From Sweatshop to Classroom : Mission College: For foreign teachers, obtaining credentials can be a struggle. But a new program may help.

Blanca Cerrillos said she lasted one day at the Sun Valley garment factory where she took a job in 1983.

“The work was so hard, I couldn’t get up the next day,” Cerrillos said. “I came to Los Angeles to be a teacher.”

The former Mexican elementary school teacher soon discovered that getting her California teaching credential was no easy job either. Cerrillos enrolled in college courses for seven years and took the state teachers’ exam five times before passing and becoming eligible to teach elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Cerrillos, who was hired this week to teach fifth grade at Hubbard Street School in Sylmar, hopes to be an example to hundreds of foreign-born teachers trying to obtain their state teaching credentials through a unique program starting Monday at Mission College in the San Fernando Valley.

The program, the Bilingual Expressway, is funded with a three-year, $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Federal officials, in awarding the grant this week, praised the Mission College program and said they hope it will become a model for universities trying to meet the growing demand nationwide for bilingual teachers. Cerrillos is a volunteer adviser to the program.

In Los Angeles, school district officials estimate it will take 10 years to hire the needed number of bilingual teachers. About 30% of the district’s 610,000 students are Spanish-speakers who are learning English.

So far, more than 800 foreign-born teachers from throughout Los Angeles have signed up for the Mission College program, Victoria Richart, dean of academic affairs, said. The program will offer classes in English and analyze foreign course transcripts to determine what classes the students must take to meet state teaching requirements.

Bilingual counselors also will hold workshops on the California Basic Educational Skills Test--which is required of all teachers--and will guide students without college degrees through the bureaucratic maze involved in signing up for classes and transferring from two-year to four-year colleges.

Such advice would have saved Israel Avalos a lot of trouble. The former elementary school teacher in El Salvador completed courses in philosophy and sociology at Mission College several years ago to fulfill requirements for a bachelor’s degree. He found out later that he didn’t need the classes because he had already passed those subjects at a university in El Salvador.

Avalos, who obtained his liberal arts degree at Cal State Northridge in June and also will serve as an adviser to the Mission College program, taught for 10 years in the Salvadoran town of Suchitoto before coming to Lake View Terrace in 1978. He quickly discovered that he was not eligible to teach in the Los Angeles school district so he found work in a plastics factory.

“I really had to start over,” Avalos said. “The work was hard and after awhile I said to myself, ‘I have to do something better.’ So I signed up for English classes at night.”

After gaining confidence in English, Avalos began taking courses at Mission College to prepare for his return to teaching. He quit his factory job and began work as a teacher’s aide at Fenton Avenue School in Lake View Terrace. Attending classes at night, he completed a two-year degree at Mission College and went on to CSUN, where he is enrolled in the teacher credentialing program.

Avalos said he, Cerrillos, and a handful of Latino immigrants aspiring to be teachers in the United States have become close friends and stuck with their goal despite having to support themselves with full-time jobs. For all of them, one of the biggest struggles, and most rewarding successes, was mastering English, Avalos said.

“Sometimes it was very discouraging,” said Cerrillos, who taught first grade in Via Victoria, a small town in the Mexican state of Michoacan. “When you don’t know English, people can be very rude. They yell, ‘What?’ You feel bad.”

But now Cerrillos and Avalos say they can assist students signing up for the Mission College program. Officials of CSUN, as well as the Los Angeles school district, have promised to cooperate with Mission College officials to smooth the path for the prospective teachers, who can expect a starting salary of about $35,000 a year in Los Angeles schools.

“I went through a lot but I know my experience will help others,” Cerrillos said. “They can look at me and say, ‘She did it. I can do it.’ ”