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April 26, 2004

Dedicated teacher returns to school for Ph.D. in education

By Jennifer McNulty

Done with college and interested in teaching, Anne Rios ignored her friends and signed up to be a substitute teacher.

Photo: Anne Rios
Anne Rios
is the daughter of immigrants from Peru and Costa Rica. Photo by Jennifer McNulty

“All my friends told me not to do it--they said being a substitute was the worst way to learn about teaching and that I’d never go into it if I started that way,” recalled Rios.

They were wrong.

As a substitute teacher in the San Mateo County Unified School District, Rios encountered a large number of minority students and recent immigrants who were making their way through high school with limited English skills. Rios, the daughter of immigrants from Peru and Costa Rica, could relate to what the students were experiencing, and she wanted to help them.

“I wanted those students to feel a sense of pride and affirmation of their native language. It’s an opportunity I certainly never had,” said Rios, who grew up in the San Francisco suburb of Millbrae, speaking Spanish at home and spending six to eight months a year in her mother’s native Costa Rica.

“I was one of only three nonwhite students in my grade school,” she explained.

“When I was in second grade, I was reading below grade level. The principal told my mom I needed more stability and to stop taking me to Costa Rica. He told her we should speak English at home. After that, we only went to Costa Rica for the summer.”

Although Rios’s academic performance improved, educators today are critical of such culturally insensitive guidance. Inspired by the needs she saw while substitute teaching, Rios began exploring graduate schools, hoping to learn a better way to help students. At UCSC, she found what she was looking for in the Education Department’s focus on culture and race. She enrolled in the master’s in education program and earned her degree and a teaching credential in 2000.

Fluent in Spanish, Rios immediately got a job teaching third grade in a “dual immersion” class at Alianza Elementary School in Watsonville.

Alianza’s high percentage of native Spanish-speaking students, including a large number of newly arrived immigrants from Mexico, made it impossible for Rios to strike the targeted 60/40 balance of Spanish- and English-language instruction expected for third grade. Frustrated, Rios worked hard to reach out to the students, making frequent home visits to get to know parents. Sometimes what she saw took her breath away.

“A lot of the kids were sick all the time, and when I saw their housing, I understood why,” said Rios. “I remember one place--there were literally holes in the floor. Seeing that showed me a lot about the resiliency of the human spirit, that those children were still coming to school and doing their best.”

Determined to match the children’s effort, Rios and her colleagues made some changes. They increased continuity by agreeing to instruct the same group all day instead of rotating children through their classrooms by topic. Children were encouraged to spend more time working together in teams. And teachers focused on directing instruction at each child’s level. The changes improved the quality of instruction and learning, and increased Rios’s job satisfaction.

“It was like night and day,” she said.

Even so, Rios couldn’t shake her desire to explore more deeply the issues of culture, language, and race that are shaping education across the United States. Rios returned to UCSC in 2003 as one of nine students in the campus’s new doctoral program in education.

“I think it was always in the back of my mind that there were questions I wanted to explore--things I couldn’t do as part of my profession,” said Rios. “My experience as a teacher has given me a new lens for viewing these issues. It has really been a powerful asset for understanding.”

Nearing the end of her first year, Rios is drawn to the social context of education, a focus shared by her adviser and mentor June Gordon, an associate professor of education, and by Margaret Gibson, a professor of education and anthropology.

New research on racial and ethnic identity is broadening understanding of what students need and how schools can foster student success.

Addressing the needs of a diverse student population and California’s many English-language learners is at the heart of the UCSC Education Department. “The faculty here are really accessible and approachable. It’s true,” said Rios, who earned her B.A. in psychology from UC Davis.

Rios, 30, dreams of doing dissertation research among students of Japanese descent in Peru and Brazil. “Notions of the ‘model minority’ have emerged in Latin America, too, and I want to understand more about what’s helped them achieve academic and economic success,” she said. With a baby due in May, Rios may end up exploring some of the same questions closer to home, among students of Japanese descent in the Watsonville area, whose family members first migrated to the Central Coast before World War II.

Rios misses the contact with students and their families that teaching offered, and she is eager to begin her fieldwork. “I get nostalgic about teaching,” said Rios. “It will always be a part of me.”

Despite the state budget crisis in California, Rios is optimistic about the prospect of improving K-12 education.

“It’s a challenging time to be in education, but for me, that isn’t a deterrent at all,” she said. “Maybe I’m idealistic, but I think we need to build partnerships between researchers, families, and teachers to really push for changes. We need to get our voices out there.”


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