Thousands of international teachers prepare state's students for global marketplace

Indeed, North Carolina leads the nation in employing teachers from abroad in K-12 schools, a data analysis by WRAL News shows.

International teachers have more than quadrupled in the state in the past decade to more than 2,100 teachers. North Carolina spent $121.4 million this year on teachers coming from abroad—six times what it did a decade ago. During that time, international teachers have gone from 1 in 200 North Carolina teachers to 1 in 50.

The influx of international teachers is due in part to big investments in global education by schools in the Tar Heel State — an effort to help students prepare to work at the global companies that keep moving to the state. Its growth has also occurred as many school systems struggle to retain teachers and fill open positions.

Vance County Schools employs about 60 international teachers, Superintendent Cindy Bennett said. It has no global immersion or dual-language programs, but the school system emphasizes preparing students to be “productive global citizens.” Dual-language programs teach content in both English and another language, and schools sometimes add a global study emphasis across content areas on top of those programs.

“We don't look at the international teachers as just a way to fill our classrooms,” Bennett said. “We really are looking at the value-add that they bring to the district. We find that they are very strong in pedagogy. We find that they are very committed to their community, and our community becomes their community.”

In the past decade, the state has increased its emphasis on global programs, particularly dual-language programs. Dual-language programs have grown from about 49 during the 2011-12 school year to 229 today.

International teachers are often bilingual themselves and not as many teachers coming from North Carolina colleges are. But their roles are bigger than that. Not all are here teaching another language or speak a language other than English.

Racquel Graham is from Spanish Dome, Jamaica, and teaches fourth grade at Cumberland Road Elementary School in Fayetteville.

Graham is on a J-1 visa, which allows her to participate in exchange visitor programs in the U.S. She just finished her fourth year at the Cumberland County school. “I wanted to experience a different culture and know how things were done differently,” Graham said.

She heard about a Chapel Hill-based company, Participate Learning, which was looking for international teachers, and she applied.

It comes with a lot of perks. Graham makes more money than she could in Jamaica. She has more technology in her classroom, and her colleagues have helped her learn to use it.

For the school district, teachers like Graham bring new perspectives to their classrooms.

“Our No. 1 interest is tied back to our strategic goals, and also our vision of wanting to prepare kids to be competitive in a global society,” said Tonya Page, the school system’s human resources director.

The school system’s strategic vision reads: “Every student will have equitable access to engaging learning that prepares them to be collaborative, competitive, and successful in our global world.”

Cumberland County Schools has 340 teachers on J-1 visas this school year. That’s about one in every nine teachers.

Schools tout the benefits of intentional teachers in providing cultural experiences to students. In many cases, students might converse with other kids across the world as a part of their teacher’s cultural exchange program.

The J-1 visa requires teachers to do cultural exchange activities with their students related to their home countries.

That could be writing letters to students abroad or solving problems set in other countries.

Graham did a scavenger hunt with her students one year, where they hunted for facts about her. She told students about her favorite things and asked students to tell her about theirs. She’s taught them about Jamaica and its history.

North Carolina’s international teacher population is growing as the state struggles with recruiting and retaining young teachers in the state.

Some education leaders from more rural areas told WRAL News they also hire international teachers because they struggle to hire anyone else.

Thousands fewer people are graduating from North Carolina colleges’ education programs. Interest in the profession has waned, at least domestically. Just 4,228 students completed a North Carolina teaching program in 2020, according to federal data, down 36% from 2012.

Graham’s principal, Michele Cain, said she sees Cumberland Road Elementary as a place for global learning, just without a language program. She frequently hires international teachers and employed seven this year.

“It is very beneficial to our students, for them to have international teachers to come on board because they have an array of expertise that they're able to bring into our school,” Cain said.

A 2013 report from the State Board of Education’s Task Force on Global Education urged the state to adopt a plan of action to increase global education in the state’s classrooms. The task force recommended embedding global themes in curriculum, teaching about international affairs, and, more than anything, expanding dual-language immersion programs.

The report also called for the state’s universities to ensure future teachers are learning how to teach global issues and perspectives and foreign languages.

“From teacher preparation through development, teachers need access to high quality curriculum content and training that allows them to develop their awareness of the global context in which we operate, integrate an international perspective throughout the curriculum, and bolster their understanding of how to build the global competency of their students,” the task force wrote. “Only then, will teachers be equipped to fully satisfy the second standard of North Carolina’s new teacher evaluation system: that they establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students by, among other things, embracing diversity in the community and the world.”

Dual-language programs are intended to ensure students become proficient in a foreign language. Research shows that learning a language is easier at younger ages; fluency is more difficult to attain when starting after age 10. In the United States, many students take foreign language classes in high school but are not able to use the language as adults.

The work of groups like Participate Learning, where Graham applied to come to North Carolina, have taken off in recent years.

Data from the federal government show that 2,662 new J-1 visas for teachers were granted nationwide in 2016. In 2021, the U.S. government granted 4,271 new visas.

No one added more than North Carolina last year, with 830 new visas for teachers. Each year, North Carolina receives about one in five to six of the new visas granted.

The $121.4 million the state spent on teachers from abroad is earmarked for their salaries, which are on the same scale as U.S. teachers, and any other costs associated with the teachers’ hire.

Back in the 1990s, international teachers were rare. North Carolina spent just $4.8 million on international teachers 25 years ago.

“I look at Vance County as a cultural melting pot that is changing the world and leading in what education should look like in a globalized world,” Bennett said.

Kadecia Stewart-Faines, now Vance County Schools’ international teacher liaison, calls coming to Vance County Schools from Jamaica the “very best experience” of her life.

She taught for eight years in Jamaica before arriving in Vance County, where she found herself immediately intimidated. “My first year here was challenging,” she said. “It was an epic failure, because I was not comfortable with my content.”

Graham described a similar struggle when she first arrived. The students were different, the culture was different, the approaches to teaching were more personalized to students.

Stewart-Faines was a math teacher but ended up working on an art show, driven by her passion for performing arts.

“In that moment, I knew that the kids did not just need Ms. Stewart as a math teacher,” she said, “but they need teachers who are going to be invested in developing every possible skill and talent.”

Just a few years later, she became the North Central Region Teacher of the Year.

Today, Graham loves her job. She extended her visa.

Her classroom’s math lesson on a recent morning was filled with energy. Students played a vocabulary game.

They danced to help them remember what they’d learned about shapes and angles. They helped and supported one another as they solved problems.

“I’m trying to build a class family that any time they show that love, that's memorable to me,” Graham said.

The experience has helped her, too.

“I’ve been learning a lot,” Graham said. “A lot of things that I can take back with me.”