CSU focuses on teaching bilingual Asian teachers

By Carrie Porche Jones, On-Line Forty-Niner

Wednesday, October 28, 1998

To meet the need for more teachers competent in Asian languages, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing approved a six California State University consortium project - which will include Cal State Long Beach - to train bilingual teachers instructing in grades K-12 .

As lead campus, CSULB will be responsible for coordinating recruitment, retention and program development.

Under the CSU Asian Bilingual Cross Culture Language and Academic Development Consortium, which will begin in the spring of 1999, six CSU campuses have been designated as host schools. CSULB has been designated to teach Cambodian, Mandarin and Vietnamese.

The Asian-American student population is the fastest growing population in California, but the percentage of Asian teachers has remained unchanged for the past 10 years, according to the Center for Language Minority Education and Research.

The goal of the consortium is "to ensure that all children of California, regardless of language and cultural background, attain a meaningful and relevant education."

Kim Oanh, coordinator of the project, said that Proposition 227 did not touch on teacher preparation in giving instruction to bilingual students.

"The proposition says that students should be taught primarily in English, but immigrant students still need support in their language. Teachers can help to bridge the gap in the role of bilingual teachers," Oanh said.

The role of the bilingual teacher is to support learning, and knowing the language makes the difference between knowledge acquisition and not learning. If one does not know the language he or she cannot teach, she said.

Oanh said teachers who want to get a bilingual certificate in a certain language would have to attend the specified campus for that language.

"The main thing is that we look at language and resources," Oanh said. "Many of our students come to school already speaking another language and we want to capture that, so when they go to high school, they won't have to learn a foreign language from scratch.

"When they graduate, they can find a place in the global market easily."