When Anna Kang’s family emigrated from Korea to Minnesota, she spoke no English. The suburban school district where she was enrolled had no programs for students learning English as a second language (ESL) at the time.

“My brother and I were some of the first ESL students in our school district,” she recalls. “They didn’t know how to deal with us.”

Kang says being in class with students who only spoke English was shocking to her. “It caused me to be very shy and very introverted. I didn’t want to speak at the time,” she recalls of her “silent period.”

As she began to master the language, Kang started to speak out and caught the attention of her fellow students. “They were paying attention to me, and that gave me more confidence,” she says.

Kang went on to earn a degree in English with a minor in Chinese from the University of Minnesota in 2001, and then she spent a year in Korea teaching English.

“I wanted to see if teaching was something I truly wanted to do,” she says. "Spending a year there gave me the answer.”

And that answer was yes. After earning certification in teaching English as a second language and completing work toward her master’s degree, Kang got married and moved back to Korea, where she taught English to elementary and high school students and adults. “I learned a lot about myself,” she says.

Kang came back to the United States with a better idea of the age groups she wanted to work with and what her strengths were. She spent two years as a multilingual paraprofessional at Irondale High School in New Brighton, Minnesota. In September, she began her first year as a teacher there—and as a U of M graduate student.

Teacher and student

“The two years I spent as a para inspired me,” she says. The teachers she worked with encouraged her to finish her master’s and get her full professional teaching license to teach English as a second language.

After looking at a number of teacher prep programs, Kang found the Minnesota Grow Your Own Teachers program (MNGOT) at the University of Minnesota. “As soon as I got information about the program, I said, ‘This is it! I want to do this,’” she recalls.

Housed in the College of Education and Human Development, MNGOT and its companion dual-language immersion education program offer an alternative path to teaching for those with a bachelor’s degree who are working in schools but don’t have a full teaching license.

Laura Mogelson, director of the U’s Multiple Pathways to Teaching Office, says establishing “grow your own” programs is a national trend. Nearly every state has a pathway to make it easier to become a teacher and, ultimately, alleviate the teacher shortage and increase the number of teachers of color.

“Minnesota’s teacher workforce is not representative of the student body,” Mogelson says. “In Minnesota, 38% of students are students of color. Only 7% of teachers are teachers of color.”

The U of M’s program started in 2015 as a residency with the Minneapolis Public Schools. Three years later, it was transformed into the current program (see box).

Clearing the path

One of the hallmarks of MNGOT is to make becoming a teacher affordable. “Time and money are the two biggest barriers for people who have this inner calling to become a teacher,” Mogelson says. “The more we are able to recruit with the promise of scholarships, the easier it is to get people to join the program and the teaching profession.”

Mogelson says she tries to create bundles of scholarships to provide more robust aid.

Kang received a package that included support from the Hoffman Family Fund in Education, Bentson Foundation MNGOT Scholarship, Jo Anne Hoff Collins Scholarship, Jacqueline R. Mithun Fellowship, and the Jack W. Newcomb Fund for Teacher Preparation.

She says receiving the scholarships sealed her decision to go to the U of M. “It was extremely important,” she says. “It was a very significant factor in deciding to go with the program.”

She looks forward to earning her master’s degree and teaching license. “I hope to stay at the school where I’m at now. They’re getting more and more ESL students each year,” she says. “I want to spend the rest of my career teaching them.”

You can make a difference for students like Anna Kang by supporting the Hoffman Family Fund in Education.