More teachers of immigrant origin

Throughout my schooling, I was one of the few children of immigrants in the classroom. My parents came from Morocco, and I was born and raised in Barcelona. Like so many Catalans, I grew up watching and enjoying Club Super3, where they aired shows like... Dragon Ball and DoraemonThanks to this audiovisual content, many of us children who didn't come from Catalan-speaking families became familiar with Catalan, which is now part of our identity. Growing up as children of immigrants isn't easy. You're born into a very complicated economic and social reality, sometimes compounded by episodes of discrimination and racism. Like many young people who have shared the same baggage, we became aware of the importance of education as a way to progress socially and aspire to a better life. Now, little by little, the result of these individual efforts is allowing many of us to become teachers, doctors, writers, and engineers. Now that I work as a secondary school teacher, I find that classrooms are more culturally diverse than in my day, but I'm still one of the few children of immigrants who are teachers. According to data from the Statistical Institute of Catalonia, 225,000 students in the education system are foreign-born. This figure doesn't include all Catalan students with immigrant roots. Students with a migratory background are the group that presentsMore school failure in CataloniaThis phenomenon refers to students who do not obtain their ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) diploma. Andreu Domingo and Jordi Bayona are two researchers who have analyzed this phenomenon. In their research, they differentiate between foreign students born outside Catalonia and Catalan students with an immigrant parent. Regarding foreign students, their poor results are explained by their late entry into the education system, which makes it difficult for them to adapt. Both researchers focus on understanding why Catalan students with foreign roots obtain worse academic results. The socioeconomic problems they face are one of the reasons. Another point to highlight is the direct correlation between a higher concentration of students of foreign origin in certain schools and a high rate of academic failure. This leads to what the authors call the "neighborhood effect," in which the negative circumstances of the student's environment influence their academic performance and future prospects. Ultimately, they end up reproducing the social conditions and inequalities of their parents, and their situation of poverty and social stagnation becomes chronic, with little room for improvement.

As a society, we cannot afford to have generations of Catalans condemned to a subordinate position. It is vitally important to implement public policies to reduce this gap. One such policy could be to rethink the Sensei program. This program, launched in 2023 by the Catalan government, was created to offer newly qualified teachers the opportunity to combine teaching experience with professional development by completing a residency at a school for a year. Teachers are assigned a mentor who guides them and facilitates their adaptation to their work. This initiative could have incorporated a more intercultural perspective and allocated some positions to teachers of immigrant origin, given the underrepresentation of this group within the Department of Education. This would have given a boost to a new generation of Catalan teachers with immigrant roots, who could gradually establish themselves in the educational field. Their presence within the faculty would also be invaluable in fostering stronger ties with families of foreign origin and facilitating communication between them and the school.

These young people need culturally relatable role models who allow them to see themselves reflected in them and who help them realize that it is also possible for them to aspire to go further. This is especially important when they observe that, both in their daily lives and in the media and public administration, there are no people of color like themselves. From my teaching experience, I observe how students appreciate having a teacher who shares a migrant background with them, because they see that I can better understand their reality and the situations they face, such as racism. Furthermore, they see that it is possible for people like themselves to hold positions, such as being a teacher. These young people need to see that they can not only aspire to be Lamine Yamal, but that they can dream and have the tools to be anything they want to be.