BURLINGTON — While growing up in Mexico, Berenice Rodriguez would often play a game with her young cousins: They would be the students and she the teacher.
Even at 8 years old, Rodriguez knew teaching was what she wanted to do.
Her dream was reaffirmed when she moved to the United States and began attending seventh grade at Allen Elementary School in Bow.
Not only did she know she wanted to be a teacher, she realized she wanted to be a teacher in the Burlington-Edison School District.
“I just felt like I had been given so much from this community,” Rodriguez said. “And I just felt like I had to do something in return.”
Despite how much she wanted it, Rodriguez believed teaching was a dream she couldn’t reach as an undocumented student.
“When I was in high school, people always told me, ‘You’re not going to be able to go to college,”’ Rodriguez said.
Today, she is a few months into her career as a second-grade teacher at West View Elementary School, the Burlington-Edison School District’s dual-language school.
“Now that I’m here, I love it,” Rodriguez said.
Her journey wouldn’t have been possible without support from her family, colleagues, the district and a program at Western Washington University that paved the way for her and 14 others to follow their dreams.
“For many of them, this was an opportunity they just couldn’t believe,” said Maria Timmons-Flores, director of Pathways to Teaching at WWU’s Woodring College of Education.
Two years ago, the university began the Pathways to Teaching program in an attempt to get more teachers of color, especially bilingual teachers, into the classrooms, Timmons-Flores said.
Statewide, about 43 percent of students are of color, while 92 percent of teachers are white, she said.
“Everyone can be the kind of teacher that students need,” Timmons-Flores said. “But sometimes, there’s a different kind of resonance, or magic, when someone really does understand who you are and where you come from.”
Growing up, Rodriguez knew that feeling all too well.
“I never had a teacher who spoke my language, or who looked like me,” she said. “I feel like I never really connected with many of my teachers because they didn’t know what it was like to work in the fields.”
Throughout school, Rodriguez always said she felt lonely. She wasn’t in English Language Learners (ELL) classes and didn’t push herself in high school, she said.
“Why would I take hard classes if there was no hope for me?” she said.
During her senior year at Burlington-Edison High School, she learned it would finally be possible for her to attend college and earn scholarships.
A new law allowed students without documentation to receive in-state tuition, she said.
Even then, college seemed inaccessible, she said.
“I was thinking ‘OK, I can go to college now, but how am I going to pay for it?”’ she said.
That’s why she was surprised to learn in her senior year that she had been awarded one of Skagit Valley College’s Champions of Diversity scholarships, which made it possible for her to attend WWU and pursue her passion.
But there was a catch: Because of her legal status, Rodriguez was still ineligible to receive her teaching degree.
At that point, Rodriguez said, she considered dropping out, but she knew that wasn’t what her family would have wanted.
“They kept telling me, ‘We moved here for a reason, so you can have a better education,”’ Rodriguez said.
In 2009, Rodriguez graduated with a bachelor’s degree in general studies.
Without clear legal status, Rodriguez said opportunities were few and far between. She became a stay-at-home mom, working the fields with her parents in the summer.
Around the time she became pregnant with her second child, an opportunity arose: the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act made it possible for Rodriguez to get a work permit.
“The first thing I did was go to the Burlington-Edison (School District) page and (look) ‘Are there any jobs for me?”’ she said.
There was a position for an ELL instructional assistant at Lucille-Umbarger Elementary School.
“In all of the interviews I’ve ever been on, hers was probably the most impressive,” said former Lucille-Umbarger Principal Bryan Jones, who is now the district’s director of equity and assessment. “(She) was just phenomenal.”
Even before becoming a teacher, having Rodriguez work at Lucille Umbarger made it easier for the school to help students and their families because she spoke their language and shared a culture, Jones said.
“To keep her in our school system is exactly what this program was able to do,” Jones said.
Rodriguez’s school colleagues and district staff encouraged her to get involved with the new Pathways program at WWU.
Rodriguez, however, was unsure.
“They kept sending me emails, and I kept deleting them,” she said. “I felt like I was going to go and get rejected again.”
Then she found out the program was designed for people from different backgrounds trying to overcome the obstacles put in front of them on their path to teaching. It allowed her to pursue her dreams while keeping her job in the Burlington-Edison School District.
Of the 15 students in the program, eight were from either the Burlington-Edison or Mount Vernon school districts, Timmons-Flores said.
Like Rodriguez, many were bilingual and employed by school districts in a capacity that had them working directly with children.
“There’s a comfort and respect in their classrooms, and that’s powerful and tangible,” Timmons-Flores said.
After two years of work, the 15 students were awarded bachelor’s degrees from the university in June, as well as elementary education certificates with ELL/bilingual endorsements.
They all went back to work in either their home districts or neighboring districts, Timmons-Flores said.
“That’s the thing about these teachers,” she said. “They’re not going anywhere. This is their community.”
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