Importing teachers misses point

Government officials and school administrators back from Mexico last week did an adequate job explaining their reasons for recruiting bilingual Mexican teachers to work in Utah schools.

Since Utah and Mexico are neighbors, said assistant state superintendent Larry Shumway, fudging his geography a bit, "it just seems like a good idea."

"The ultimate goal is to make sure we have enough teachers," said Mike Fraser of Granite School District, one of four Utah districts that sent representatives south of the border.

But no one got around to officially addressing what Deseret Morning News education writer Tiffany Erickson calls "the huge question."

"Why don't we grow our own?"

It's a fair question and one that Kim Campbell, president of the Utah Education Association, was happy to respond to.

"What this is (importing teachers from Mexico) is a Band-Aid approach to the deeper problem of teacher shortage," said Campbell, leader of the state's largest teachers union with more than 18,000 members. "It's treating the symptom and not the cause."

She continued, "You have to kind of ask yourself why we're exporting the teachers that we're training here in Utah to other states while we're importing teachers from Mexico."

Campbell said news of the Mexican imports — as many as 50 could be in place for the coming school year — has generated considerable response from UEA members.

"They mostly expressed the same concern," she said, "that instead of dealing with the teacher shortage here we're going to start importing. The teachers are saying, 'If one is in my building I'll certainly do all I can to help them be successful, but, boy, this isn't the solution to the real problem."'

Campbell defined "the real problem" of teacher shortage as more multidimensional than low salaries. "We have to acknowledge that we are starting to make inroads in that area," she said, "but many teachers are leaving not just because of salary but because they don't feel like they have the working conditions to be successful. These are people who come in with their hearts and passions in it, but no matter how hard they try they can't meet the needs of their students. They don't have the resources, they don't have the support systems.

"I'm talking about a broad range of issues. It's class size, it's being provided with the kinds of resources teachers need, it's mentoring programs for new teachers, it's ESL (English as a second language), it's per-pupil expenditure. Teachers are dealing with many issues they didn't have to deal with in the past, and they are perfectly willing to do their very, very best, but they need to be put in a position where they can be successful and many don't find they have that."

So they leave.