SEATTLE – Este viernes es el Día Nacional de Aprendizaje de Verano, una celebración dedicada a los programas de todo el país que mantienen despiertas las destrezas de los niños entre un año escolar y otro y los animan a inscribirse, asistir y aprender algo nuevo. Tal vez ellos no se den cuenta, pero los programas de verano también ayudan a asegurar que sus destrezas académicas no se retrasen durante el otoño.
El verano es una nueva oportunidad de introducir los campos STEM (siglas en inglés para Ciencia, Tecnología, Ingeniería y Matemáticas). En la Washington Midschool de Seattle, la jardinería es también una ciencia en el club “Green Plate Special”. Marisa Rousselle, Coordinadora del Community Learning Center (Centro Comunitario de Aprendizaje) en Seattle Parks and Recreation (Parques y Recreación de Seattle), dice que la meta es que el entusiasmo de verano continúe hasta el siguiente año escolar.
“Así que, si puedo lograr que un estudiante inscrito en este club de jardinería realmente se conecte –y puede ser un estudiante que me dijo antes que no les gusta la ciencia–, tal vez vengan a la escuela y pongan más atención en su clase de ciencias, porque ven la conexión con este club que realmente disfrutan.”
La organización School’s Out Washington aporta capacitadores en el STEM y entrenamiento para los programas de verano de todo el estado. Casi una de cada cuatro familias de Washington tiene un niño en un programa veraniego de aprendizaje –menos que el promedio nacional, que es de uno de cada tres, sobre todo porque no hay suficientes programas en el estado para satisfacer la demanda.
Mucha gente asume que las materias STEM son de interés natural para los estudiantes asiáticos. Pero pero Peggy Kwok, supervisora del Youth Development Program (Programa de Desarrollo Juvenil), en el Chinese Information and Service Center (Centro Chino de Información y Servicio), afirma que no siempre es el caso.
“La mayoría tiene la barrera del lenguaje y tal vez el problema de lectoescritura. Queremos interesar a nuestros niños migrantes en el STEM, particularmente a aquellos estudiantes que vienen de padres de baja escolaridad y también de familias con pocos ingresos y recursos limitados.”
Kwok explica que la escuela es tomada muy en serio en las culturas asiáticas y sería difícil convencer a los estudiantes y sus padres de que el aprendizaje veraniego pueda llegar a ser divertido.
“La mayoría tiene la barrera del lenguaje y tal vez el problema de lectoescritura. Queremos interesar a nuestros niños migrantes en el STEM, particularmente a aquellos estudiantes que vienen de padres de baja escolaridad y también de familias con pocos ingresos y recursos limitados.”
Agrega que otro beneficio para los estudiantes inmigrantes es que los programas de verano no están estructurados y su trabajo no es calificado, lo que quita mucha presión a los niños mientras aprenden inglés y hacen nuevas amistades.
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Education advocates are calling on lawmakers to increase funding for programs to combat the teacher shortage.
Around 37% of schools nationwide report being short at least one teacher. The problem is worse at schools serving high-poverty neighborhoods where more than half report a vacancy.
Susan Kemper Patrick, a senior researcher on the Educator Quality team at the Learning Policy Institute, said those numbers are troublingly high.
"At least 314,000 teaching positions across the U.S. are either unfilled or filled with teachers who are not fully certified for their assignments," she said. "This means at least one in ten teaching positions nationally are either unfilled or not filled with a certified teacher."
Data from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing showed 10,000 teacher vacancies in the 2021-22 school year. The number of teacher credentials issued that year was down 16% from the previous year - but has now started to trend upward.
In 2023, California passed a bill to make it easier for retired teachers to return to the classroom.
Kemper Patrick noted that schools are resorting to desperate measures such as combining classes, relying on a virtual teacher or using a long-term substitute.
"The U.S. Department of Education School Pulse survey found that 36% of public schools across the U.S. reported that they had to increase class size due to teacher and staff vacancies," she said.
Kemper Patrick blamed the problem on low salaries, noting the average starting salary for a teacher nationwide is less than $43,000 a year. Congress is currently considering two bills, the Diversify Act and the Educators for America Act, which would double the amount of the Teach America grant from $4,000 to $8,000 per year.
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It's estimated that nearly half of all schools in the country don't have enough teachers. To help change that, the University of Texas in El Paso offers a residency program to help ensure that first-time teachers succeed.
The "Miner Teacher Residency" gives students in the College of Education an opportunity to work in elementary and middle schools alongside working teachers.
Clifton Tanabe, dean of the UTEP College of Education, was part of a recent national roundtable discussion on ways to solve the teacher shortage, and said the program gives future educators the skills they need to be ready for their first day of class.
"A third grader in a first-year teacher's classroom is only going to get to do third grade once, but that teacher will be able to do the third grade again and again," he explained. "So, we want them ready for that first group of third graders that they take on."
Tanabe added nearly half of the students enrolled in the program are first-generation college students and 70% are bilingual. He adds that mirrors the population of students in the public school system in El Paso, where 90% of the students are Hispanic. Most of the new teachers remain in the area, he said.
Many school districts have been forced to leave positions open, or fill them with teachers who are not fully certified. Some rural Texas districts have gone to a four-day school week. And some teachers are leaving the profession, citing increased workloads, low pay and concerns about safety.
According to Tanabe, teacher retention is directly related to being successful in the first two years on the job - and the UT program addresses this.
"So, folks who graduate from our residency model in their first and second years in teaching are set up with an instructional coach who's from the university, from the College of Education, to work with them on individualized instructional improvement," he continued.
The residency program is in its sixth year. It currently has 62 teachers working in five different school districts in the El Paso area.
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Ohio's Black students are more likely to face excessively harsh discipline practices such as expulsion and suspension, according to a recently released report from the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio.
The data show out-of-school suspensions and expulsions rose in every grade level from kindergarten through twelfth grade in the 2022-23 school year, compared with the previous academic year.
John Standford, state director for the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio, said economically disadvantaged students comprised 83% of all out-of-school suspensions.
"School districts really have to pay closer attention to the data and really screen the data, review the data, on a regular basis to really begin to address the issues of inequities," Standford urged.
Last year saw 174,000 cases of total suspension or expulsion among low-income students compared to 35,000 cases among students who do not qualify as economically disadvantaged. According to the report, Black females in Ohio were six times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than their white female peers. Black males were also more than four times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white male peers.
Kim Eckhart, research manager for the fund, said she understands the difficulties teachers face. She hopes the report encourages districts across the state to support schools with the resources and time needed to address behavioral problems restoratively.
"We need schools to be supporting teachers with additional time and space," Eckhart contended. "So that there is capacity to address these things, rather than just kicking the student out of the class, kicking them out of the school."
School discipline practices are also linked to Ohio's alarmingly high chronic absenteeism rates. According to the report, missing as little as two days of school per month can lead to chronic absence. More than 26% of Ohio students -- more than 400,000 children -- were chronically absent from school in the 2022-2023 school year, up by nearly half from the 2018-19 school year.
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