For the first time, Minnesota teachers can become licensed to teach Karen, Somali and other heritage languages

Before Ehtalow Zar’s students could sample the porridge their teacher had prepared for them, they had to answer a question.

“Why do you guys think this is our traditional Karen food?” she asked them.

Classes like this one at St. Paul’s Johnson High School — where a group of mostly Karen students learn about Karen language and culture — have become more and more popular in Twin Cities schools in recent years.

The push for heritage language programs has grown as charter schools have developed programs honoring the cultures and languages of immigrant communities, and students and parents have asked school districts to create these programs, too.

Research has shown that learning a heritage language — a student’s home language or the language of their broader community, which kids born in the United States may not speak fluently — can improve academic performance and sense of belonging.

But until very recently, it was all but impossible for heritage language teachers to obtain a license in teaching their language and culture. Instead, those teachers often received temporary permissions to teach their subject matter. That gave them little job security or relevant professional development, and they often weren’t eligible for annual raises.

Now, following a 2023 law, a program through the state of Minnesota helps teachers in languages like Karen, Hmong, and Somali obtain licenses. Forty-seven teachers joined the first cohort; of those, about a third have either received their license or been approved to receive it soon.

Minnesota’s cohort pathway for heritage language teachers is “the first of its kind,” said Jenna Cushing-Leubner, an associate professor of world languages education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Concordia College in Moorhead debuted a master’s degree program that allows heritage language teachers to obtain a license. A cohort of Hmong teachers graduated this spring, and Concordia now has its first candidates for Somali and Karen licensure. And the University of Minnesota has a master’s in teaching program that can help working professionals gain a world language license — including heritage language teachers.

“It’s like a huge switch has flipped, and things are happening in Minnesota that we’re just not seeing anywhere else,” Cushing-Leubner said.

When Pang Yang developed a Hmong language class at Park Center Senior High in Brooklyn Center, she didn’t have the right license to teach the class. Instead, she held licenses in elementary education and English as a second language.

As she talked to other Hmong language teachers, she realized the lack of a license was a major obstacle. They had to get an “out of field” permission to teach their subject, and the state caps teachers at five out-of-field permissions in their career.

“I put everything together, and I submitted it in, and they said, well, you’ll need a syllabus from your professor,” Yang said. But she’d gotten her teaching degree 15 years before. “My professor is dead.”

Yang reached out to Education Evolving, an advocacy nonprofit, which took up the cause.

“It was putting her program in jeopardy every single year,” said Alex Vitrella, program director at Education Evolving. “We had visited her classroom and knew how powerful it was, how impactful it was for her students and for the community at large.”

In Minneapolis Public Schools, Deqa Muhidin was running into similar challenges trying to develop a Somali heritage language program. She said she received administration pushback around teacher retention, since the Somali language teachers would have to use temporary licenses. Despite the pushback, the district launched its Somali heritage language program in 2021. Muhidin is now the district program facilitator for Somali heritage language.

After years of advocacy — including an Education Evolving report, a change of leadership at the state’s teacher licensing agency and the election of a DFL trifecta — the Legislature passed a bill in 2023 to create a state program to help heritage language teachers obtain a license and simplify the process for them to do so.

Grant Boulanger, the heritage language pathway specialist at the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board, said the new standards “reduced burdens” on teachers by considering their multilingualism and multiculturalism an asset and reducing the number of steps necessary to complete a portfolio. It also provided for a specialist — Boulanger — to facilitate a process for heritage language teachers. The program is free to participants.

The first cohort represents Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Hmong, Karen, Korean, Spanish, Somali and Tigrinya. Thirty of those teachers signed up to pursue a language license in addition to other licenses they already hold. For 17 candidates, the license in their heritage language will be their first teaching license.

Samira Abdurahman, who teaches multilingual learners at Willow Creek Middle School in Rochester, applied for the program. Her children speak Somali, but they don’t speak it the same way she does.

“I think that when you lose your language, you lose your culture, and that’s what we see these days,” she said.

Now, she is waiting for her license to come through — one of the first professional Somali licenses in the state.