Some people pursue diplomas to help them succeed. Others pursue them so their children can succeed.
With that goal in mind—success—a class of parents committed nine weeks to learning how to navigate the educational system. They aimed to learn how to help their children graduate and pursue college educations of their own. After completing their training, the parents received their diplomas in a ceremony.
For some, it was a first.
More than 100 people filled Tommy Kunst Junior High School’s auditorium. Seventy-nine of them, all adults with school-aged children, would be making their way to the front to be awarded a diploma and certificate.
Once a week for nine weeks, these parents went to work, picked up their children, and then headed to the Parent Institute for Quality Education class to learn about the many ways they could get more involved with their children’s education.
Many of the parents in the program—though not all—are of Latino descent. That’s significant in light of efforts to reach out to such a demographic in schools.
Recently President Barrack Obama acknowledged the changing face of the country in a town hall meeting sponsored by Spanish language television network Univision. In a speech, Obama said that in order for this country to succeed in a global market, its diverse workforce—a large percentage of which is Latino—needs to get the right education. The key to that, he said, is getting parents of those children involved in the educational process.
That message isn’t lost on leaders in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, comprised of approximately 70 percent Latino students. Fortunately, the district has educators who can relate to many of those students and their families, making the process of reaching the students—not only at school, but at home—a little easier.
Olivia Bolaños knows where the students are coming from and what’s possible.
“I’m one of those people,” she said. “Only Spanish was allowed to be spoken at home. I’m the one who has passed through that system and will say there’s no excuses for these students not to succeed.”
She agreed that the key to success lies with reaching parents and making them aware of their role in their student’s success. But to do so, educators also need to know where the parents come from culturally. In many Latin American countries, parents aren’t expected to be a part of their student’s education, and the parents bring that mentality to a world of PTA groups, School Site Councils, and parent-teacher conferences. Confusion sets in.
Margarita Gonzàlez, Ph.D. and director of Consolidated Projects and Migrant Education for the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, said it’s not a matter of apathy toward their children’s education, but one of trust.
“Parents really trust the schools and teachers. They make sure their children are dressed, that they behave well, that they have food—and they think that’s their job,” she explained. “When they come here, it’s different. They don’t know that here it’s a partnership.”
A language barrier often compounds that mentality. Parents unsure of English likely aren’t going to venture into an academic system that they probably haven’t gone through themselves, nor ask questions in a language they don’t understand.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t care about whether their children succeed, Bolaños said.
“I had one parent who went through the PIQE program that I asked, ‘Why don’t you keep going, go to Hancock College?’” Bolaños remembered. “And he said, ‘I didn’t come to this country to be successful, I came so that my children could be successful.’”
The Santa Maria-Bonita School District does its part to address both the students and the parents in order to reach the students at home. The district adopted a new curriculum called California Treasures that focuses on conversational and academic vocabulary. The curriculum also provides for a differential approach that allows children to learn at their own levels. Often, because newly arrived students don’t have certain language abilities, they’re two to three grades behind in skills. This can affect children as early as kindergarten.
“You may have this child who has 50 words of English and this one that has 50,000,” Bolaños said. “The child with limited vocabulary would need three to four years to acquire it at the level of a native speaker.”
The district has struggled to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act—which, in part, requires all schools to meet progressive benchmark proficiency increases in areas like math and English—but it’s made steady progress with the language arts portion. At this point, the district sits just below 40 percent proficiency. That’s significantly lower than the aimed-for 56.8 percent proficiency marker, but it’s a lot higher than where the school started in the 2001-2002 academic year: just shy of 20 percent. Bolaños pointed out, however, that the district is on track in the math category.
Much of that disparity has to do with the language barrier: Math is a universal language. To that end, the district strives to better teach students in their own language, while also helping them better develop their English speaking skills.
“Research has indicated that the more you know in your primary language, the easier it is to acquire English,” Bolaños said. “For instance, picking up words like transportacion and transportation, carro and car, there are lots of cognates, and it’s easier to make that connection.”
The district’s faculty spends time on staff development for English-language learners once a month. The district is made up of 61 percent English-language learners, and 91 percent of those are Hispanic.
“It can be very easy to say, ‘Well, they go home and just speak Spanish,’” Bolaños said. “But we need to say to ourselves, ‘What can we do to help them learn the language?’”
She said each school site has a certain amount of funding to provide for all language learners, including a percentage specifically for English-language learners. Each school site can spend the funding as it sees fit within parameters, such as on bilingual books with audio and pictures or even music, which, with its rhythmic patterns and language structure, ends up being a good way to teach a language.
The methods have shown results. For instance, the school district now has 1,000 identified Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) students—up from 500 just a couple of years ago. Approximately 300 parents participate in the GATE meetings.
The district continues learning after school as well, when it offers programs like After School Education and Safety Program (ASES), a state-funded program that exposes students to the arts and physical education and allows time for completing homework, socializing, and interacting in English. Nearly 1,300 students are enrolled in that program, Gonzalez said. The district also provides summer school and Saturday school.
