Informed & Inspired

Across California, school districts are scrambling to fill a severe shortage of bilingual educators to keep up with the growing numbers of English learners in the classroom. The need in rural communities is particularly acute. As a result, many schools have turned to teachers with only bachelor’s degrees and “emergency credentials” — one-year permits typically given to substitutes — to fill in the gaps. 

Natasha Sebestyen remembers the feeling of shock. It was March 13 — a Friday — and the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak was about to crest in the U.S. An instructional assistant in a second and third grade combined class in Irvine, Sebestyen checked her email to find a clear message from her school district: Get ready to send your students home with all their things. There will be no school for at least three weeks.

Almost every year, Paula Richardson (’06, ’19) says she experiences “one of those moments.” Often, they will occur before a concert, as her assembled middle schoolers nervously rehearse. Invariably, Richardson will need to intervene and offer her students encouragement and guidance on how to play better.

A few months ago, Amber Riehman (’14, ’15, ’20) found herself listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “All, Here, Now” speech. King — speaking in 1966 at the height of the Civil Rights movement — warned against what he called “gradualism,” asserting: “We want all of our rights, we want them here, and we want them now.” For Riehman, those words made an impact.

In a world often defined in black and white terms, Selam Gebrekristos (’07, ’13) has learned to embrace a life somewhere in the middle. 

Jermaine Rocacorba remembers a San Diego State University Leadership Minor project called “Create a Future Adventure.” The assignment was to create something that doesn’t already exist — something that would make the world a better place. Rocacorba, who graduated from SDSU in December of 2018 with a degree in communication, has been seemingly living that project ever since. 

As a lecturer in the San Diego State University Department of Child and Family Development, Carolyn Sanders teaches courses in multiple settings. But the course she calls her “passion project” typically meets in only one location: the natural canyon landscape of the SDSU Children’s Center’s backyard.

Dr. Jessica Suhrheinrich, associate professor in the San Diego State University Department of Special Education, is beginning work on a federally-funded project aimed at empowering educators who work with young students with autism.

A staff team from the Office of the Dean and Office of Student Success is set to offer insight and provide recommendations for improving student success in the College of Education’s two undergraduate majors.

As a young undergraduate student at the University of Texas-El Paso, Dr. Alberto Esquinca made a daily trek across a bridge spanning the concrete banks of the Rio Grande. The journey provided him safe passage beyond the imposing border fence — the physical representation of the century and a half of geopolitics that separated his family’s home in Ciudad Juarez from the opportunity he sought in the United States.