DACA teachers bring more to the table

When Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was announced two years ago, the idea was to offer hope to the oftentimes forgotten children of the immigration debate.

SEE ALSO: Dreamer says DACA program changed her life

Even though fear among the DACA undocumented remains rampant, one national educational organization, Teach For America (TFA), is doing its part to ensure the future of those involved isn’t lost.

Over the last year, TFA actively recruited eligible DACA individuals to join its corps, which from coast to coast includes more than 11,000 teachers who reached more than 750,000 students nationally.

Now for the 2014-15 school year, TFA recently announced the addition of more than 40 DACA beneficiaries to its teaching force.

Latino Community Relations VP Amanda Fernandez told VOXXI.com, “With Deferred Action, what that allowed us to do was to back up our position on the Dream Act, saying that we believe children in this country should have access to a great education and should not be fearing deportation in pursuit of access to a great education.”

Part of that thinking also included DACA individuals who were also college graduates wanting to give back to their community. Fernandez said through the TFA’s research, the organization discovered there were no barriers to opening up admissions to its teaching corps among DACA recipients.

“A year ago we had two deferred action individuals who actually had applied to the corps and got in,” Fernandez said. “Through a lot of work across our regions, our legal team, our admissions team, multiple folks within our organization, we will now have 44 DACA teachers this year teaching in five different regions.”

TFA’s mission is to recruit recent college graduates and professionals of all backgrounds to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools. The group trains and develops corps members to have an immediate positive impact on their students.

However, with the DACA teachers, the impact is shared on both sides of the classroom.  Fernandez said TFA has witnessed a profound impact involving the educator and pupil.

“Teachers themselves can serve as role models and can actually share the experience of so many of their students and/or families who are experiencing the challenges of being undocumented and immigration challenges,” Fernandez said. “That’s really what we’re seeing to be the result of DACA teachers coming into our classroom, in addition to just their ability to advance academic achievement of their kids in their classroom.”

SEE ALSO: Two years after DACA, report shows the program is working

She added the only real concern among TFA officials regarding the DACA recipients is the uncertainty of the program. Basically, the fear is fickle government leaders on a whim could pull the plug on DACA in the future forcing teachers in school districts to leave their position.

“Through many conversations we’ve had with people who know a lot more about immigration than we do, that likelihood is not very high,” Fernandez said. “At least that’s our belief.”

For now, TFA is confident with its program. In fact, Fernandez said the goal for the next school year is to double its DACA members and make sure the seeds of the future are sowed and not forgotten in education and elsewhere.

“This is something that I firmly believe needs to be shared out with our society at large,” Fernandez said. “We have over 500,000 DACA recipients and many who have college degrees and are ready, willing – with a high degree of tenacity just based on what they’ve already gone through – to actually get that college education.

“So we are remiss as a country if we’re not providing access to opportunities, be it in teaching or elsewhere to contribute to the economy and to our society at large.