Addressing the Educator Shortage: Supporting Pathways to the Teaching Profession for Multilingual Paraeducators
With the strong and increasing presence of Multilingual Learners in U.S. public schools, multilingual educators are vital to ensuring academic excellence and promoting multilingualism and multiliteracy among these students. However, the current shortage of qualified educators exacerbates the disproportionately small share of those who are multilingual. With a higher percentage of multilingual speakers represented among paraeducators, this group represents a corps of potential teacher candidates. This paper explores the history of exclusionary practices in U.S. education which have influenced current teacher shortages, establishes research on the benefits to diverse students of congruent educators, includes examples of teacher preparation programs which support paraeducator-to-teacher pathways, and explores obstacles faced by multilingual teacher candidates to entering the profession, with proposed processes to eliminate such barriers.
