Bring international teaching assistants to Emerson

Emerson Dual Language Magnet is excited to expand our international teaching assistant program in 2022! Our Teaching Assistants (or TAs) are young adult Spanish speakers who have or are working toward a degree in education and come for a year of cultural exchange—they enrich our community and academic program with their Hispanic heritage and diverse perspective and we provide a year of work experience in a U.S. school. 

With a TA in their classrooms, our students benefit from additional small group and one-to-one instruction. Our TAs will even lead a lesson for an entire class from time to time, and often help and interact with students during lunchtime and recess.   

Importantly, these TAs do NOT replace but complement our existing hardworking staff. They enhance the curriculum and experience for our  families, and provide additional support without competing with current associate educator positions.

We are extremely fortunate to have Emerson families who volunteer to host our TAs, but we need your donations to cover other program expenses. Our goal is to raise $12,000, enough money to bring two international TAs for the 2022-2023 school year. 

·       A donation of $400 will cover one month of a Teaching Assistant stipend.

·       A donation of $2,000 will cover the cost of J-1 visa processing for one Teaching Assistant.

·       A donation of $6,000 will fully cover the cost of one Teaching Assistant for the 2022-2023 school year.

NEW this year:  Emerson is one of five MPS schools connected via a new nonprofit organization called Minneapolis Bilingual Education Collective (Colectiva Bilingue, or Colectiva, for short). Colectiva is also fundraising to bring international TAs to its partner schools, with a goal to bring one or two TAs to each partner school in 2022-2023. The Emerson SILC PTA GiveMN campaign featured on this page is in addition to Colectiva's fundraising. More support in our classrooms means more one-on-one and small group opportunities. Bringing teaching assistants via Colectiva AND our school PTA enables us to reach more students.  

We have four international TAs at Emerson for the 2021-2022 school year: two are funded from Colectiva Bilingue, one is funded from previous donations to this campaign, and one is here through a program sponsored by the Government of Spain.

These international TAs will add tremendous value to our school community! Can you help us reach our goal of raising $12,000 to fund two teaching assistants?