Migrant education programs make Saturday school a family affair
Students in a migrant teaching programme in Los Angeles dig for fossils. Credit: LAUSD Migrant Education Programme
(Update: A Castilian translation of this story is now bachelor, courtesy of the Los Angeles Unified Migrant Education Program.) School on Sat? Nigh students would protest such an intrusion on their free time, but for children of migrant workers, Sabbatum school is a family affair.
Combined with after-school and summer programs, Saturday courses are a required office of the federally funded Migrant Education Program, which gives some of the country'due south about at-risk students a chance to proceed pace with their peers.
Migrant education programs are for children whose parents are in jobs that crave them to movement often, such every bit in the agriculture manufacture. Children may nourish several different schools each twelvemonth as families move from region to region, following the seasonal planting of crops.
To ensure that children don't autumn behind, the program offers a range of services such equally academic classes, bilingual and multicultural instruction, vocational education and even some wellness intendance.
Sabbatum programs have been seen equally a way to supplement traditional academic years and boost student achievement, yet formal use of Saturdays as part of the school agenda, along the lines of the migrant program, is a rarity in California.
The program includes multiple Saturday activities for the entire family, with kid care provided for babies and toddlers, preschool programs for iii- and 4-yr-olds, easily-on projects for elementary and middle school students, and a take a chance to grab up on credits for loftier school students. Classes for adults focus on literacy, nutrition, computer skills and parenting. Districts that desire to participate in the migrant programme – which is voluntary for both schools and families – must offering academic services beyond the regular schoolhouse 24-hour interval to receive federal funds.
Interviews by EdSource in contempo months have establish that some campuses offering special tutoring or Advanced Placement grooming sessions, while other students participate in able-bodied or arts events on Saturdays or perform community service work. In addition, some schools apply Saturday academic programs every bit a style to recoup average daily attendance funding losses past requiring students with many absences to attend.
Just few programs compare to the full-scale, in-depth approach by the migrant education program, which attempts to prevent the learning loss that could exist suffered when students are transferred from one school to the side by side as their parents follow the crops or other afoot work.
Those who abet for more than learning time for students say Saturday programs are one way schools can boost student accomplishment, along with longer school days and longer school years.
"All of those speak to the fact that the conventional 180-mean solar day, v-twenty-four hours-a-calendar week schedule is non based on what'south needed for kids and families," said Chris Gabrieli, chairman of the Maryland-based National Center on Time & Learning, which advocates for more academic time. "That schedule is based on a ready of user-friendly routines people worked out (effectually adult work schedules). But a lot of the experimentation you're seeing is based on people saying in that location are unlike populations of students now with different needs, and maybe we shouldn't be so bound by traditions."
Rosa León, who teaches in the migrant teaching programme in Los Angeles Unified, says she wishes the interactive, hands-on, family-oriented classes were bachelor to all students. All students and families, she said, could do good from this approach.
In-depth approach
The migrant programme supports children and youth, ages 3 to 21, whose parents or other members of their family accept worked in agronomics, fishing, dairy, nutrient processing and packing, forestry or the livestock industries inside the past three years. While post-obit the temporary work, parents must have taken their child from their regular school to a different school commune, whether or non the student went to school at the 2d location, program organizers said.
Not all eligible students participate in the voluntary migrant program. Statewide, 133,928 students were eligible to participate in the 2011-12 school year, but simply 79,547 took function in the classes, according to figures from the California Department of Education.
In Los Angeles Unified, two,500 students qualify for the program, still only about 10 percent of those participate, despite efforts by staff to encourage greater omnipresence. The Los Angeles plan offers classes during the summer and later on school in add-on to eight to nine Saturday classes per semester, lasting from 8:30 a.grand. to 1:30 p.g.
Students in Los Angeles explore Cabrillo Beach tide pools during a Saturday field trip arranged by the Migrant Education Plan. Credit: LAUSD Migrant Education Program
Many of the families who participate in the Los Angeles migrant program turn to temporary agricultural work when they tin't observe other jobs, or if they are laid off from other employment, said Nellie Barrientos, migrant didactics programme coordinator at Los Angeles Unified.
"When families exercise not find piece of work in Los Angeles, i of the alternatives they take is to seek agricultural work up north in Fresno, Bakersfield, Oxnard, Tulare or Santa Maria," Barrientos said in an email.
