‘Grow Your Own’ Teacher Training : Education: Long Beach schools will offer a special class to entice minority students into teaching.

In an effort to match the ethnic diversity of its student population, the school district will offer a special class this fall to encourage students to return to their schools as teachers.

“We have a very positive mix of students and we would very much like to increase the racial and ethnic mix of our teaching staff,” said Helen Z. Hansen, an assistant superintendent for personnel services in the Long Beach Unified School District.

The class will show students how to develop lessons, select teaching materials and allow them to play the role of teacher at elementary schools.

Diana Williams, district programs specialist, calls it a “grow our own” plan that will guarantee students a teacher-training position while they are in college and a priority for a full-time job once they receive their teaching credential.

Of the district’s nearly 69,000 students, less than 31% are white. But almost 81% of its teachers are white. As a result, students are deprived of role models in their own ethnic groups and there are few people who can communicate with them in their own languages, school officials said. One of every four students in the district cannot speak English proficiently.

The district has a serious shortage of bilingual teachers. About 300 teachers have been given waivers to teach on the condition that they will learn Spanish, according to Felice Strauss, president of the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach.

“A lot of them really aren’t qualified to be teaching what they’re teaching,” Strauss said. She hailed the district’s new program, which she hopes will also fill the critical need for special-education teachers.

Officials expect an ethnically mixed group to enroll for the new class at Millikan, Poly and Wilson high schools. If successful, the yearlong program will be expanded to the district’s two other high schools, Hansen said.

“We believe these perks could be the incentive for kids to get into our program,” Hansen said.

Long Beach Unified officials are working with Long Beach City College and Cal State Long Beach, where administrators say they want minority teachers.

At Long Beach City College, there are plans to form a Teachers of Tomorrow Club, said Minnie Douglas, affirmative action officer.

And at Cal State Long Beach, there is a new program called Impact TEACH, aimed at helping minority students interested in education with test preparation, tutoring and some scholarships, according to Michael Grant, the project’s co-director. Subsidized by a $64,000 grant from the state, the program also will provide support through a career help center and workshops, Grant said.

“We’ve had a lot of success so far, which is amazing because our numbers have been so low,” Grant said. “However, I see a reversal. Minority students are saying, ‘We’re interested in teaching, but we need proper guidance.’ ”

At least 85% of the students at Cal State Long Beach recommended for education credentials in 1988 were white, according to university spokeswoman Toni Beron.

About 89% of the 803 students graduating responded to the survey, and of those who responded 1.3% were black and 6.4% were Latino, Beron said.

The figures are grim across the nation as minority college students go to other professions that lured them with promises of higher salaries and more status. The number of black college graduates receiving teaching certificates, for example, declined from 12,992 in 1977 to 5,456 in 1985, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

To reverse the trend, school districts are trying a number of approaches. The Long Beach plan is modeled after a similar program at Gardena High School. The neighboring Los Angeles Unified School District has a 5-year-old magnet program at Crenshaw High School called Teachers Training Academy, which is described by educators as a model program in the state.

In Long Beach, future teacher clubs have been revived at the five high schools within the last two years, Williams said. “The clubs were the first step,” she said. The class this fall is the next step, she continued. The course will give students “a little taste of what it feels like to be a teacher.”

Student/ Teacher Ethnic Makeup Comparison Long Beach Unified School District, 1989 Racial and Ethnic Survey Students Total Students: 68, 526 White: 30.8% Hispanic: 29.4% Black: 19.0% Asian: 14.8% Pacific Islander: 2.0% American Indian: .4% Flipino: 3.6% Classroom Teachers Total Teachers: 2,824 White: 80.9% Black: 8.6% Hispanic: 5.0% Asian/ Pacific Islander: 4.2% American Indian/ Alaskan: .4% Flipino: .8% Source: Long Beach Unified School District