Then there are programs designed for the parents, such as PIQE. Executive Director Alma Grimaldo said the nine-week program has been around since its inception in 1987, but it has only about a five-year history in the Santa Maria Valley.
“After going through the program, they feel the school belongs to them,” Grimaldo said. “They understand it, and they’re much more open to it.”
Based out of Bakersfield, the PIQE program is established in schools in the Santa Maria, Paso Robles, Lucia Mar, and Santa Barbara districts. Grimaldo said that nearly 90 percent of Latino children of PIQE-graduated parents graduate from high school—versus only 50 percent of Latinos nationally.
Before working with the Santa
Maria-Bonita School District, Bolaños was principal at Sanchez Elementary School, where she implemented the program; it was the first school to do so in Santa Maria. That first Santa Maria graduation saw 300 parents walking.
“There were parents who would go straight from work,” Bolaños said. “They wanted to learn. They were hungry for it.”
Parents attend classes once a week and learn about their role in the educational process, learn what questions to ask, and even get handouts with specific questions they can take to educators and point to the information they want to know if they don’t feel comfortable enough to ask for it in English. PIQE, in short, provides parents with information and tools so there’s no excuse for their children not to succeed, as Bolaños puts it.
The PIQE program also collaborates with the state university system. At the end of the program, participants are given a PIQE diploma, as well as a certificate from Cal Poly guaranteeing them entrance—as long as they meet admission requirements. The certificate applies to the graduating parent and all their children.
“It’s very symbolic,” said Professor Philip S. Bailey, Dean of Science and Mathematics and Cal Poly. “We want these parents who came from work for nine weeks and did this thing. We want them to know we support them in the California State University System.”
The Student Life and Leadership Coordinator at Cal Poly and college liaison to the PIQE program added, “Our representation is not only symbolic for the parents, it’s symbolic for us, too, because we want to attract students to our university.”
Bailey, who raised four adopted children of diverse ancestry and was host to 15 exchange students over the years, has been a big supporter of the PIQE program. He told the audience at a recent PIQE graduation ceremony at Tommy Kunst Junior High that higher learning and career success is possible for anyone, no matter what their background. He told the stories of his children and some of the students he housed who reached phenomenal heights. But he also brought along one of his students to tell her story firsthand.
Blanca Lopez is a mathematics major at Cal Poly with a story to which many of the parents in the audience could relate. Raised by Mexican parents who finished high school and became laborers (a construction worker and house cleaner), Lopez was expected to finish high school and clean houses with her mother.
“I saw that there was more,” Lopez said. “Without telling them, I went and enrolled at Cal Poly.”
Now she’s a mathematics major and in the top 20 percent of her class, Bailey said.
With stories like Lopez’s, the graduating PIQE class came away energized. PIQE’s Grimaldo said that’s typical: “At first they don’t always want to enter the program. It’s a nine-week commitment and something they’ve got to do after work and still get dinner done and clean house, but at the end they are excited about what they’ve learned.”
Maricruz Albarran doesn’t speak English, but she participates in the School Site Council and just completed the PIQE program. She reached college in Mexico but didn’t finish. Still, she promotes the importance of college to her children.
“The most important thing is to learn how to be supportive of our kids, which is a big thing in our Latino family,” Albarran said through a translator.
While many of PIQE’s students are Latino and non-English speaking or new to the country, not all of them fit that demographic. They do all share the desire to make sure college is a possibility for their children.
Blanca Aguirre said she has a GED and attended one year of college.
“So I want a lot better for my two children,” she said. “The most important thing is to be there for them and guide them.”
Aguirre is active with her children’s schoolwork and participates in the Tommy Kunst Junior High School Site Council.
“Seeing them succeed and graduate college would be the ideal for me,” she said.
Another parent and PIQE graduate, Hasan Adam, said he attended college and is currently an electrical engineer. He enrolled in PIQE to learn about financial aid and how students can maintain their GPAs to be ready for college.
“It’s a tough time,” he said. “With all the budget cuts in government, kids need to know where all the scholarships are and how to get grants.”
Ed Cora, principal of Tommy Kunst Junior High, said the school’s migrant program pays for every parent who graduates from the PIQE program. He said because of the program, his school has seen a lot more parents coming in and asking questions.
“I think it’s important for all parents to understand what their educational rights are for their child, how to read transcripts, and what questions to ask,” he said. “If a school is doing a good job, they should be open to that. It keeps everyone on their toes.”
Though she only speaks Spanish, Albarran makes sure she gets involved and asks the right questions. Through an interpreter, Albarran said she tells her children she wants them to go as far as they can, and that the sky’s the limit. She said she’s often asked how she keeps up her support with all the other obligations she has in her life.
She answered in Spanish, but the English translation carried all the same emotion: “I tell them the love that I have for my children keeps me going.”
Contact Arts Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 14-21, 2011.