"For the past two years, weekdays for Susanna have meant thumbing through picture books, organising cubby holes and leading classroom choruses of songs. But her work as a pre-school teacher came to a screeching halt in October, when she found out her application to renew her work permit had been denied. Susanna, who uses a pseudonym in this article for fear of reprisals, is one of the nearly 10 percent of teachers in the United States who are immigrants."
"She recalls breaking the news to her students, some of whom are only three years old. Many were too young to understand. In one week, I lost everything, Susanna told Al Jazeera in Spanish. When I told the kids goodbye, they asked me why, and I told them, I can only tell you goodbye.' There were kids that hugged me, and it hurt my heart a lot."
An increasing number of US schools rely on immigrant teachers to fill shortages, with immigrants making up nearly 10 percent of the workforce. Temporary exchange visas brought 6,716 full-time teachers for 2023-2024, many from the Philippines. Deportation enforcement and denied work-permit renewals have forced immigrant educators out of classrooms, ending livelihoods and disrupting students' emotional development. One asylum-seeking pre-school teacher from Guatemala lost her permit and had to stop working immediately, leaving young children confused and distressed. Advocates warn that sudden teacher departures risk traumatizing students and exacerbating staffing gaps across pre-kindergarten to university levels.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]