While the district encourages every eligible family to nourish, many face logistical challenges, Barrientos said. The migrant students are scattered throughout the large, urban commune, and parents may struggle to detect transportation to the 3 schoolhouse sites that offer Sat programs. In addition, some parents work on Saturdays or have other commitments, non to mention that getting teenagers to get up in the morning is no easy task.
Beneficial program
The program provides valuable academic aid, but also exposes students to experiences they might not otherwise take – such as out-of-state field trips or trips to local beaches to study the tide pools.
Claudia Bañuelos, whose parents picked lettuce, was fourteen and a skillful student in the Los Angeles commune when her mother insisted that she attend Saturday school with the family.
"I didn't feel the need to go, to get up early Sat," she recalled. "But once we were in that location, we knew there was a purpose for us."
Because she did not demand to make upwardly credits, Bañuelos helped tutor the younger students.
Bañuelos, now 32 and a graduate of California Land Academy, Fresno, said the dedicated teachers who worked in the plan helped her realize she had educational and career options she hadn't considered earlier.
Self-conscious about her Spanish accent, Bañuelos hadn't thought nigh attending higher and instead intended to go any job she could later high school. The teachers in the program fabricated her realize that there was zippo wrong with her accent, she said.
"English language wasn't my first linguistic communication," she said, "so I just had to work with information technology and make sure I was understood. Information technology'due south only who I am."
Now a mother of 3, Bañuelos runs an later-school program and plans to render to college in January to pursue either a education credential or a career as a nurse.
Her mother, Rosa Bañuelos, said the program "changed our lives." Now that her children accept grown, Bañuelos volunteers with the migrant instruction program.
"I learned to be a parent leader, learned to write," she said. "My husband and I learned that educating our children was a family unit affair – that it takes the whole family."
'Gratifying' work
The migrant instruction program is taught by credentialed teachers, such as kindergarten teacher León, who teaches at Humphreys Avenue Elementary in E Los Angeles on regular school days and with the program at Harmony Uncomplicated in Due south L.A. in the summertime and on Saturdays.
"It is a lot of work, but information technology is very gratifying," León said. "They come because they want to come, and the parents are so grateful for this opportunity."
Kindergartners in a migrant education programme in Los Angeles studied marine life and wrote essays almost what they'd learned. Credit: LAUSD Migrant Education Plan
Students are given a writing score from i to 4 when they begin the semester, and an individual programme for each pupil is developed based on that score. Students are assessed again at the cease of the semester. The nerveless information, a written assessment of the students and samples of their work are and so given to their classroom teachers.
"Many of the students jump up one score, a few even two scores," León said. "Even if they have the same score, I tin see growth, specially in kindergarten, in the means the kids are expressing themselves."
This includes their ability to speak in consummate sentences in English language, broaden their vocabulary and tackle more than sophisticated fine art projects. Data on the writing cess for 157 students at the three sites in spring 2022 testify that more than 60 pct of the students grew by at least ane indicate in their writing cess, with virtually a quarter jumping two points.
With the introduction of the Mutual Cadre Land Standards, the migrant teaching programme is focusing more on critical thinking and writing. This past summertime, León'due south kindergarteners researched the threats to marine life and and so were asked to write an stance piece about whether it was important to preserve ocean habitats.
But perhaps the biggest do good of the plan, co-ordinate to its graduates, is the boost in self-confidence.
Mariana Alonzo, 18, the daughter of an orangish picker, is a ceremonious engineering science pupil at University of California, Davis, who participated in the migrant program. She recalls a trip to Washington, D.C., offered to eye schoolhouse students through the migrant education programme. She had never ventured exterior California.
"Because of that trip, I was able to come out of my comfort zone," she said. "It was a calendar week without my parents. It was hard. I cried. Merely it helped me be stronger and made me realize I'd accept to be on my own someday."
This story has been translated into Castilian past the Los Angeles Unified Migrant Education Programme. A copy of the Spanish version is available hither.
EdSource Today senior editor Michelle Maitre contributed to this report. Susan Frey covers expanded learning fourth dimension. Contact her.
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Source: https://edsource.org/2013/migrant-education-programs-make-saturday-school-a-family-affair/40748
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