A new course at Lane Community College in early childhood education will be offered completely in Spanish this summer. It’s aimed at addressing the need for childcare for a growing population of Spanish-speaking families.
Philip Martinez, Dean for Social Science at Lane, told KLCC locally and across the state, community colleges are experiencing a larger number of students whose first language is Spanish.
“That population also has a need for childcare,” he said. “And, consequently, there are childcare centers that are beginning, that are predominantly or entirely in Spanish to serve those families and those children. So, we want to professionalize that sector.”
The course, Human Development and Family Services, is part of the certificate process in Early Childhood Education.
It’s being offered as an online class this summer.
Martinez said they have approval for another class taught in Spanish and hope to offer more. LCC has a program called PASS (Pathways Academic Skills and Services) in which a bilingual coach works with students who are English-language learners. They take courses in English with the assistance of the coach. That program is primarily for people who are already learning English.
“The Spanish language courses are intended to do the same thing but start people in a couple of courses in Spanish and then they would transition to the PASS courses in time,” he said.
The goal would be for the students to eventually transition to taking their courses in English.
The program is modeled after one at Clackamas Community College. In that case, Martinez said they translated their entire program into Spanish.
“And so we’re learning from them in our own community with the resources we have. Clackamas funded that with a very large grant,” he said. “We don’t have such a grant, so we’re going to be moving a lot more slowly and learning from their experience and our own.”
Martinez said the Early Childhood Education Program is hoping this expansion will be a win-win for LCC students and the community.
