Newsroom – California State University, Northridge

CSUN Receives $2 Million Federal Grant to Prepare Tomorrow’s Bilingual Teachers

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Sep. 22nd, 2011) ―

California State University, Northridge’s Michael D. Eisner College of Education has received a $2 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help students with an Asian-language background become bilingual teachers.

Last year, the college received a $3 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education for a similar project involving students with Spanish-language backgrounds.

“Politicians can say what they want about bilingual education,” said education professor Clara Park, who is coordinating both projects, “but the reality is we live in a global, multicultural economy and society. For us to succeed as a nation, for us to succeed as a state, we need to educate people who are comfortable working in multi-cultural environments.”

That means, she said, “we need teachers who can relate to and understand the backgrounds of the English-language learners in our schools. We also need teachers who our English-learning children can relate to. More than 50 percent of the students in our schools have Hispanic backgrounds and more than 11 percent have Asian backgrounds. If we are going to have citizens who are going to function comfortably in a multicultural, multilingual world, then we need teachers and public school leaders who can make that happen.”

Park said the latest U.S. Department of Education grant supports students with Asian-language backgrounds who are interested in becoming bilingual teachers as well as those students who are interested in earning a master’s degree in multicultural and multilingual education.

And, mostly importantly to Park, the grant will support an Asian Bilingual Teacher Education Program Consortium that will connect the education colleges at 11 California State University campuses so that students can take classes from faculty across the state utilizing video conferencing and other technology. Those campuses include Northridge, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pomona, Sacramento, Fullerton, Fresno, San Diego, San Francisco, Stanislaus and San Jose.

“For example, Los Angeles does not have a large Hmong community, but Sacramento does,” Park said. “Students here at Northridge could take classes, using technology like Moodle, Elluminate, Skype or video conferencing, from a professor at Cal State Sacramento without having to hop on a plane to do it.”

Park pointed out that many countries outside the United States respect and honor those who go into the teaching profession.

“It seems like every other country but the United States reveres its teachers,” she said. “In Asian countries, they command the highest respect. The same is true in Latin American countries. But here, because of how teachers are treated, a lot of Asian parents would rather their children be doctors or lawyers.

“That’s one of the reasons why I applied for this grant,” Park said. “I want students with Asian language backgrounds to know that they are needed and that we are here to support them.”

 

 

 

 

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