Supporting Bilingual and Minority Teachers

As the linguistic and ethnic diversity of schools across the country increases, the number of bilingual educators and teachers of color is on the decline (Lankard, 1994; Torres-Guzman & Goodwin, 1995). Nationally, minorities represent only 13.5 percent of the teacher workforce, but more than 30 percent of the student population (Lenhardt, 2000). According to Lankard (1994), "the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education has predicted that minority teachers will represent less than 5 percent of all U.S. teachers by the year 2000." This is already the case in the Northwest, where students of color represent more than 17 percent of the student population (Lenhardt, 2000). The ratio of minority students to teachers is expected to grow even wider as fewer people of color and speakers of other languages enter the field of education (Lankard, 1994; Torres-Guzman & Goodwin, 1995).

How can schools support, encourage, and retain bilingual and minority teachers? The first step, according to Lankard (1994), is to make "a cultural transformation within the institution," in which multiculturalism and diversity become not just values, but priorities: "Faculty diversity needs to be seen as crucial to the multicultural school environment" (Lankard, 1994). All students need to see successful adults from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds represented on the school staff. Students and teachers should also see that their home culture and language are valued at school.

Another step schools can take to better support minority and bilingual teachers is to ensure induction programs take into account teachers' prior experience, perspectives, and needs (Kestner, 1994). Probably the best way to do this is simply to ask new teachers to identify areas in which they most need and want support.

Induction and mentoring programs should also be developed as much as possible in relation to teachers' assignments (Kestner, 1994). Torres-Guzman (1996) suggests, for example, that new bilingual teachers fare best when they are assigned mentors who teach the same grade level, content area, and language of instruction. This allows for more specific "instructional talk" directly linked to bilingual teaching: when to use which language, how and when to test English-language learners, how to make curriculum more inclusive, etc. (Torres-Guzman, 1996). In cases when there are no experienced bilingual teachers available to mentor novices, Torres-Guzman recommends developing more "dyadic" mentoring relationships, in which non-bilingual veteran teachers can learn from their bilingual mentees about language acquisition and strategies for working with English-language learners.

Other areas in which bilingual teachers may need additional support include locating bilingual teaching materials, identifying appropriate language assessment tools, and dealing with "conflicting philosophies" about bilingual education in the school and community (Sosa & Gonzales, 1993).