Spanish-Speaking Teachers Being Imported to N.M.

Omar Zamudio thinks he is the ideal person to persuade Mexican immigrant high school students not to squander their chance at a U.S. education.

Zamudio, 31, recently came north from his home near Mexico City to teach math in Albuquerque. He says he doesn’t need to do anything other than present himself as an example; the language and culture he shares with his students gives him instant credibility.

“If I can stay here as a professional, they can too,” he said.

In a state where a quarter of the residents speak Spanish, New Mexico’s supply of bilingual teachers has not met demand. That’s why, in October 2004, the state signed an agreement with Mexican officials to bring teachers from that country here.

Zamudio is one of 13 Mexican educators teaching Spanish-language courses for the first time this year in New Mexico. More than 140 teachers applied.

Once chosen, the teachers can remain in New Mexico for three years. Some will return to Mexico for the summer, and others will stay to teach summer school, said Gladys Herrera-Gurule, the state’s bilingual education director.

New Mexico is among the few states to have such a program, but it is not alone: California schools have been hiring Mexican teachers since the 1980s, said Edda Caraballo, a bilingual education consultant for the California Department of Education. California has 45 Mexican teachers this school year and would hire more if it could find teachers meeting bilingual standards, she said.

Eduardo Holguin, president for the National Education Assn. in New Mexico, said that throughout the country, individual school districts are hiring teachers from Spanish-speaking countries.

“The demand for dual-language teachers ... is something that certainly has gone beyond our borders,” he said.

In New Mexico, the Mexican teachers, who have to meet the same licensing requirements as local teachers, will help until New Mexicans can be trained to fill the need.

“We cannot tell kids to wait until someone receives a degree,” Herrera-Gurule said. “That would be a crime.”

Mexican teachers say they can do a lot to help immigrant families and others who want classes in Spanish. For example, Zamudio said, only a dozen parents attended parent-teacher conferences last January. But after he began telephoning parents, nearly all of them showed up for the March conferences.

“Hispanic people who live here identify with the teacher, the same language, the same culture, the same ideas,” he said.

David Briseno, who directs the bilingual program for Clovis Municipal Schools and leads the New Mexico Assn. for Bilingual Education, said his district was sending a recruiter to Spain in search of bilingual educators.

Clovis, a farming and military base community in eastern New Mexico, hopes to hire teachers from Mexico in upcoming years, he said. “Those teachers are going to be a better match for our kids than teachers coming all the way from Spain,” Briseno said.

The Mexican teachers also hope to take home with them ideas from the U.S.

Yolanda Estrada, 40, a math teacher at Van Buren Middle School in Albuquerque who comes from Guadalajara, says she hopes to urge Mexican officials to better enforce truancy laws after seeing how well they work here.

Zamudio has suggested that his school publish a handbook. He has also matched up pen pals -- Mexican students who write in English and U.S. students who correspond in Spanish -- to improve foreign language skills.