As an elementary school student in Salinas, Araceli Anaya struggled with classes because she and her parents didn’t know much English.
Now in the process of earning her master’s degree in education at UC Santa Cruz, Anaya hopes to become a kindergarten teacher so she can help other young students in a simiilar situation.
Anaya is among the first 12 students to be a part of the university’s new Latinx Initiative for Future Teachers (LIFT) program. The program allows participating students to finish a master’s in education and earn credentials for teaching in math, science, multiple subjects, history or English in 12 months and receive mentorship and financial support.
“I really want to better myself,” said Anaya, a mother of five, ages 1 to 16.
As a Hispanic-Serving Institution, UC Santa Cruz is constantly looking for ways to improve graduation rates and increase opportunities for Hispanic students to enter graduate programs and high-level professional careers.
“This is very important for the nation and extremely important for California,” said Cynthia Lewis, chair of the UC Santa Cruz education department. The goal is for graduates of LIFT and the university’s teacher education program to work in the schools and become leading advocates for equity, social justice and antiracism.
As of 2018–19, 61 percent of California’s K–12 teachers were white, with Hispanics making up the next largest percentage at 21 percent. The student population, by contrast, was 55 percent Hispanic and 23 percent white.
Soleste Hilberg, director of teacher education at UC Santa Cruz, said the program is aware that the experience of Hispanic and white students can differ considerably, and is working to correct that in the master of arts/credential program. From focus group interviews over the last three years, the program has learned of the need for mentors for students of color. All those in the LIFT program are paired with a mentor of color to help them navigate the teaching profession, Hilberg said. The program is also bringing in speakers with successful backgrounds to talk to the students.
Hilberg said her program also reallocated their scholarship funds. Now, the program awards more money to those who are first-generation college students or who come from low-income families and demonstrate their commitment to the program’s mission, which is to prepare new teachers for a new California; teachers who are ready to become social justice teacher leaders.
“We are working hard to examine our policies and practices to see how we might be contributing to societal and systemic inequities and to ensure equity and justice for our students and their future students,” Hilberg said.
Some of the LIFT students have enough support that they don’t need to work at other jobs while they are completing the program, she said.
One way UC Santa Cruz’s graduate teaching program is different than others is it accepts undocumented students. Usually, they are students who were brought by their families to the U.S. as children but never became citizens. They are not allowed to get federal scholarship money, so the university finds other ways to help them get funding, such as what is described above.
All the students, including the undocumented ones, have no trouble finding jobs after graduation, said Hilberg.
“Our students are in big demand,” Hilberg said.
