be problematic, just 6 percent of the county’s teachers are Latino.
“We do know it’s important to have a representative population of teachers in the classroom,” said Carlos Ayala, dean of the Sonoma State University School of Education.
“In this way, students can see themselves as being academic, as part of the college or career-going group, because they have role models in place to support them,” Ayala said.
That resonates with Andres Correa, who often struggled through Piner High School and then Elsie Allen High without much sense that he could go further.
“It would probably have motivated me a lot to see that someone of my culture or who looks like me is able to go to college and that they accomplished their dreams,” said Correa, 21.
He said he found inspiration from a Latino Spanish teacher at Piner who helped him find new energy for school, and from a white teacher at Elsie Allen who did the same, convincing him he could get a higher education. He graduated on time from Elsie Allen in 2012.
“The teacher doesn’t have to be Latino in order for a person to relate to them, but it does help because then you can see that there’s someone that looks like you that’s made it in life,” said Correa, who works as a youth health educator and is studying to be an emergency medical technician.
“That’s one of the things that made me want to go into education. I know I’m not the only kid who grew up with those concerns,” said Jenny Cavins. A Latina teacher at the Spanish-English dual immersion Flowery School in Agua Caliente, Cavins saw several friends drop out for reasons she believes had to do with an absence of Latino teachers. Though she did well, with a lot of support from her parents, she felt the lack, too, growing up in Glenn County, she said.
“At times, it was discouraging,” she said.
Out of 3,902 kindergarten-through- 12th-grade teachers in the county, 235 are Latino, though there are 31,104 Latino students. In Santa Rosa City Schools, the county’s largest school district, 66 out of 856 teachers are Latino, or 8 percent; 8,277 of its 16,710 students are Latino, just under 50 percent. The data are from the state education department.
“There’s a need for us to do more,” said Jason Lea, the Santa Rosa district’s assistant superintendent for human resources.
A teacher’s ethnicity isn’t a substitute for quality, he said. But with the large number of Latino students in Santa Rosa schools - 25 percent are learning English; 15 percent of Latino students in the 2013-2014 class dropped out - it clearly matters, he said.
“The key really to helping kids at risk, regardless of whether it’s socioeconomic, first-generation or whatever, is really relationships. That goes beyond ethnicity - and most of our teachers do that very well, establishing strong relationships. That and solid direct instruction is the most impactful thing that can happen,” Lea said. “But do we need more Latino teachers? Heck, yeah, we do.”
When he started kindergarten in the small town of Lamont, south of Bakersfield, Ricardo Alcala spoke no English. His teacher, whom he recalls as elderly and white, changed his name, writing “Ricky” on his name tag.
It stayed with him for some two decades. Alcala, a Spanish teacher and wrestling coach at Elsie Allen, is just now reclaiming the name given him by his parents, immigrant farmworkers from Mexico,
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