See how Iowa schools are bring language teachers from Spain
see how Iowa schools are filling world language teacher positions and enriching classrooms through an exchange program with Spain.
- The Exchange Visiting Teachers from Spain helps schools find qualified Spanish teachers.
- World language teaching positions are hard to fill in rural areas.
The sounds of Dallas Center-Grimes High School Spanish students singing “¿Por Que Te Vas?” by Jeanette with varying levels of gusto and prodding by teacher Antton Zuazu Hernández may seem like an unusual way to learn.
But the sing-along is how Zuazu Hernández, a native of Spain, helps engage his students and share his culture as part of a teacher-exchange program.
“I feel I’m a messenger in a way, and this is part of the program,” he said. “We’re expected to both bring our culture here and bring your culture back to Spain.”
Zuazu Hernández — who taught English in Spain — is among 26 bilingual teachers in Iowa as part of an exchange program between the Iowa Department of Education and Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture.
“(The program) was created to address the shortage of qualified Spanish teachers in the state and helps expose students to different world cultures,” said Heather Doe, the department’s spokesperson. “… The Exchange Visiting Teachers from Spain program has been very successful in helping schools, especially in rural communities, hire highly qualified Spanish teachers.”
Iowa has nearly 1,200 world language teachers in kindergarten through college, according to the Iowa World Language Association website.
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Some foreign language teachers in Iowa moved to the U.S. and later obtained teaching credentials. Others were recruited to work in Iowa schools.
Iowa schools, including Waukee Community School District, even offer financial incentives as a recruitment tool for hard to fill positions.
“Many of them, like me, will arrive with teaching experience from our home countries, but in the process of validating the credentials in the U.S. we find obstacles,” said Elizabeth Bulthuis, a Waukee High School world languages teacher who immigrated from Ecuador in 2003, “and the validating of credentials also can be lengthy and costly, because of all the educational systems and how they are structured differently.”
Exchange program is beneficial to schools, superintendent
The Spain exchange program — which brings hundreds of teachers to schools across the U.S. — comes with several requirements.
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The Spanish teachers must be certified in the language with at least two years of experience, Doe said. Additionally, candidates go through a vetting process at the federal, state and local levels. Teachers also attend a three-day state orientation.
Schools and districts participating in the program pay an $895 fee to offset licensing and orientation costs, Doe said.
The program is a blessing for rural areas struggling to fill positions teaching foreign language, special education, math and science.
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“It’s very difficult to even get an applicant,” said Deron Stender, the superintendent at the rural Creston Community School District, “… When I say it’s difficult to even find (the candidates) they don’t exist. And if they do, they’re probably going to be in a larger metro, urban, suburban areas where there’s just more opportunities.”
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St. Anthony’s Catholic school brings Spanish speaking teachers to the U.S. to teach students the language.
Zuazu Hernández taught Spanish and drove a bus at Creston during the 2024-25 school year. But falling enrollment and budget cuts resulted in his position being eliminated.
A program drawback is teachers only have three-year visas, he said.
“When you have a very good individual that comes to your district from a foreign country after the third year, you still have that need again,” Stender said. “So, we just open it back up to the same program, but you’re doing another refresh of the process, and while that’s a challenge, it’s still better than not having a teacher in the classroom.”
Not every world language teacher comes from Spain
Another issue schools have faced is filling teaching positions for immersion programs.
In the early 2000s, St. Anthony’s started a Spanish-immersion program after several families with children of Honduras and Guatemala descent wanted their kids to have a Catholic school education and maintain their connection to the Spanish language.
“A lot of teachers go to school to teach Spanish, but they go to school to teach it as a standalone Spanish class,” principal Jennifer Raes said. “… We were really searching for teachers that could come here and teach in any subject, just a regular teacher, but also has the skills of teaching in Spanish and English.”
Marisol Guerra, a Honduras native, came to the U.S. in 2010 to help start St. Anthony’s program. Guerra manage to come to the U.S. as part of that year’s Spain exchange program cohort.
More than a decade later, the school offers classes in English and an immersive track where 85% of the students’ day is spent learning in Spanish. While families were hesitant in the beginning to take part in the immersion program, there is now a waitlist of almost a dozen families.
“There was uncertainty, (but) they wanted their children to learn a second language,” Guerra said, “and they wanted without knowing, I think, they also were exposing them to other cultures and opening their minds to other things.”
The over the years, St. Anthony’s has employed teachers who moved to America from Spain, Mexico and other Latin American countries.
The over representation of teachers from Spain likely is due to other countries not offering similar exchange programs, said Bulthuis, a member of the Iowa World Language Association.
It took several years for the veteran teacher — who came to Iowa in 2005 — to become credentialed to teach in the U.S. because she was not part of an exchange program.
“I think that world language teachers can be difficult to recruit because the pool of candidates is relatively small, so teachers need a strong language proficiency, cultural knowledge and all the teaching certifications,” said Bulthuis, who left Ecuador in 2003 because of the country’s financial crisis, “(but) many people who speak another language also have opportunity in other careers.”
Bulthuis does not recommend loosening the criteria to teach in Iowa but suggests improving or streamlining the process for an international teacher to obtain a state teaching license.
“… Not every Spanish speaking country is going to have (an exchange) program like that in place to help their community,” Bulthuis said,
Cultural exchange
Educators say employing international teachers goes beyond language skills.
“International educators can bring tremendous cultural and linguistic expertise to the classroom, which is an incredible skill and very valuable for students,” Bulthuis said.
That cultural exchange can carry over into a school’s lesson plans.
Zuazu Hernández often lets his American students’ interests drive what he teaches them about Spanish culture. These questions have ranged from wanting more insight into bullfighting, the Spanish school system, stereotypes and politics.
“Sometimes, they are more interested in me as a person, or the things I can tell them about Spain than the actual Spanish language,” he said, “but they have that curiosity that I think all teachers, we have to take advantage of.”
While reading “¡Viva el toro!” by Lisa Ray Turner and Blaine Ray, a novel about bullfighting, Zuazu Hernández talked to students about his family’s love of the cultural spectacle and how it is losing popularity in Spain because of how the bulls are treated.
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Zuazu Hernández is open about his perspective on the practice to his students.
“To me, bullfighting is not worth sustaining just because it’s a tradition — traditions are not always good or acceptable — but rather because it’s an art, and it expands the depth of human understanding of the most intense truths in life, with death as the scariest of all,” he told the Des Moines Register in an email.
His students appreciate his candidness and the chance to learn from teachers with different lived experiences.
“I like having different teachers because they have different experiences, and I think it adds to the overall class,” said Grace Heston, an 11th grader Dallas Center-Grimes High School. “When you’re learning about Spanish, you’re not just learning about a language, you’re learning about the culture associated with it.”
Samantha Hernandez covers education for the Register. Reach her at (515) 851-0982 or svhernandez@gannett.com.
