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To fill teacher jobs, community colleges offer new degrees
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Fatima Nunez Ardon, a teacher in training, teaches Spanish to second graders at Madrona Elementary School in SeaTac, a suburb in Seattle, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. Ardon went through a program at Highline College, a community college, to train to be a teacher. - photo by Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times via AP
In her second-grade classroom outside Seattle, Fatima Nuñez Ardon often tells her students stories about everyday people realizing their dreams. One day, for example, she talked about Salvadoran American NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio and his journey to the International Space Station. Another day, she told them her own life story — how she, an El Salvadoran immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in middle school speaking very little English, came to be a teacher.